Words to Reading Time: How Long Will Your Text Take to Read?

Published August 31, 2026

"5 min read" has become standard at the top of articles, and there's a good reason: it's the single most useful thing you can tell a reader before they start. But where does that number come from, and how do you work it out for a presentation, a video script, or a piece you're about to publish? This guide covers the reading and speaking rates people actually use, a conversion table you can use directly, and the situations where the standard estimate is badly wrong.

The formula

Reading time is simply total words ÷ words per minute. All the nuance is in which rate you pick, and the right rate depends entirely on what the words are for:

Toolyard's counter uses 200 words per minute for its reading-time figure. That's at the conservative end of the silent-reading range, chosen deliberately: it's better to promise five minutes and take four than the reverse.

Quick conversion table

Two columns, because these are the two questions people actually ask. "How long will people spend reading this?" uses 200 wpm. "How long will this take me to say out loud?" uses 140 wpm.

Writing to a time slot

Turn the table around and you have a drafting target. To fill a slot, multiply the minutes by your speaking rate — and then cut, because almost every first draft runs long.

• 3-minute lightning talk — about 400 words.
• 5-minute presentation — about 650 words.
• 10-minute conference talk — about 1,300 words.
• 20-minute keynote — about 2,600 words.
• 60-second video script — about 140 words, or 120 if there are visuals to land.

One rule saves most people from overrunning: write to about 85% of the slot. Live delivery always adds time — pauses for emphasis, a slide that needs a moment, a question, the sentence you rephrase halfway through. A script that times out at exactly 20 minutes in your kitchen will take 23 on stage.

Where the estimate goes wrong

Reading-time labels are averages of averages, and there are four situations where they mislead:

1. Dense or technical writing. Readers slow down, re-read sentences, and stop to think. A 2,000-word explanation of a tax rule is not a 10-minute read for someone unfamiliar with tax rules — it's closer to 20.
2. Non-text content. Word-based estimates ignore images, charts, code blocks and tables entirely. A tutorial with eight screenshots takes far longer than its word count suggests, because looking is time too.
3. Reading to do, not to know. If your article is a set of instructions someone follows while reading, the real time includes performing every step. That can be five times the reading estimate.
4. Second-language readers. Reading speed in a non-native language is typically substantially slower, so a globally read piece will take many of its readers longer than the label promises.

None of this makes the estimate useless — it just means the number is a signal, not a contract. Its real job is to distinguish "read this now" from "save this for later," and it does that job well.

Measure your own reading speed

The 200-words-per-minute default is an average, and you are not the average. Working out your real rate takes two minutes and makes every estimate on this page more useful to you personally:

1. Pick an article on a topic you know reasonably well — not something unusually easy or unusually technical.
2. Paste it into a counter to get the exact word total.
3. Read it properly, start to finish, timing yourself. Read for comprehension, not for the test.
4. Divide the word count by the minutes taken. That's your words-per-minute for that kind of material.

Most people land somewhere between 150 and 300 for general prose. If your number is well below 200, published reading-time labels are systematically optimistic for you and you should mentally add a third. If it's well above, you can safely treat "10 min read" as closer to seven.

Do the same test for spoken delivery and the payoff is larger still. Record yourself reading 300 words of your own script at a natural pace, time it, and you'll have a personal speaking rate. Some people are naturally at 120 words per minute and some at 170 — a 40% difference that decides whether a 20-minute slot needs 2,400 words or 3,400.

How to check reading time in seconds

1. Open the Word Counter.
2. Paste in your article, script or draft — the counts update as you type.
3. Read the reading time box, calculated at 200 words per minute.
4. For a spoken piece, take the word total instead and divide by 140 — or read the spoken column in the table above.

A practical tip for presentations: count each section separately. Knowing that your introduction is 90 seconds and your case study is four minutes tells you exactly what to cut when you're two minutes over — which the total alone never does.

Is it private and free?

Yes. The counter runs entirely in your browser, so your draft, script or article is never uploaded to any server. It's free, needs no sign-up, and continues to work offline once the page has loaded.