What is this calculator?
Estimates how long a piece of text takes to read, from its word count and a reading speed you can adjust. It reports the word count alongside the estimate, so you can see what the figure is based on.
Use it when:
- You are publishing an article and want to show a "5 min read" label.
- You are checking whether a script or presentation fits a time slot.
- You want to compare the length of several drafts objectively.
Intended for: Writers, editors, content teams, and speakers timing a script.
How is this calculated?
- The text is split on whitespace and the resulting non-empty tokens are counted as words.
- The word count is divided by the words-per-minute figure to give a duration in minutes, which is then expressed in minutes and seconds.
- The rounding mode decides how that duration is presented: rounding up never understates the commitment, nearest gives the closest label, and exact shows the raw figure.
- The default of 200 words per minute reflects typical adult silent reading of general prose; dense or technical material is slower, and reading aloud is slower still at roughly 130 to 150.
Formula
Reading time
Minutes = Word count ÷ Words per minute
A linear estimate — the whole model is the reading speed you choose.
Example
A 1,200-word article at the default 200 words per minute, rounded up.
- 1,200 ÷ 200 = 6 minutes exactly.
- Rounding up leaves it unchanged at 6 minutes.
Result: 6 min 0 sec, from a word count of 1,200.
Frequently asked questions
Which reading speed should I use?
Around 200 words per minute suits general prose read silently. Use 100 to 150 for technical or reference material where readers pause and re-read, and about 130 to 150 for text read aloud.
Are images, code blocks, and tables counted?
Only their text is, and only as words. A code block or a diagram usually takes far longer to absorb than its word count suggests, so technical articles read slower than the estimate.
Why does my estimate differ from another tool's?
Almost always the assumed reading speed, and sometimes the word-counting rule (hyphenated words, numbers, punctuation). Both are visible here, so the figure can be reproduced.
Assumptions
What this calculator takes as given:
- Words are whitespace-separated tokens.
- Reading speed is constant across the whole text.
- The transformation runs in your browser; the text you paste is not uploaded or stored.
Limitations
What this calculator cannot know or does not model:
- It does not judge difficulty, so dense material reads slower than the estimate.
- Time spent on images, diagrams, code, or tables is not accounted for.
- Individual reading speed varies widely; the result is an average, not a promise.