Text Reading Time Calculator
Paste the text to estimate how many minutes it takes to read.
Uses the same reading-speed research reference (Brysbaert, 2019) that many blogs and content platforms use to show 'X min read' at the top of an article.
Estimate based on average prose reading speed (about 1,200 characters per minute, per Brysbaert 2019). Actual speed varies by person, familiarity with the topic and text complexity.
Frequently asked questions
Why does the estimate use characters instead of just a word count?
Because average word length differs between languages — a Portuguese word tends to be longer than an English one. Counting characters keeps the estimate consistent across languages, without overestimating reading speed in longer-word languages.
Where does the 1,200 characters per minute figure come from?
From a 2019 meta-analysis by researcher Marc Brysbaert covering 190 studies and over 18,000 participants, which found 238 words per minute as the average silent reading speed for adult non-fiction text.
Does this estimate apply to any type of text?
It's an average for regular prose. Technical text with difficult or unfamiliar terms tends to be read more slowly than the estimate suggests.