--- title: "Words Per Minute Speaking: Free Speaking Rate Checker | Speakeroo" description: "Free speaking rate checker: read a passage or speak for a minute and get your real words per minute, plus a calculator for script timing and reference ranges with every source cited. No account needed." url: "https://speakeroo.app/words-per-minute-speaking" --- # Words Per Minute Speaking: Check Your Speaking Rate Record about a minute of speech and get your real words per minute, or use the calculator to time a script. Free, no account needed, with every reference range sourced. Sign up for free Get the app Your speaking rate is the number of words you say in a minute. Speakeroo already measures pace in every practice session, so this page lets you measure it on its own: read a short passage or speak freely for about a minute and get your real words per minute, not an estimate. Below the checker is a text calculator for working out words per minute from a script and a time, or the talk length of a script at a chosen rate. Reference ranges are listed with the study each one comes from, because published speaking rates depend on the kind of speech and on how the time is counted. Fast speakers often fill their pauses with um and like. [See the filler words list](https://speakeroo.app/filler-words). ## Measure your speaking rate Read the passage or speak freely, and get your words per minute from a real recording. What will you say? Speak freely Read a passage > Every morning, the market on Harbour Street opens before the sun is fully up. Vendors carry crates of oranges, bundles of fresh herbs, and trays of warm bread across the wet cobblestones. A cyclist rings her bell, a delivery van backs slowly into a narrow gap, and somewhere nearby a radio plays an old song. By eight o’clock the whole street is crowded with people who know exactly what they want and people who simply came to look. Prices are called out, jokes are traded, and a small boy argues politely about the weight of a bag of apples. Read this at the pace you would use to tell a friend a story. Stumbling over a word is fine. Keep going until the timer stops or you reach the end. Record 30 to 60 seconds at your normal pace, then press the arrow to measure it. ## Words per minute calculator No recording needed: work out your rate from a script and a time, or the length of a talk at a chosen rate. Your script 0 words ### Words per minute from your time Minutes Seconds Your speaking rate — ### Talk length at a chosen rate Words per minute Talk length (minutes:seconds) — ## Speaking rate reference ranges, with sources Published figures for different kinds of speech, each with the study it comes from. There is no single ideal rate. Each figure below is what one study measured or recommended for one kind of speech, and the same speech gives different figures depending on whether silences are counted. Use the row closest to your situation, not an average of all of them. - ### Academic lectures, British English 173 wpm Mean of recordings made in the UK in 2020–2021; individual recordings ranged from 125 to 247. Source: [Wang Li (2021). British English-Speaking Speed 2020. Academic Journal of Humanities & Social Sciences, 4(5), 93–100. doi:10.25236/AJHSS.2021.040517](https://francis-press.com/papers/4225) - ### News monologues, British English 198 wpm Mean of the same sample; individual recordings ranged from 152 to 241. Source: [Wang Li (2021). British English-Speaking Speed 2020. Academic Journal of Humanities & Social Sciences, 4(5), 93–100. doi:10.25236/AJHSS.2021.040517](https://francis-press.com/papers/4225) - ### Interviews, British English 197 wpm Mean of the same sample; individual recordings ranged from 140 to 236. Source: [Wang Li (2021). British English-Speaking Speed 2020. Academic Journal of Humanities & Social Sciences, 4(5), 93–100. doi:10.25236/AJHSS.2021.040517](https://francis-press.com/papers/4225) - ### Conversation, British English 222 wpm Mean of the same sample; individual recordings ranged from 187 to 261. Source: [Wang Li (2021). British English-Speaking Speed 2020. Academic Journal of Humanities & Social Sciences, 4(5), 93–100. doi:10.25236/AJHSS.2021.040517](https://francis-press.com/papers/4225) - ### Telephone conversation, American English 196 wpm American English telephone conversations (Switchboard): all words over the whole elapsed time of the call. Individual conversations ranged from 111 to 291 wpm, and the average rises to 236 wpm when silences are left out. Source: [Yuan, J., Liberman, M., & Cieri, C. (2006). Towards an integrated understanding of speaking rate in conversation. Interspeech 2006. doi:10.21437/Interspeech.2006-204](https://www.isca-archive.org/interspeech_2006/yuan06_interspeech.html) - ### Radio delivery 160–180 wpm A recommendation, not a measurement: the paper reports that most authors writing about radio recommend this range. Source: [Rodero, E. (2012). A comparative analysis of speech rate and perception in radio bulletins and podcasts. Text & Talk, 32(3), 391–411. doi:10.1515/text-2012-0019](https://doi.org/10.1515/text-2012-0019) ## How to check and adjust your speaking rate 1. 1 ### Record a sample Read the provided passage, or speak freely about anything, for 30 to 60 seconds. A longer sample gives a steadier number than a short one. 2. 2 ### Compare with a matching reference Note your words per minute and compare it with the cited ranges for the kind of speaking you do. Lectures, interviews, radio, and conversation are measured at different rates, so pick the one that matches your situation. 3. 3 ### Fit your script to the time Paste your script into the calculator and set the rate to see the talk length. Cut or add words until it fits the time you have. 4. 4 ### Rehearse and measure again Fast speakers tend to fill their pauses, so check your filler words next. Then rehearse the real talk out loud and measure it again. ## Questions ### How do I measure my words per minute speaking? Words per minute (wpm) is the number of words you say in one minute. Divide the words in a passage by the minutes it took to say them. Speakeroo does that for you: record about a minute of reading or free speech and the checker returns your wpm, or paste a script into the calculator and enter your time. ### What is a good speaking rate? There is no single ideal rate. Published measurements depend on the kind of speech and on how time is counted: Wang Li (2021) measured a mean of 173 wpm for British English lectures and 222 wpm for conversation, and Yuan, Liberman and Cieri (2006) found 196 wpm, or 236 wpm with silences left out, in the same American phone calls. The reference table on this page lists every figure with its source. ### How does the speaking rate checker work? Speakeroo transcribes your sample with word timings, then averages your pace across ten-second windows of the take, the same measurement that appears as pace in a practice session’s feedback. Silence before your first word and after your last word is not counted, and pauses between words are. ### Is the speaking rate checker free? Yes. The checker is free and needs no account for your first measurement. It uses part of the same free recording allowance as the other Speakeroo tools, and the audio is deleted once it has been transcribed. ### How long will my speech take? Use the calculator on this page: paste your script, pick the rate you want to speak at, and it returns the talk length. Rehearse out loud and time yourself to replace the estimate with your real rate. ## Keep going [Filler words](https://speakeroo.app/filler-words) [Filler word tracker](https://speakeroo.app/filler-word-tracker) [Public speaking practice](https://speakeroo.app/public-speaking-practice) [Read aloud practice](https://speakeroo.app/read-aloud-practice) [Impromptu speaking practice](https://speakeroo.app/impromptu-speaking) ## Try it now, no account needed Every practice mode is free and starts in your browser. A free account adds session history and progress tracking so you can see the same feedback improve over time. 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