Typing Speed Test

This typing test measures how fast and how accurately you type a passage of ordinary English. Type the text in the box below it; the clock starts on your first key, and the test ends when you have typed the last character. As you go, each character turns dark when it is right and red when it is wrong, and the underline shows where you are.

Or choose a timed test of 30, 60 or 120 seconds. The clock still starts on your first key, the built-in passages run on one after another so the text never runs out, and the test stops when the time is up. The word you were in the middle of counts for the letters you got right, so stopping mid-word costs you nothing you had typed.

Words per minute uses the standard definition of a word as five characters, spaces and punctuation included, so a passage of long words and a passage of short ones are measured the same way. Only characters that end up right count toward your WPM: typing 60 correct characters in 30 seconds is 12 words in half a minute, or 24 WPM. Raw speed counts everything you typed, right or wrong — the gap between the two is what your mistakes cost you.

Accuracy is measured key by key, at the moment you press it. If you type a wrong letter and fix it with Backspace, the passage ends up perfect but the mistake still counts, because the time it cost you was real. That is why a test can finish with every character right and still show less than 100% accuracy.

After each test you see the characters you missed most often — spaces included, which are among the commonest misses — and every character you got wrong at least once is underlined in the passage. Beside them are your slowest keys: for each character typed right at least three times in a clean run, the average time since the key before it. A key pressed with Shift held counts at half its time, so a capital is not slow just for needing a second key. Those are the keys worth practising.

There are ten built-in passages, written for this test in plain English with only the punctuation a standard keyboard has. Next passage steps through them in order. To practise on something of your own — code, a speech, a passage in your own field — choose Use your own text and paste it; line breaks and runs of spaces become single spaces, since a screen cannot show how many spaces a gap holds. Pasting into the typing box itself is switched off.

For drills rather than prose, choose Random words: 50 common English words, or as many as a timed test needs, in a random order. Punctuation adds capitals, commas, full stops, question marks, quotes and brackets, all keys a standard keyboard has. Numbers turns about one word in ten into a number. New words deals a fresh set, and the page's link carries the set you are on, so a friend who opens it types the same words. Each combination keeps its own best, so a run without punctuation never outranks one with it. The words come from the EFF short wordlist by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, used under CC BY 4.0.

Your results are kept in this browser's own storage, on this device only: your five best in each kind of test and your ten most recent, with the date. Older results are deleted as new ones arrive. Best lists the kind of test you have chosen, so a short text of your own, or a 30-second sprint, never competes with a full passage. A test that took under ten seconds is shown but not kept, since a few seconds is too short to measure a speed and would otherwise sit at the top of your best. Nothing is sent anywhere and there is no account. The trash button clears the history.

For far more — word-count modes, other languages, larger word lists, and a history kept across devices — Monkeytype is free and open source and runs in the browser. Keeping your history there needs an account, and it shows ads on the result screen unless you switch them off in its settings.