Reading time calculator

Enter a word count, or a page count if that is all you have, and pick a reading speed. Results update as you type.

Reading time

6 h 18 min

90,000 words at 238 words per minute. At 30 minutes a day that is 13 days.

The same text at every speed

Your own speed is probably somewhere in this table. The spread is the honest answer to "how long will it take": the same book can take one reader half as long again as another.

Speed	Words/min	Time	Days at 30 min
Reading aloud	183	8 h 12 min	17
Slow, careful reading	175	8 h 34 min	18
Silent, non-fiction	238	6 h 18 min	13
Silent, fiction	260	5 h 46 min	12
Fast silent reading	300	5 h	10

How reading time is calculated

Reading time is the word count divided by a reading speed in words per minute. That is the whole calculation: minutes = words ÷ words per minute. If you enter pages instead of words, the word count is estimated first as pages × words per page. Days to finish is the reading time divided by the minutes you read each day, rounded up, because a book you finish ten minutes into day thirteen still takes thirteen days.

The arithmetic is not where the uncertainty is. The uncertainty is almost entirely in the speed, which is why the table shows every rate at once instead of hiding the spread behind one answer.

Where the reading speeds come from

The preset speeds are the central estimates from Marc Brysbaert's 2019 review and meta-analysis of reading rate, published in the Journal of Memory and Language. It pooled 190 studies of adult readers of English and arrived at:

238 words per minute for silent reading of non-fiction, with most adults between about 175 and 300
260 words per minute for silent reading of fiction, with most between about 200 and 320
183 words per minute for reading aloud, with a much narrower range of about 167 to 203

Fiction reads faster than non-fiction because its vocabulary is usually more familiar and its sentences less dense with new information. Reading aloud has a narrow range because it is capped by how fast anyone can articulate words clearly. The "slow" and "fast" presets are simply the low and high ends of the silent range, for readers who know they are at one end or the other.

Brysbaert also noted that the figure of 300 words per minute often quoted for the "average" adult reader is on the high side. If you have used an older reading-time estimate and found you always took longer than it said, that is the likely reason.

A worked example

Say you want to know how long a 320-page paperback novel will take. At about 300 words per page it is roughly 96,000 words.

Reading silently at the fiction rate of 260 words per minute: 96,000 ÷ 260 = 369 minutes, or 6 h 09 min.
At 20 minutes each evening, that is 369 ÷ 20 = 18.5, so 19 evenings.
Reading the same book aloud to a child at 183 words per minute: 96,000 ÷ 183 = 525 minutes, or 8 h 45 min.

The gap between silent and aloud reading is worth knowing if you are planning a bedtime read-aloud: the same book takes about 40% longer when every word has to be spoken.

Reading time for common lengths

For quick reference, here is how long some round word counts take at four of the speeds above. 5,000 words is a long magazine feature or a short story; 90,000 is a typical adult novel.

Words	183 wpm	238 wpm	260 wpm	300 wpm
1,000	5 min 28 s	4 min 12 s	3 min 51 s	3 min 20 s
5,000	27 min	21 min	19 min	17 min
20,000	1 h 49 min	1 h 24 min	1 h 17 min	1 h 07 min
50,000	4 h 33 min	3 h 30 min	3 h 12 min	2 h 47 min
90,000	8 h 12 min	6 h 18 min	5 h 46 min	5 h
150,000	13 h 40 min	10 h 30 min	9 h 37 min	8 h 20 min

Where this estimate stops being reliable

A words-per-minute figure measures reading at a steady pace. Real reading is not steady, and several things push your time well away from the estimate:

Difficult or technical text. Textbooks, legal documents and dense academic writing are often read at half the rate of a novel or less, because you reread, pause and look things up. For study reading, use a custom speed well below the presets.
A second language. The rates above are for adults reading their first language. Reading in a language you are still learning is usually much slower.
Formatting. Poetry, plays and books with lots of short dialogue lines have fewer words per page, so a page-count estimate will overstate the words. Use the real word count if you can find it.
Breaks. The calculation counts reading time only. Stopping to make tea, reread a passage or check your phone is not in the number.

The estimate is most accurate for what the underlying studies measured: adults reading ordinary prose in their own language, without interruption.

Common questions

What is the average adult reading speed?

For silent reading in English, the best current estimate is about 238 words per minute for non-fiction and 260 for fiction, from Marc Brysbaert's 2019 meta-analysis of 190 studies. Most adults fall somewhere between about 175 and 300 words per minute. Reading aloud is slower, at around 183 words per minute, because you can only read as fast as you can speak.

How do I find out my own reading speed?

Set a timer for five minutes and read a book you would normally read, at your normal pace, without skimming. Count the pages you covered, multiply by the book's words per page (count the words on one full page, or use 300 for a typical paperback), and divide by five. Do it twice with different books and use the average, then enter the result as a custom speed above.

How many words are in a typical novel?

Most adult novels are somewhere between 70,000 and 120,000 words, and 80,000 to 100,000 is the range most often suggested for a debut. Genre matters: epic fantasy often runs well past 150,000, while many romance and thriller novels are shorter. If you only know the page count, multiply it by 250 to 300 words for a standard paperback; the words to pages converter lists the ranges for other formats.

Can I read much faster with speed reading?

Not without losing comprehension. A 2016 review by Keith Rayner and colleagues in Psychological Science in the Public Interest examined speed-reading methods and found a consistent trade-off: reading faster than normal means understanding less. Skimming is a useful skill for finding information, but it is a different activity from reading a book.

Why is my e-reader's time estimate different from this one?

Many e-readers estimate from your own page-turn speed in that book, so after a few chapters they reflect your actual pace, including pauses. This calculator uses a fixed rate you choose. If the two disagree by a lot, your e-reader is probably the better guide for that particular book, and you can feed its implied speed back in here as a custom rate.