Free, no account, runs in your browser
How long a book will take, how many words your draft needs each day, what reading level your writing is at, and a timed room to write in. Each page shows the formula behind its numbers.
Writing sprint
A plain editor with a timer. Pick 5 to 60 minutes and, if you like, a word target. You see the words you add this sprint, not the whole draft, and your pace. Each sprint goes into today's log and your streak. The draft is saved on this device as you type.
At the adult average reading speeds from Brysbaert's 2019 meta-analysis. Word counts are round figures for each length of book; the reading time calculator takes your book's own count and your own speed.
| Length | Words | Reading aloud (183 wpm) | Silent, non-fiction (238 wpm) | Silent, fiction (260 wpm) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Short story | 5,000 | 27 min | 21 min | 19 min |
| Novella | 30,000 | 2 h 44 min | 2 h 06 min | 1 h 55 min |
| Short novel | 60,000 | 5 h 28 min | 4 h 12 min | 3 h 51 min |
| Typical novel | 90,000 | 8 h 12 min | 6 h 18 min | 5 h 46 min |
| Long novel | 150,000 | 13 h 40 min | 10 h 30 min | 9 h 37 min |
Readers planning around a deadline or a goal: a book club date, a library due date, a yearly reading challenge, a long audiobook and a short commute. Writers working to a word count: a novel draft, a thesis chapter, a speech with a time slot, a submission with a length limit. And anyone who wants a second opinion on how readable a piece of writing is.
Most of these tools are careful arithmetic on figures you supply. Where a tool has to assume something, such as an average reading speed or the number of words on a paperback page, it says what it assumed and where the figure comes from, and it lets you replace it with your own. Where established methods disagree, as the six readability formulas do, the page shows all of them rather than blending them into one confident-looking number. Words are counted the same way everywhere: the sprint timer, the word counter and the readability checker share one counting routine. The methods page collects every formula and source in one place.