SharpAssessment

Free typing speed test: measure your WPM in one minute

A free one-minute typing test that reports net words per minute and character accuracy. Runs in your browser, no signup, and your result is not sent anywhere.

0 net WPM100% accuracy60s left

What this test measures

Sustained speed and accuracy on ordinary prose, over one minute. That is a narrower thing than “typing ability”, and the gap matters if you are preparing for a job that involves a keyboard.

Prose typing is the easiest case: the words are predictable, your fingers fall into familiar patterns, and autocorrect habits help rather than hurt. Real work is often harder. Entering account numbers, codes or names gives you none of that predictability, and most people are meaningfully slower at it.

How to read your result

  • Net WPM is the headline number. It is your gross speed minus your uncorrected mistakes, so it cannot be inflated by typing fast and sloppily.
  • Accuracy is the percentage of characters that matched. Anything below about 95 percent is worth working on before speed.
  • Gross WPM is shown for comparison. If gross is far above net, errors are your limiting factor, not speed.

One run is a noisy measurement. Take it three times and use the middle result.

If you are practising for a job test

Employer typing tests differ from this one in ways that will affect your score:

  1. They are often longer. Speed at five minutes is lower than speed at one minute, because concentration is the real constraint.
  2. They may use forms or numbers, not prose. Practise the kind of content the job involves.
  3. Some penalise corrections, some do not. Ask which, because it changes the right strategy completely.
  4. The keyboard will not be yours. Practise on a keyboard you dislike at least once.

If you are hiring

A typing number on its own rarely decides anything. What usually matters is accuracy on the specific format the job uses, sustained for longer than a minute, under light time pressure. A one-minute prose test does not measure that, and an unsupervised one measures it even less.

The data entry accuracy test and the 10-key numeric entry test describe the versions built for hiring, including how each is scored. Both are planned rather than live: this typing test is currently the only one on the site you can actually run.

Frequently asked questions

What is a good typing speed?
Around 40 words per minute is typical for someone comfortable with a keyboard. Roles that are mostly typing, such as data entry or transcription, commonly expect 50 to 70 WPM with high accuracy. Above 80 WPM is fast. Accuracy matters more than raw speed in almost every job: 45 WPM at 99 percent beats 65 WPM at 92 percent for anything involving records.
How is net WPM calculated?
A word is counted as five characters including spaces. Gross WPM is characters typed divided by five, divided by minutes elapsed. Net WPM subtracts uncorrected errors from that figure. Net WPM is the number worth quoting because it does not reward typing quickly and wrongly.
Is my result sent to an employer?
No. This test runs entirely in your browser and the result is displayed only to you. We record that a test was completed along with the score, so we know whether the tool is used, and nothing that identifies you.
Can I use this to screen candidates?
Not reliably. There is no identity check and no supervision, so a candidate can retake it until they like the number. It is built for practice and for curiosity. Screening needs a supervised, recorded and consistently scored run, which is what the platform is being built to do.