Where the reading speeds come from
The defaults come from one source: Brysbaert (2019), “How many words do we read per minute? A review and meta-analysis of reading rate”, in the Journal of Memory and Language. It pooled 190 studies of adults reading English and found average silent reading speeds of about 238 words per minute for non-fiction and 260 for fiction. Reading aloud averaged about 183 words per minute. The gap between fiction and non-fiction is mostly word length: non-fiction uses longer words. Individual readers vary: most adults read non-fiction at 175–300 wpm.
The skimming preset is different: 450 wpm is our own round assumption for someone scanning headings and first lines, not a research average. Pick your own number if you know your audience reads faster or slower.
How we count and round
- Words are counted the same way as in our word counter: contractions and hyphenated words count once, numbers count, punctuation doesn’t.
- Time is words divided by speed, shown to the second. The “min read” label rounds up to whole minutes with a minimum of one, which is the usual blog convention.
- Images, code and tables aren’t timed. Readers slow down on dense technical text, so for tutorials treat the number as a floor.
Use it backwards
Writing a script for a five-minute demo or a launch video? Set the speed to reading aloud (or your own pace: time yourself reading one paragraph) and enter the minutes. You get a word budget to write to. For a talk, most people speak slower than they read aloud once they add pauses and slides, so leave room.
For blog posts, reading time is a reader courtesy, not an SEO lever. Write the length the topic needs. If you want the text itself checked for length, sentence length and readability, paste it into the word counter. Converting a draft from Google Docs first? Use paste to Markdown.