Reading Speed Test — WPM & Recall Check

How fast do you read? Most people guess, and most guess high. This test hides the text behind a blur until you press Start, so you cannot pre-read a line, and stops the clock the moment you say you are done.

Then it asks three quick questions. A fast time with nothing remembered is skimming, and the recall check is there to tell the two apart.

How to Use the Start and Done Buttons

1. Choose Sample passage and a language, or My own text to paste a chapter or article of your own.
2. Press Start reading. The blur lifts and the clock starts.
3. Read at your normal pace. When you reach the end, press Done: I finished reading or just hit Enter.
4. Answer the recall check, then read your words per minute, characters per minute and the time a novel would take you. New text loads different passages for another run.

The English sample opens with “The finance team met with Dr. Alvarez before the 9 a.m. review.” and runs to about 235 words across four short passages. A smaller A / A+ / A++ switch sets the text size, which is worth matching to how you normally read: squinting costs speed.

The Counting Method: Words, Characters and Recall

Speed is words ÷ minutes, so 65 words read in 15 seconds is 260 wpm. Words are found with the browser’s own word segmenter, which matters for Chinese and Japanese: those scripts put no spaces between words, and splitting on spaces would count a whole sentence as one. Characters per minute ignores spaces and is the fairer figure for those two languages. In English, the comparison point is 238 wpm, the average for adults reading non-fiction in Brysbaert’s 2019 review of 190 studies.

Each recall question shows four words. One appeared once in the text, taken from the first, middle or last third; the other three appear nowhere in it. The “at this speed” table divides a 1,000-word article, a 5,000-word report and a 90,000-word novel by your result, so a reader at 238 wpm sees 6 h 18 min for the novel.

When Not to Use This as a Comprehension Score

Three word-recognition questions show that your eyes passed over the whole text. They do not test whether you understood the argument, so treat a 3/3 as “I read it”, not “I could summarise it”. Pasted text needs at least 50 words, and a run under 5 seconds is thrown out with “Under 5 seconds: that was a click, not a read. Press Start and read to the end.” Your last ten runs are kept in this browser only, with the date, language and recall score, so you can watch the trend instead of a single number.