Checker · typing speed
Is your typing speed good?
A good typing speed is roughly 65–80 words per minute (WPM) with 95%+ accuracy — comfortably above the typical adult speed of about 40 WPM. Enter your own number below to see which band it lands in and what that means in practice.
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Is 40, 70 or 100 WPM good?
The same verdict, for the numbers people actually ask about.
Is 30 WPM good?
Not quite. 30 WPM sits just under the ~40 WPM typical adult speed. It's a normal place to be if you never formally learned touch typing, and it's the band that improves fastest with deliberate practice. That's 0.8× the typical adult speed; another 8 WPM would reach the average band.
Is 35 WPM good?
Not quite. 35 WPM sits just under the ~40 WPM typical adult speed. It's a normal place to be if you never formally learned touch typing, and it's the band that improves fastest with deliberate practice. That's 0.9× the typical adult speed; another 3 WPM would reach the average band.
Is 40 WPM good?
It's average. 40 WPM is about average — the typical adult types around 40 WPM. Perfectly serviceable, though it's usually the point where the keyboard, rather than the thinking, is the bottleneck. That's 1× the typical adult speed; another 6 WPM would reach the above average band.
Is 45 WPM good?
It's average. 45 WPM is about average — the typical adult types around 40 WPM. Perfectly serviceable, though it's usually the point where the keyboard, rather than the thinking, is the bottleneck. That's 1.1× the typical adult speed; another 1 WPM would reach the above average band.
Is 50 WPM good?
Yes, above average. 50 WPM is above average and past the point where typing feels like work. Faster than the typical office worker, with real room before the fluent-typist band. That's 1.3× the typical adult speed; another 15 WPM would reach the good band.
Is 55 WPM good?
Yes, above average. 55 WPM is above average and past the point where typing feels like work. Faster than the typical office worker, with real room before the fluent-typist band. That's 1.4× the typical adult speed; another 10 WPM would reach the good band.
Is 60 WPM good?
Yes, above average. 60 WPM is above average and past the point where typing feels like work. Faster than the typical office worker, with real room before the fluent-typist band. That's 1.5× the typical adult speed; another 5 WPM would reach the good band.
Is 65 WPM good?
Yes. 65 WPM is a good typing speed — fluent touch typing, comfortable for a full day, and quick enough that your hands keep pace with your thoughts instead of trailing them. That's 1.6× the typical adult speed; another 25 WPM would reach the fast band.
Is 70 WPM good?
Yes. 70 WPM is a good typing speed — fluent touch typing, comfortable for a full day, and quick enough that your hands keep pace with your thoughts instead of trailing them. That's 1.8× the typical adult speed; another 20 WPM would reach the fast band.
Is 75 WPM good?
Yes. 75 WPM is a good typing speed — fluent touch typing, comfortable for a full day, and quick enough that your hands keep pace with your thoughts instead of trailing them. That's 1.9× the typical adult speed; another 15 WPM would reach the fast band.
Is 80 WPM good?
Yes. 80 WPM is a good typing speed — fluent touch typing, comfortable for a full day, and quick enough that your hands keep pace with your thoughts instead of trailing them. That's 2× the typical adult speed; another 10 WPM would reach the fast band.
Is 90 WPM good?
Yes — fast. 90 WPM is fast: the territory of developers, writers and people who type all day. Sustaining it at 95%+ accuracy is the hard part, not reaching it once in a test. That's 2.3× the typical adult speed; another 30 WPM would reach the exceptional band.
Is 100 WPM good?
Yes — fast. 100 WPM is fast: the territory of developers, writers and people who type all day. Sustaining it at 95%+ accuracy is the hard part, not reaching it once in a test. That's 2.5× the typical adult speed; another 20 WPM would reach the exceptional band.
Is 110 WPM good?
Yes — fast. 110 WPM is fast: the territory of developers, writers and people who type all day. Sustaining it at 95%+ accuracy is the hard part, not reaching it once in a test. That's 2.8× the typical adult speed; another 10 WPM would reach the exceptional band.
Is 120 WPM good?
Yes — exceptional. 120 WPM is exceptional, competitive-typist territory. Very few people hold it outside a short test, and almost nobody holds it across a real working day. That's 3× the typical adult speed — the top of the scale.
Speed without accuracy isn't speed
Raw WPM is misleading if you're constantly correcting. Every mistake costs a backspace and a retype, so 70 WPM at 98% beats 90 WPM at 85% in real work. Aim for 95%+ accuracy first, then push the speed — that's why Pulse weighs the two together.
Test scores run high
A typing test feeds you common words and your full attention for sixty seconds, so the number comes out flattering. Real work mixes code, names, punctuation and thinking pauses. For the everyday figure — the one worth trying to move — Pulse measures it automatically across every Mac app, with AI-generated keystrokes filtered out. For the full breakdown by level, see the average typing speed benchmarks.
What "good" actually means for you
There is no single good number, because no one types one kind of thing. A novelist writing prose and a developer typing brackets and underscores are doing different jobs with the same ten fingers. "Good" is the speed at which the keyboard stops being the bottleneck — where your hands keep pace with your thoughts and you stop noticing them.
Once you know your baseline, improvement gets specific. You stop chasing raw speed and start closing small, repeatable leaks: a key you fumble 9% of the time across thousands of presses, the bigram that stalls your hand, the reach that costs a beat. Pulse surfaces these with keyboard intelligence and a per-finger breakdown, so getting faster is just fixing what your own data flags.
Frequently asked.
Is 80 WPM good?
Yes — 80 WPM with high accuracy is a strong, professional speed, twice the ~40 WPM average. Most people never measure their real all-day speed, only test scores.
Does accuracy matter more than speed?
They go together. Every mistake costs a backspace and a retype, so 70 WPM at 98% often beats 90 WPM at 85%. Aim for 95%+ accuracy first, then push speed.
Why is my real speed lower than my typing-test score?
Tests use easy, common words and your full attention for sixty seconds. Real work mixes code, names, punctuation and thinking pauses, so your everyday WPM usually lands well below your best test. The everyday number is the one that matters.