What is a good typing speed? The average, by job, and in keystrokes

What is the average typing speed?

About 52 words per minute on a computer. That's the average from the largest typing study yet, in which researchers around Aalto University in Finland had 168,960 volunteers memorise and type 15 English sentences online. They averaged 51.56 WPM, with a standard deviation of 20.2 (Dhakal et al., 2018). The fastest typed 120 WPM or more. People type very differently, and one average hides a lot of them.

It's a good number with clear limits. The volunteers chose to take part: 68% were in the US, their mean age was 24.5 and 98.1% typed on QWERTY (Dhakal et al.). A sentence you've just memorised is also easier to type than a text you have to read as you go. So this isn't the speed of "everyone", and no study has measured the same thing as carefully for every country or keyboard.

What typing speed do you need for a job?

Around 40 WPM for most admin jobs, more if the job is mostly typing. There's no universal standard, but public employers that publish their requirements give a good picture. The US federal government asks 40 WPM for a clerk-typist and similar roles, measured on a five-minute sample with three or fewer errors (US OPM). For a data transcriber, 20 or 25 WPM is enough, depending on the grade.

South Coast AQMD, a public air quality agency in California, asks for net speeds: 30 WPM for an office assistant, 45 for an administrative assistant or a legal secretary, 55 for a senior deputy board clerk and 60 for an executive assistant (South Coast AQMD). The more a job is about text, the higher the bar. If you're applying, ask how long the test is and whether mistakes are deducted.

Is 40 WPM good?

Yes, for an office job. It's the federal bar for a clerk-typist, and it's no recent invention: a Dutch royal decree of 5 May 1958 asked would-be typing teachers to copy a text for ten minutes at an average of 200 keystrokes per minute, touch typing with ten fingers (Staatsblad 1958, no. 229). That's exactly 40 WPM, held for twice as long. The decree doesn't say how many errors were allowed.

Is 60 WPM good?

Yes, comfortably above the 51.56 WPM average of the large study, and the speed South Coast AQMD asks of an executive assistant (South Coast AQMD). At that point, accuracy usually matters more than another few words. If you're preparing for an assessment, our page on a typing test for a job application shows how to practise both at once, against the clock and with real words.

How do you convert WPM to keystrokes per minute?

Multiply by five. In typing tests a "word" isn't a real word but five characters, spaces included, a convention that goes back to the typing competitions of the early 1900s (MacKenzie). That way it doesn't matter whether a text is full of short words or long ones. English-language tests report WPM; in Dutch, speeds are often given in keystrokes (aanslagen) per minute, as in that 1958 decree, which is why the numbers look five times higher.

Gross vs net WPM: why accuracy is a separate number

Gross WPM counts everything you typed, net WPM only what's right, and accuracy tells you how much you got right the first time. Type 260 characters in a minute with 10 left wrong, and your gross speed is 52 WPM while your net speed is 50. That looks like a small gap, but a test that only measures gross speed rewards sloppy typing.

Never compare a gross speed with a net one: if you leave your mistakes in, you look faster than you are.

So why a third number? Because a mistake you fix with Backspace leaves no trace in your net speed: it only costs time. In the large study, an average of 1.167% of characters stayed wrong, but people made 2.29 corrections per sentence (Dhakal et al.). Faster typists also made fewer errors. Speed and accuracy go together more often than you'd think.

What's good, then? The federal limit of three errors in five minutes at 40 WPM, about 1,000 keystrokes, comes to roughly 99.7% accuracy if you count each error as one character (US OPM). That's strict. At Lurndo, the final tests from module 5 on and the certificate ask for at least 97%. In your first one-minute test you work out a net speed yourself.

Why is typing on a phone slower?

Because thumbs on glass are slower than ten fingers on keys. In a study of 37,370 volunteers, people averaged 36.2 WPM on their phones, with 2.34% of characters left wrong (Palin et al., 2019). That's about 15 WPM slower than on a computer, the researchers write. If your phone speed is well below your desktop speed, that's normal, not a sign you can't type.

How you hold your phone matters. People who typed with two thumbs reached 38.0 WPM, those using one finger 29.2 (Palin et al.). Age shows up too: 10- to 19-year-olds were fastest at 39.6 WPM, and people aged 50 to 59 averaged 26.3. Touch typing is learned on a physical keyboard, so Lurndo's typing exercises need one. On your phone you can still read the explanations and see your results.

Does touch typing make you faster?

A little, and not always. In the large study, people who had taken a typing course were on average 5 WPM faster than those who hadn't, a difference the researchers call small (Dhakal et al.). 72% of participants had taken one. Untrained typists can be as fast as trained ones, they write, even if trained typists are faster in general.

A small lab study went further. Among 30 people, the touch typists averaged 57.8 WPM and the others 58.9, no significant difference (Feit et al., 2016). The touch typists used 8.5 fingers on average, the others 6.2. The big difference was in their eyes: the non-touch typists looked at the keyboard 41% of the time, the touch typists 20%. As Feit, Weir and Oulasvirta put it, "the number of fingers is not an indicator for high performance".

What does make a difference? Mostly how much your keystrokes overlap. Fast typists press the next key before they let go of the last one. On average that happened on 25% of keystrokes, and most fast typists did it on 40 to 70% (Dhakal et al.). That was more closely linked to speed than the number of fingers, which participants reported themselves: only 47.6% said they used nine or ten.

So why learn to touch type? Because your eyes stay on the screen, where your text and your mistakes are. The French study found the same: the biggest difference between fast and slow students was whether they looked at their hands (Pinet et al., 2022). How long it takes to get back to your old speed is in how long it takes to learn touch typing. Been typing with two fingers for years? See from two fingers to ten.

The line you just typed ran through the same typing engine as the course, in your own browser and on the keyboard you picked. It checks every character against the target text, and whether you got it right at the first keystroke. Held-down keys and pasted text don't count. After the last key you see your mistakes in the line, and if you tap one, you read what most likely went wrong.

Typing speed on AZERTY: does Shift count as a keystroke?

That's up to each test, because there's no standard. On a Belgian AZERTY keyboard you type the digits and the full stop with Shift; on QWERTY you don't. If a test counts Shift as a keystroke, the same text gives more keystrokes on AZERTY. If it only counts characters, the text is the same length on every keyboard. Before you compare speeds with someone else, ask how their test counted.

There's good news about AZERTY itself. A French study measured 1,301 students typing French sentences on AZERTY: the fastest third averaged 80 WPM and the slowest third 54 (Pinet et al., 2022). Only 17 of them had ever had typing lessons, and they typed about two hours a day. Even the slowest third is above the large English-language study's average, though the methods differ too much for a hard comparison.

At Lurndo, a keystroke is a character. A capital, a full stop or a digit with Shift counts as one keystroke, and so does a character with AltGr, like @ on Belgian AZERTY. So the same sentence counts the same on AZERTY and QWERTY. What Shift does cost you is time, and that shows in your speed. To learn on this keyboard, see touch typing on AZERTY.

How Lurndo measures your typing speed

In net words per minute, five keystrokes to a word, with accuracy as a separate number. Our free typing test runs for half a minute, one, three or five minutes, with real words and no account. Your net speed only counts the characters that are right. Accuracy is the share you got right at the first keystroke, so a mistake you fixed still counts. Afterwards, a heatmap shows which keys slow you down.

Put your result next to the numbers in this article, without turning them into a ranking. 51.56 WPM is the average of young, mostly American volunteers on QWERTY, 40 WPM the federal bar for a clerk-typist, and 97% the accuracy our final tests ask for. We deliberately don't give you a percentile like "faster than 80% of people". For that you'd need measurements from a group like you, and those don't exist for every keyboard and language.

Want to get faster? Start with rhythm, not speed. In typing to the beat you type to a metronome before the clock starts. Still typing with two fingers? Begin with F and J on the home row. The first three modules are free, and the typing test always will be.