Reading time calculator
A 300-page book takes about 5 hours 17 minutes to read at the average adult speed for fiction, 260 words a minute, at 275 words a page. A slow reader takes about 6 hours 53 minutes and a fast one about 4 hours 18 minutes. Change any number below for your own book and pace.
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How long does it take to read 100, 200 or 300 pages?
At the average adult speed for fiction, 100 pages takes about 1 hour 46 minutes, 200 pages about 3 hours 32 minutes and 300 pages about 5 hours 17 minutes. Every length from 50 to 1,000 pages, at 275 words a page:
| Pages | Slow, 200 wpm | Average, 260 wpm | Fast, 320 wpm |
|---|---|---|---|
| 50 | 1 h 09 min | 53 min | 43 min |
| 100 | 2 h 18 min | 1 h 46 min | 1 h 26 min |
| 150 | 3 h 26 min | 2 h 39 min | 2 h 09 min |
| 200 | 4 h 35 min | 3 h 32 min | 2 h 52 min |
| 250 | 5 h 44 min | 4 h 24 min | 3 h 35 min |
| 300 | 6 h 53 min | 5 h 17 min | 4 h 18 min |
| 350 | 8 h 01 min | 6 h 10 min | 5 h 01 min |
| 400 | 9 h 10 min | 7 h 03 min | 5 h 44 min |
| 500 | 11 h 28 min | 8 h 49 min | 7 h 10 min |
| 600 | 13 h 45 min | 10 h 35 min | 8 h 36 min |
| 700 | 16 h 03 min | 12 h 20 min | 10 h 02 min |
| 800 | 18 h 20 min | 14 h 06 min | 11 h 28 min |
| 1,000 | 22 h 55 min | 17 h 38 min | 14 h 19 min |
Non-fiction takes longer, because the average speed is lower:
| Pages | Slow, 175 wpm | Average, 238 wpm | Fast, 300 wpm |
|---|---|---|---|
| 50 | 1 h 19 min | 58 min | 46 min |
| 100 | 2 h 37 min | 1 h 56 min | 1 h 32 min |
| 150 | 3 h 56 min | 2 h 53 min | 2 h 18 min |
| 200 | 5 h 14 min | 3 h 51 min | 3 h 03 min |
| 250 | 6 h 33 min | 4 h 49 min | 3 h 49 min |
| 300 | 7 h 51 min | 5 h 47 min | 4 h 35 min |
| 350 | 9 h 10 min | 6 h 44 min | 5 h 21 min |
| 400 | 10 h 29 min | 7 h 42 min | 6 h 07 min |
| 500 | 13 h 06 min | 9 h 38 min | 7 h 38 min |
| 600 | 15 h 43 min | 11 h 33 min | 9 h 10 min |
| 700 | 18 h 20 min | 13 h 29 min | 10 h 42 min |
| 800 | 20 h 57 min | 15 h 24 min | 12 h 13 min |
| 1,000 | 26 h 11 min | 19 h 15 min | 15 h 17 min |
How long does it take to read a 300-page book?
A 300-page novel takes about 5 hours 17 minutes of reading at the average speed, and a 300-page non-fiction book about 5 hours 47 minutes. That’s reading time, not elapsed time: breaks, rereading and a dense chapter all add to it.
Some sites say a 300-page book takes about 10 hours. That works out to 30 pages an hour, or about 138 words a minute at 275 words a page, which is slower than the slow end of the adult range for silent reading (200 for fiction) and slower than the average for reading aloud (183). It’s a fair estimate for a hard book read closely, but not for an average reader reading a novel.
How many days will it take to finish a book?
At 20 minutes a day, a 300-page novel takes 16 days at the average fiction speed. Days to finish, rounded up:
| Pages | 15 minutes a day | 20 minutes a day | 30 minutes a day | 60 minutes a day |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 100 | 8 | 6 | 4 | 2 |
| 200 | 15 | 11 | 8 | 4 |
| 300 | 22 | 16 | 11 | 6 |
| 400 | 29 | 22 | 15 | 8 |
| 500 | 36 | 27 | 18 | 9 |
| 800 | 57 | 43 | 29 | 15 |
For a yearly target rather than a single book, the reading goal calculator works backwards from the number of books to pages and minutes a day.
How the numbers are worked out
Reading time is the number of pages times the words on a page, divided by the reading speed. Two of those are assumptions you can change above:
- Reading speed. The averages, 260 words a minute for fiction and 238 for non-fiction, are the adult means for silent reading in English from Marc Brysbaert’s 2019 meta-analysis of 190 studies and 18,573 participants. The same review found most adults read fiction at 200 to 320 words a minute and non-fiction at 175 to 300, which is what “slow” and “fast” mean here.
- Words per page, 275. A working figure, not a measured average. It depends on the edition, the type size and the margins. To measure your own book, count the words on three full lines, divide by three, and multiply by the lines on a page.
What the average reading speed is explains the speeds in more detail, and how to measure your own.
Sources
- 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.
Published by Chaptify LLC, the maker of Chaptify, a reading tracker and social reading app for iPhone.