Speaking speed test: how many words a minute do you speak?
Read a short passage aloud, pressing Start as you begin and Stop at the last word, and see your pace in words a minute beside the averages a published review gives. There is no microphone and no sign-up: the page only times you, and the test sends nothing. Or measure a recording of yourself in Burncaps, or type a script's words and the time it took.
Press Start, or the space bar, as you say the first word, read at the pace you would use for a talk or a video, and press Stop at the last word. There is no microphone: the page only times you.
On Saturday mornings the market fills the square outside the town hall. The first stalls open at eight, when the air is cold and the bakers are stacking warm loaves in rows. By ten the square is busy. A man sells apples from three farms in the valley and lets you taste each kind before you choose. Next to him, a woman mends bicycles while her customers wait with a cup of tea. Children count coins for sweets, and older neighbours stop to talk about the weather and the football. Nobody seems to be in a hurry. When the rain comes, as it often does, everyone moves under the awnings and the talking carries on as if nothing had happened.
Growing your own vegetables does not need a large garden. A sunny corner, a few pots and a little patience are enough to start. Begin with plants that forgive mistakes. Salad leaves grow quickly and can be picked again and again. Radishes are ready in about a month, which keeps the excitement going while slower crops catch up. Runner beans climb up a fence and give far more than one family can eat. Tomatoes take more care, but the first ripe one tastes better than anything from a shop. Water in the early morning or the evening, when the sun is low, so less is lost to the heat. Push a finger into the soil before you water: if it feels damp, wait another day. Slugs will find your seedlings, so check under the leaves after rain. Keep a simple notebook of what you sowed and when, and what did well. Next spring you will know which corner gets the best light and which plants are worth the space. Most of all, enjoy the small changes from one day to the next. Watching a seed turn into something you can eat is one of the quiet pleasures of a garden.
If you live near a canal, the towpath is one of the easiest walks there is. It is flat, it is quiet, and it nearly always leads somewhere interesting. You can join it in the middle of a busy town and within half an hour find yourself among fields, with only birdsong and the odd boat engine for company. The locks are the best place to stop for a while. A lock is a simple machine: heavy gates at each end with a chamber of water between them. To take a boat uphill, the crew closes the lower gates and lets water in from the higher side. The water rises, the boat rises with it, and when the levels match, the upper gates swing open and the boat carries on. It is slow work, and people often gather to watch. Most boaters are happy to explain what they are doing, and some will let a curious child help push the long wooden beam that opens a gate. Further on you may pass old warehouses turned into flats, stone bridges with numbers on them, and the backs of gardens where people grow roses and runner beans down to the water. Herons stand perfectly still at the water's edge, waiting for a fish, and ducks follow anyone who looks as if they might have bread. If you plan a long walk, look at a map first and note the places where you can leave the path, because a canal does not always turn where you expect it to. Wear comfortable shoes, take some water and a snack, and give way to cyclists on the narrow stretches. Above all, slow down. Nobody on a canal is in a hurry, and that is exactly what makes it such a good place for a walk.
Your pace appears here when you press Stop: the passage's words over the time you took, in words a minute, beside the averages from a published review of reading and speaking rates.
Your pace
words a minute
- Passage
- Time
The shaded band is 140 to 180 words a minute, the review's range for audiobooks and speech; the tick at 183 is its average for reading aloud. The scale runs from 60 to 300.
One timed reading of one passage is not your everyday pace. With the words in front of you there are no pauses to find the next one, so a reading can come out quicker than the way you talk when you make it up as you go. Read twice, or measure a recording of yourself, below.
Or measure it another way
A recording of yourself
Choose a video or a sound file of you talking: MP4 or MOV, or an audio file such as MP3, WAV or M4A. It opens in the Burncaps editor, which writes every word it hears, and your pace appears at the top of the script, under Your script:
1:23 · 210 words · nothing cut, nothing moved · 158 words a minute
It counts from your first word to your last, pauses included, which is how a speech or a script is timed; silence before the first word and after the last is left out. No export or sign-up is needed to see it.
The video never leaves your browser. On a computer, English is heard on your own device unless you choose our speech service; on a phone the sound goes to our speech service unless you keep it on the phone. The service gets short pieces of sound, never the picture. Until the editor opens it, the file waits in this browser's own storage on your device.
Words and a time
Type the words you said and the time it took, such as 300 words in 2:05.
Now caption it
Drop the video in Burncaps. It listens, writes every word as a script, and burns word-by-word captions into the video, in your browser. The video never leaves your browser.
Free: 2 videos every 30 days, each with captions and up to 3 clips, no watermark, no sign-up. Then try Captions + Clips free for 7 days, no card. Captions + Clips is $29 a month for unlimited clips and captions; Captions is $9.98 a month or $49 once.
What is the average speaking speed?
There is no single figure: it changes with who is talking, to whom, and whether they are reading. These are the figures we could read at their source, each named below with the day we read it.
| Situation | Words a minute | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Audiobooks and speech | 140 to 180 | Brysbaert (2019), a review of reading rates, which adds that other estimates of speech rate are of similar magnitude |
| Rate of speech, English speakers in the United States | about 150 | National Center for Voice and Speech, Voice Qualities |
| Reading aloud, adults reading English | 183 on average | Brysbaert (2019), from 77 studies and 5,965 participants |
| Radio news, the ideal rate in one study | 170 for news dense with information, 190 for lighter news | One study reported in Brysbaert (2019) |
| Practice presentations on VirtualSpeech in 2026, in several languages | median 111; the middle half 86 to 133 | VirtualSpeech, from 32,809 practice presentations |
| Silent reading, for comparison | 238 for non-fiction, 260 for fiction | Brysbaert (2019), from 190 studies |
Where these come from
Brysbaert, M. (2019). How many words do we read per minute? A review and meta-analysis of reading rate. Journal of Memory and Language, 109, 104047. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2019.104047, read in full on 3 November 2026. Its figures are for English. The review says other languages need more or fewer words for the same message, so a word count means something different there.
The National Center for Voice and Speech, Tutorials, Voice Production, Voice Qualities: ncvs.org/archive/ncvs/tutorials/voiceprod/tutorial/quality.html, read on 3 November 2026. It says the average rate of speech for English speakers in the United States is about 150 words a minute. The page carries no date.
VirtualSpeech, Average Speaking Rate and Words per Minute (Data), by Dom Barnard, 22 October 2026: virtualspeech.com/blog/average-speaking-rate-words-per-minute, read on 3 November 2026. The figures are VirtualSpeech's own measurements of 32,809 practice presentations made on VirtualSpeech in 2026, from meeting updates to job interviews, in several languages, and it says lower rates in some languages may also reflect people practising in a second language.
How many words a minute is a speech?
About 140 to 180, the range the review gives for audiobooks and speech. At that pace a 3 minute speech is 420 to 540 words, a 5 minute speech 700 to 900 and a 10 minute speech 1,400 to 1,800. The speech time calculator works it out for your own script at your own pace, and shows a table for every minute from 1 to 60.
Once you have your pace from the test above, type it into the calculator's pace box, and the time for your script and the words for your minutes follow it.
What is a good pace for a video, a speech and a voice-over?
A speech or a presentation: the review's 140 to 180 words a minute for speech is a sensible range to aim for. VirtualSpeech advises roughly 120 to 160 words a minute for most presentations, and measured a median of 111 across the 32,809 practice presentations made on VirtualSpeech in 2026.
A video to camera: no source we read gives a pace for videos. A script read to camera is reading aloud, for which the review's average is 183 words a minute, so if your reading comes out above 180 and you want to sit inside its range for speech, slow down or cut words. Word-by-word captions follow your voice, so a viewer watching without sound reads them at your pace.
A voice-over: the review says audiobooks are spoken at 140 to 180 words a minute, and reports one study that found the ideal rate for radio news to be 170 for messages dense with information and 190 for lighter ones. To fill a set time, change the script rather than your speed: the speech time calculator says how many words fill it.
How to slow down or speed up
- Time yourself first: read a passage above twice, pressing Retry between the two, so you know your pace before you change it.
- To slow down, give each full stop a breath: start a new line after each sentence in your script and pause at every line end.
- Practise against a target: at 150 words a minute, the 200 word passage takes 1 min 20 s. Read it until your time lands within a few seconds of that.
- To speed up, close the gaps rather than rushing the words: leave out the ums and the long pauses. In a clip, Burncaps cuts them for you.
- Practise with a teleprompter scrolling at a steady speed and keep up with it: try the free online teleprompter.
- Measure a real recording, not only a reading: the pace Burncaps shows comes from the words you actually said.
How this test counts
The passages' words are counted the way a word processor counts: anything between spaces that holds a letter or a number. The time runs from your press of Start to your press of Stop, so the moment your finger takes is in it: at 160 words a minute, half a second either way moves the pace for the 120 word passage by about 2 words a minute, and the longer passages less.
A recording measured in Burncaps counts the words it writes, from the first word to the last, with the pauses between them; silence before the first word and after the last is left out. Correct a word in the script and the pace follows. Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Lao, Khmer and Burmese are written without spaces between words, so a count of words is not reliable for them, and no pace is shown.
Questions, answered plainly
What is the average speaking speed?
There is no single figure. A published review of reading rates (Brysbaert, 2019, Journal of Memory and Language) says audiobooks are spoken at 140 to 180 words a minute and that other estimates of speech rate are of similar magnitude. The National Center for Voice and Speech says the average rate of speech for English speakers in the United States is about 150 words a minute.
How many words a minute is normal in a speech?
About 140 to 180, the range the review gives for audiobooks and speech, so a 5 minute speech is about 700 to 900 words. The review also reports one study that found the ideal rate for radio news to be 170 for messages dense with information and 190 for lighter ones.
How do I test my speaking speed?
Choose a passage on this page, press Start as you say its first word and Stop at its last, and the page divides the passage's words by the time. For the way you talk when you are not reading, measure a recording of yourself in Burncaps: the pace shows at the top of the script, counted from your first word to your last.
Is my reading speed the same as my speaking speed?
Not quite. With the words in front of you there are no pauses to find the next one, so a reading can come out quicker than the way you talk when you make it up as you go. The review's average for reading aloud is 183 words a minute, just above the top of its 140 to 180 for speech. One timed reading of one passage is not your everyday pace.
Is 200 words a minute too fast?
It is faster than the 140 to 180 words a minute the review gives for audiobooks and speech, and above its average of 183 for reading aloud. The one study the review reports on radio news found the ideal rate to be 190 for lighter news and 170 for news dense with information, so 200 is above both.
Does the test use my microphone?
No. The read-aloud test only times you: you press Start and Stop, and the page counts the words of the passage you read. It never asks for the microphone. The page sends only anonymous step counts, such as that it was opened, never your times or your words.
How does Burncaps measure the pace of a recording?
It writes every word it hears with the time it was said, then divides the words by the time from the first word to the last, pauses included, which is how a speech or a script is timed. Silence before the first word and after the last is left out. The pace shows at the top of the script for the whole video or recording, not for a clip, whose cuts would make it faster than you spoke, and not for under 20 words or 10 seconds of talk.
Does it work in other languages?
The passages are in English and the averages on this page are for English; the review says other languages need more or fewer words for the same message, so compare a pace only with others in the same language. Burncaps shows no pace for a recording in Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Lao, Khmer or Burmese, which are written without spaces between words, so a count of words is not reliable for them.
Is my recording uploaded?
The video never leaves your browser. On a computer, English is heard on your own device unless you choose our speech service, which is also offered for other languages and for recordings over ten minutes; on a phone the sound goes to our speech service unless you keep it on the phone. The service gets short pieces of sound, never the picture, and passes them to Microsoft's speech recognition in the EU, which by Microsoft's terms for the service stores none of it.
Burncaps facts, checked 3 November 2026
What it is: a browser tool that burns animated word-by-word captions into a talking video, or finds the best moments of a talk, podcast or interview and gives them back as ranked, captioned 9:16 clips.
Price: free for 2 videos every 30 days, each one recording with its captioned video and up to 3 clips, no mark and no sign-up; then the free 7-day Captions + Clips trial, no card (your email only); then Captions + Clips, $29 a month, gives unlimited clips and captioned videos, or Captions, $9.98 a month or $49 once, gives unlimited captioned videos. Captions paid once is not a subscription.
Privacy: the video never leaves your browser. The sound goes only to our speech service, on a phone unless you switch it off, on a computer only if you choose it. Because the video never reaches us, we cannot keep it or train AI on it, and we train no AI on anything you make.
Files: MP4 or MOV in, MP4 out. Captions on the whole video: up to ten minutes. Clips: up to three hours, on a phone or a computer. SRT, VTT, ASS and text files are free without limit for recordings up to ten minutes; a longer recording, up to three hours, gives its script and those files (the first ten minutes free, all of it as one of your free videos, in the trial or with Captions + Clips or Captions) and its clips (every one found and shown before you sign up; up to 3 from each free video exported free, every one in the trial or with Captions + Clips).
Clips: about one clip for every two minutes of talk, up to 30, ranked, the ones we would post first circled, each showing the words it opens and ends on and the reason it was chosen; each cut to 9:16 with ums and dead air removed, an opening card and captions, framed on whoever is talking. Every clip of the whole recording is found and shown, free and with no sign-up; each free video exports up to 3 of them, and the 7-day trial and Captions + Clips export every clip, unlimited.
Languages and styles: captions in the language spoken, twelve Indian languages heard on your device, translation into 59 languages, 60 caption styles.
After it listens: correct any word (one click changes it everywhere), add or cut words, one to six words at a time, position, size, text and highlight colours, and names this browser remembers, all free and without listening again.
Made by: Jordan Labs Ltd, UK company no. 17358646.
Against other tools: sixteen caption tools compared, from the vendors' own pages.