Guide · typing speed
What is the average typing speed?
The average typing speed is about 40 words per minute (WPM) for an adult on a computer. A good typing speed is 65–80 WPM with 95%+ accuracy; professional developers and writers often reach 90–110 WPM, and competitive typists exceed 120 WPM.
| Level | Speed | Who |
|---|---|---|
| Beginner | 20–35 WPM | Hunt-and-peck or still learning touch typing |
| Average adult | 38–45 WPM | The typical office worker |
| Good / professional | 65–80 WPM | Fluent touch typist, comfortable all day |
| Fast | 90–110 WPM | Developers, writers, power users |
| Exceptional | 120+ WPM | Competitive typists and the top of the leaderboard |
Speed is only half of it
Raw WPM without accuracy is misleading — every mistype costs a backspace and a re-type. A steady 70 WPM at 98% accuracy beats a frantic 95 WPM at 88%. And in 2026 there's a third factor: autocomplete and AI suggestions quietly inflate everyone's numbers. The speed that actually matters is the one your own hands produce.
How to measure your real speed
Take a quick typing test for a snapshot. For your true, everyday number, Pulse measures your speed automatically across every Mac app — with AI keystrokes filtered out, a keyboard heatmap, and a weekly leaderboard.
Why the average keeps drifting up
The classic figure — 40 WPM — comes from studies of people typing fixed passages with nothing helping them. That world barely exists anymore. Two forces now sit between your hands and the number on the screen, and they pull in opposite directions.
The first is the machine. Autocomplete finishes your words, snippets expand a trigger into a paragraph, and an AI suggestion drops thirty characters from a single Tab. A speedometer that counts those keystrokes will happily report 130 WPM for someone who typed four letters. It isn't measuring your hands; it's measuring the tooling. This is why a clean number has to discard pasted and generated text before it counts a single word — otherwise the average drifts up for reasons that have nothing to do with skill.
The second force is real and worth chasing. People who type for a living — developers, writers, support agents — genuinely sit well above 40, often 80–110 WPM, because they've put in thousands of unglamorous hours. That's the gap between a good typing speed and an average one, and it closes the same way every time: a little daily attention to the keys you fumble, not a heroic sprint. If you want the gap to shrink, deliberate practice on your own weak spots beats another timed test.
So the honest answer to "what's average" is two answers. There's the headline number a benchmark spits out, and there's the speed your hands produce when nothing is filling in the blanks for you. The second one is the only one worth knowing — and the only one a single test or an everyday measurement should ever try to report.
Frequently asked
What is the average typing speed?
The average typing speed is around 40 words per minute (WPM) for an adult using a computer. Professional typists and many developers and writers type 65–100 WPM, and competitive typists exceed 120 WPM.
What is a good typing speed?
A good typing speed is roughly 65–80 WPM with 95%+ accuracy — fast enough to keep up with your thoughts without fatigue. Speed without accuracy isn’t faster, because corrections cost time.
How can I measure my real typing speed?
A typing test gives a one-off score on a fixed word list. To know your real, everyday speed, Pulse for Mac measures it automatically as you work across every app — and filters out AI/autocomplete so the number reflects your hands.