What is a good typing speed?

A good typing speed for everyday work is 60-80 words per minute (WPM). The average typist reaches about 40 WPM, so anything above 60 WPM already puts you well ahead, and 100+ WPM is professional territory.

This page collects WPM benchmarks by skill level and profession, real numbers from TypeSprint typing tests, and the difference between WPM, CPM and keystrokes per minute - for learners, teachers and everyone who types a lot.

Most people type between 30 and 50 WPM. Trained touch typists reach 60-80 WPM, professional typists 100 and more, and the fastest typists in the world exceed 200 WPM.

Two reference points from research: in a 1999 study by Karat et al., average transcription speed was 33 WPM. The largest public dataset - 136 million keystrokes from 168,000 online test takers, analyzed by Aalto University (Dhakal et al., 2018) - shows an average of 52 WPM; people who take online typing tests skew faster than the general population.

Across the first 503 finished typing tests on TypeSprint, the median speed in the most-played mode - the 3-minute test, 367 results - is 195 CPM, i.e. 39 WPM, at an average accuracy of 90%. That confirms the textbook figure: the typical typist lands right around 40 WPM.

Methodology: our own data from all test results between April 10 and August 29, 2026. Results on custom texts and results flagged by the server-side anti-cheat are excluded; we report the median rather than the average so a few very fast racers don't distort the picture. The dataset is still small and grows daily - we refresh these numbers regularly, and you can watch the fast end of the field live on the leaderboards.

WPM counts standardized words per minute, where one word is defined as 5 characters. CPM counts characters per minute, so CPM = WPM × 5. The "Anschläge pro Minute" (keystrokes per minute) used in German-speaking countries is the same idea as CPM.

Words are standardized because real words differ in length - "a" and "nevertheless" should not count the same. Every serious typing test therefore counts 5 characters, including spaces and punctuation, as one word. German typing certificates and job listings traditionally state requirements in Anschläge pro Minute: the classic office baseline of 200 Anschläge per minute equals 40 WPM.

There are two different error models, and they measure different things: errors left in the final text, and every mistyped key you ever pressed. A meaningful accuracy number needs the second model.

TypeSprint tracks both. Typos are wrong characters still in the text when the test ends - you can remove them with backspace, and each remaining one costs points. Mistypes count every wrong keypress, and backspacing does not undo them; accuracy is computed from mistypes and total keystrokes, on the server.

This is why accuracy numbers from different sites are only comparable if the error model matches: 98% with corrected errors ignored is a much weaker number than 98% of all raw keystrokes. As a rule of thumb, raw accuracy above 95% means your precision is fine and you can push for speed.

Accuracy first, speed second: learn to touch type with all ten fingers, practice a few minutes daily, and speed follows. Going from 40 to 60+ WPM takes weeks to a few months of regular practice, not talent.

• Learn proper finger placement: every finger owns its keys, starting from the home row.
• Practice short and often - 5-10 focused minutes per day beat an hour once a week.
• Stay a little below your maximum speed until accuracy sits above 95%; errors cost more time than slow keys.
• Stop looking at the keyboard as early as possible, even when it feels slower at first.
• Measure regularly: a timed typing test once a week shows whether the practice is working.

TypeSprint's free touch-typing course covers exactly this: 40 lessons per keyboard layout (QWERTZ and QWERTY), starting on the home row, about 5 minutes per lesson, no installation and no payment. And to measure yourself, take a typing test - alone or as a real-time race against others.