What is the average reading speed?

Average reading speed at a glance

The average adult reads 260 words a minute silently for fiction, 238 for non-fiction and 183 aloud:

All three averages and both ranges come from Marc Brysbaert's review and meta-analysis in the Journal of Memory and Language (2019). The silent-reading figures pool 190 studies with 18,573 participants. The reading-aloud figure pools 77 studies with 5,965. The pages-an-hour column is our conversion, at 275 words a page.

What is the average reading speed in words per minute?

The average adult reads English silently at 238 words per minute for non-fiction and 260 words per minute for fiction. Those are the pooled estimates from Brysbaert's 2019 meta-analysis of 190 studies, and they apply to adults reading English as their first language.

The difference between fiction and non-fiction is about word length. Non-fiction uses longer words on average, and Brysbaert found the difference between the two speeds could be predicted from word length.

Children, older adults and people reading in a second language read more slowly, according to Brysbaert's review. His averages are for adults reading in their first language.

How many pages can you read in an hour?

The average adult reads about 57 pages an hour of fiction and 52 pages an hour of non-fiction, at 275 words a page. Pages an hour is words per minute times 60, divided by the words on a page, so the answer depends on the book as much as on the reader:

Words per page is the number people least often know, and it changes from one edition to the next. You can measure it in a minute: count the words on three full lines, divide by three, and multiply by the number of lines on a full page.

What is a good reading speed?

Any speed between 200 and 320 words a minute for fiction, or between 175 and 300 for non-fiction, is normal for an adult. Brysbaert's review found most adults fall inside those ranges. Reading faster than 320 words a minute on fiction puts you above most adults. Reading slower than 200 means books take longer, but it doesn't mean you're reading badly.

Speed is also something the same reader changes all the time. A familiar genre, a gripping chapter or a light book goes faster. A dense argument, a translated classic or a textbook you're studying from goes slower, and should.

Why do some sites say 300 words a minute or more?

A reading speed of 300 words a minute is too high for the average adult: it's the top of the normal range for non-fiction. Marc Brysbaert's 2019 review says its own estimates "are lower than the numbers often cited in scientific and popular writings", and it sets out why those figures overshoot.

The same caution applies to speed-reading claims. A 2016 review in Psychological Science in the Public Interest, by Keith Rayner and four colleagues, concluded that readers are unlikely to double or triple their speed, "from around 250 to 500–750 words per minute", while understanding the text as well as they did at normal speed.

How fast do people read aloud?

Adults read aloud at an average of 183 words per minute, according to Marc Brysbaert's 2019 meta-analysis, which pooled 77 studies and 5,965 participants for this figure. That's about 70% of silent reading speed for fiction. It matters for anyone reading to children, practising a speech, or estimating how long a book takes to read out loud.

Does speed reading work?

Speed reading works only if you accept understanding less. A 2016 review of the reading research by Keith Rayner and colleagues found "a trade-off between speed and accuracy": skimming gets you through a text faster "with moderate comprehension". To read faster without losing understanding, the review recommends practice and becoming "a more skilled language user", for example by building vocabulary, "because language skill is at the heart of reading speed."

How can you measure your own reading speed?

Time yourself reading a book you'd normally read, for 10 minutes, then divide the words you read by 10.

1. Pick a book at your usual level and a page you haven't read yet.
2. Count the words on three full lines, divide by three, and multiply by the lines on a full page. That's the book's words per page.
3. Read normally for 10 minutes by a timer, not skimming, and note where you stopped.
4. Multiply the pages you read by the words per page, and divide by 10.

Do it on two or three different days and take the middle result. With your own number, the reading time calculator tells you how long any book will take, and the reading goal calculator tells you what a yearly goal asks of each day.

How long does a book take at the average speed?

A 300-page novel takes about 5 hours 17 minutes at the average fiction speed of 260 words a minute, at 275 words a page. The same length of non-fiction takes about 5 hours 47 minutes. At the slow and fast ends of the normal range for fiction:

For real books rather than page counts, we counted the words in the full text of sixty classics, from The Great Gatsby to War and Peace: how long it takes to read the classics.

Sources

1. Marc Brysbaert, Journal of Memory and Language 109 (2019). How many words do we read per minute? A review and meta-analysis of reading rate. Checked 22 September 2026.
2. Rayner, Schotter, Masson, Potter and Treiman, Psychological Science in the Public Interest 17 (2016). So Much to Read, So Little Time: How Do We Read, and Can Speed Reading Help?. Checked 23 September 2026.