Reading Time Calculator
Estimate how long your page takes to read, silently or aloud, using reading speeds from a study of 190 experiments rather than a round number somebody guessed.
Your text
Pasting the real text is better than a word count on its own, because the estimate is adjusted for how hard the writing is to read.
Quick and rough. With only a number there is no way to tell dense writing from light writing, so the difficulty adjustment is switched off.
Navigation, sidebars and footers are stripped out, and the images on the page are counted and given looking time of their own.
How long it takes
Not everyone reads at the same speed
The same words, other ways
How the estimate was built
Where the time goes
Use it on your page
Where the usual numbers come from
Almost every reading time tool divides your word count by a round number. Two hundred. Two hundred and fifty. Three hundred, if it is feeling generous. Ask where the number came from and the trail goes cold, because it did not come from anywhere in particular.
There is a real answer. In 2019 Marc Brysbaert published a meta-analysis in the Journal of Memory and Language that pooled 190 separate experiments covering 18,573 participants, and it remains the most thorough measurement of adult reading speed available. Adults reading English non-fiction silently average 238 words a minute. Fiction runs faster at 260, largely because the words are shorter. Reading aloud is much slower at 183. The widely repeated 300 is higher than the evidence supports.
Those are the figures this tool uses, and it tells you which one it applied and why.
Your text is not average text
A pooled average describes ordinary prose. It does not describe a dense technical page with four-syllable words and thirty-word sentences, which people genuinely read more slowly. So when you paste the actual text rather than a word count, the estimate is adjusted using the same two inputs every readability formula relies on: how many syllables your words average, and how many words your sentences average.
Prose at roughly 1.5 syllables a word and 17 words a sentence is treated as ordinary and left alone. Denser than that and the speed comes down; lighter and it goes up. The adjustment is capped at a quarter in either direction, because reading speed varies with difficulty but not without limit, and the tool shows you the figures it used so you can disagree with it.
One number hides the truth
“6 min read” is a point estimate of a distribution. Most adults reading non-fiction fall between 175 and 300 words a minute, which is a spread of nearly two to one. The same article is a comfortable four minutes for one reader and a slog of seven for another.
So the range is shown alongside the headline figure, with a fast reader at one end and a slow one at the other. It will not change the label you publish, but it is worth knowing how wide the real answer is before you put a single number on a page and treat it as a fact.
Images take time too
Check a live page and the images on it are counted. Medium worked out years ago that readers spend real time looking at pictures and built it into their estimate: roughly twelve seconds for the first image, a little less for each one after, settling around three. An illustrated tutorial with twenty screenshots genuinely takes longer than its word count suggests, and ignoring that is how a “five minute read” turns into fifteen.
The same is true of code blocks, tables and charts, which are not counted separately here. If your page is heavy with those, treat the estimate as a floor.
Should you publish a reading time at all?
Usually yes. Someone deciding whether to start an article wants to know what they are committing to, and an honest label answers that before they have to guess from the scrollbar. It is not a ranking factor and no search engine rewards you for showing one.
The only real risk is inaccuracy. A label claiming four minutes on a twenty minute article is worse than no label, because the reader feels misled rather than informed, and that is a harder thing to recover from than a long page honestly signposted.
Where this sits among the other tools
- The Word Counter shows a rough reading time among a dozen other live counts while you type. Use it while drafting; use this when you are about to publish the number.
- The Sentence Length Checker and the Paragraph Length Checker deal with why a page feels long rather than how long it is.
- When the writing is done, the SERP Snippet Preview Tool and the Meta Description Checker handle how it presents itself in the results.
Is anything stored?
No. Pasted text and typed word counts are worked out in your browser and never leave the page. Checking a live page sends only that address to our server, which fetches the page and returns its text and image count, because a browser cannot read another site directly. Nothing is written to a database or a log.
Why this one gives different numbers
Most reading time tools divide your word count by a round number somebody picked. The research does not support any of the usual ones.
Speeds from a real study
Brysbaert pooled 190 experiments covering 18,573 people and found adults read English non-fiction silently at 238 words a minute, fiction at 260, and aloud at 183. Those are the defaults here, not 200 or 300.
Adjusted for your writing
Dense prose is read more slowly than light prose. The estimate is shifted by up to a quarter either way based on how long your words and sentences actually are, and the tool shows you the adjustment it made.
A range, not one number
Most adults read between 175 and 300 words a minute. A single "6 min read" hides that completely, so the spread is shown alongside it with a fast and a slow reader at either end.
Images count too
Check a live page and the images on it are counted and given looking time: about twelve seconds for the first and a little less for each one after, which is the approach Medium popularised.
Where the time goes
If your text has headings, the time is broken down by section with a running total, so you can see which part is doing the damage rather than just that the whole thing is long.
Ready to paste
The finished label, the HTML for it, and the timeRequired value for your Article schema, all written out and copyable.
Questions about reading time
What reading speed should I use?
For an ordinary article aimed at a general audience, 238 words a minute. That figure comes from a 2019 meta-analysis by Marc Brysbaert in the Journal of Memory and Language, which pooled 190 separate studies covering 18,573 participants, and it is the best-evidenced number available. Fiction runs faster at 260, mostly because the words are shorter. Reading aloud is much slower at 183. The 300 words a minute you see quoted everywhere is higher than the evidence supports.
How does the difficulty adjustment work?
It uses the same two inputs every readability formula uses: how many syllables your words average, and how many words your sentences average. Text around 1.5 syllables a word and 17 words a sentence is treated as ordinary and left alone. Denser than that and the speed comes down; lighter and it goes up. The shift is capped at 25 per cent either way, because reading speed does vary with difficulty but not without limit. The tool tells you the adjustment it applied and why, so you can judge it.
Should I put a reading time on my posts?
It helps more often than it hurts. A reader deciding whether to start an article wants to know what they are committing to, and an honest "4 min read" answers that. It is not a ranking factor and no search engine rewards you for showing one. The one caution is accuracy: a label that says four minutes on a twenty minute article does more harm than no label at all, because the reader feels misled rather than informed.
Why do images add time?
Because people look at them. Medium worked out that readers spend a few seconds on each image and built that into their estimate: roughly twelve seconds for the first, decreasing for each one after, settling at about three. An illustrated how-to with twenty screenshots genuinely takes longer than its word count suggests. The same is true of code blocks and tables, which are not counted separately here, so a heavily technical page will still read a little long.
How is this different from the Word Counter?
The Word Counter shows a reading time among a dozen other live counts while you type, using a flat speed. This exists to get that one number right: it uses researched speeds rather than a round one, adjusts for how hard your text is, shows the spread across real readers, counts images on a live page, breaks the time down by section, and hands you the markup. If you just want a rough figure while drafting, use the counter. If you are about to publish the number, use this.
Is my text sent anywhere?
Pasted text and typed word counts are worked out entirely in your browser and never leave the page. The exception is checking a page by address: a browser cannot fetch another site directly, so the address is sent to our server, which reads the page and returns the text and the image count. Nothing is stored either way.