Free tool
Paste the text, or start from a word count or page count. Reading time at your speed, plus read-aloud and narrated audio for comparison.
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Reading speed
Reading time at 238 wpm
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Read aloud (130 wpm)
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As narrated audio (155 wpm)
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At 238 words per minute, the reading you actually encounter breaks down like this:
| Long email | 500 words | ≈ 2 min |
| Blog post | 1,500 words | ≈ 6 min |
| Long-form essay | 5,000 words | ≈ 21 min |
| 20-page paper | ≈ 6,000 words | ≈ 25 min |
| 100-page report | ≈ 30,000 words | ≈ 2 hr 6 min |
| 300-page book | ≈ 90,000 words | ≈ 6 hr 18 min |
Counting a PDF? The PDF word counter reads the exact count from the file, in your browser.
Every reading-time estimate, including this one, models a reader moving through prose once at steady speed. Real reading is messier: dense material drops effective speed below 150 words per minute, note-taking doubles the time, and interruptions reset momentum. Treat the number as a floor for anything you actually need to learn.
The narrated-audio row is the one estimate that behaves: audio plays in real time, so 9 hours means 9 hours, or 6 at 1.5x speed, and those hours can happen on a commute. Planning a speech instead? The words to minutes calculator handles speaking pace.
Words divided by reading speed. The default, 238 words per minute, is the average adult silent-reading rate from the largest published meta-analysis of reading studies. Paste your text, enter a word count, or enter pages, and the estimate updates from whichever speed you set.
Around 2 hours at average speed for a typical paperback page of 300 words. Double-spaced manuscript pages run shorter, dense single-spaced documents run longer, which is why the calculator lets you pick the page type instead of assuming one.
Most publishing platforms estimate read time at 200 to 265 words per minute. Medium famously uses 265. Those figures describe casual article skimming; research on sustained reading of full texts lands lower, which is why this calculator defaults to 238 and lets you adjust.
Estimates assume continuous prose read once. Technical material, note-taking, re-reading, and figures all slow real reading well below any calculator's number. For dense textbooks, many readers effectively process 100 to 150 words per minute. Set the custom speed accordingly, or stop estimating and listen instead.
Yes, and the calculator already shows that number: narrated audio at 155 words per minute. Audionarrator converts PDFs, DOCX, and EPUBs into chapter-aware audiobooks you can play at up to 2x, which turns commutes and walks into reading time. The first chapter is free at any length.
The books and reports you never find sitting-down time for convert into chapter-aware audiobooks. First chapter free at any length, no card required.