How long will it take to read this?

How many minutes is 1,000 words?

About 4 minutes to read silently at an average adult pace of 250 words a minute, and about 7 minutes to read aloud at a speaking pace of 140. A slower reader takes nearer 7 minutes silently and a fast reader about 3.

The same maths scales cleanly: 500 words is 2 minutes, 2,000 is 8 minutes, and 5,000 is 20 minutes. Reading aloud always takes roughly twice as long as reading silently, because speech is limited by how fast you can articulate rather than how fast you can take words in.

Why 250 words a minute and not 300

Most converters default to 300 words a minute. Brysbaert's 2019 meta-analysis of 190 studies put adult silent reading closer to 238 words a minute for non-fiction and 260 for fiction, so 300 runs fast and the estimates it produces run short.

We use 250, which sits between those two figures. It makes every number on this page slightly larger than the one you will see elsewhere, and slightly closer to the truth. If you want your own figure rather than an average, time a real session or take a comprehension-scored speed test.

Writing a speech instead of reading one

Working backwards from a time limit is the more common problem for a talk. At 140 words a minute, a 3 minute speech is about 420 words, a 5 minute speech about 700, and a 10 minute speech about 1,400.

Treat those as a ceiling rather than a target. Pauses, laughter, a slide that needs a moment, and the fact that almost everyone speeds up when nervous all move the real number, and a script that fills the slot exactly on paper tends to overrun in the room.

How to use the words to minutes converter

1. 1

   Paste your text or enter a word count

   Paste an essay, chapter, thread or script and it counts the words for you. If you already know the number, switch to the word count tab and type it in.

2. 2

   Read the time at your pace

   The headline figure is the average adult reading pace. Underneath, the same text is shown at a slower and a faster pace so you can pick the one that matches how you actually read.

3. 3

   Check the spoken time if you are presenting

   The read-aloud row uses a prepared-talk pace of 140 words a minute, which is what you want when the text is a speech, a script or a voiceover rather than something to be read silently.

Frequently asked questions