Average Typing Speed by Age, Job, and Experience

Most "average typing speed" articles cite the same number — 40 WPM — and stop there. That number is technically correct and almost completely useless. A 60-year-old hunt-and-peck typist and a 25-year-old developer both average 40 WPM only in the same way that a sedan and a school bus both have four wheels. The number hides everything that matters.

This guide breaks down typing speed the way it actually varies in the real world: by age, by profession, by years of computer experience, and by what kind of text you are typing. The numbers below are aggregated from public typing-test datasets (Typing.com, Ratatype, 10FastFingers) and self-reported figures from large surveys of professional typists. Wherever a range is given, the lower number is the bottom of the typical band and the upper number is the top.

The Headline Number: 38 to 40 WPM

If a friend asks "what is the average typing speed?" — the honest answer is 38 to 40 words per minute for a general adult population, with about 92% accuracy. That figure has been remarkably stable since the late 1990s. It does not move much when you average across all adults because the population balances slow hunt-and-peck typists against fast professional ones.

The interesting numbers are the ones underneath that average.

Average Typing Speed by Age

Typing speed roughly follows a bell curve across the lifespan. Children are slow because they are still learning the keyboard. Teens and young adults are fastest because they grew up on keyboards and phones. Speed gradually declines after about 40 — not because of cognitive ability, but because typing is no longer the primary input method for many people once they reach senior roles.

A few things to notice in this data:

• The peak is the 23-to-35 band, not later. People plateau when their job stops requiring them to type more than they already do.
• The decline after 50 is real but small. A motivated 60-year-old who types daily will out-type the average 25-year-old.
• Children's speeds rise fast because they are practicing constantly during the school year.

Average Typing Speed by Profession

Profession is a stronger predictor than age. A 50-year-old transcriptionist will smoke a 25-year-old marketing manager, every time. The reason is simple: the transcriptionist has spent a quarter-million hours typing under time pressure, and the marketing manager has spent her time in meetings.

Court reporters look like an outlier because they are. Stenography is a different keyboard with a different alphabet — chords represent whole syllables. Comparing a steno machine to a QWERTY keyboard is like comparing a motorcycle to a bicycle.

Speed by Years of Computer Experience

If you control for age and just ask "how many years has this person typed daily?" — you get a much cleaner curve. Speed climbs steeply for the first three years of regular typing, climbs gradually for years three through ten, and plateaus after that.

The plateau in the 15+ band is the most important finding here. People who have been typing for two decades are not faster than people who have been typing for ten — unless they actively tried to get faster. The skill ossifies at whatever level your job demands. If your job demands 60 WPM, you stay at 60 WPM forever.

Speed Differences by Text Type

The same person types different speeds depending on what they are typing. A test giving "the quick brown fox" produces a much higher WPM than a test giving raw legal contract text. Most "average typing speed" claims silently assume the friendliest possible text.

That last row is the one nobody talks about. There is a big difference between the speed at which you can transcribe text someone else wrote and the speed at which you can compose your own. When you are writing original thought — an email you have not pre-composed in your head, a document with structure decisions, a Slack reply that requires diplomacy — your effective WPM might be 25 to 30, not 60. The keyboard is not the bottleneck. Thinking is.

What Speed Actually Matters?

Once you know where you fall on the curve, the natural question is: should I be faster? The answer is more nuanced than the typing-tutor websites would have you believe.

Below 40 WPM: yes, get faster

If you type below 40 WPM and you have an office job, learning to touch-type is one of the highest-ROI skills available. The gap between 30 and 50 WPM means the difference between typing being a daily friction and typing being invisible. Fifteen minutes a day on Keybr or TypingClub will get you there in three months.

40 to 60 WPM: maybe, depends on your job

This is the sweet spot for most professional work. If you write for a living — journalist, novelist, content marketer, technical writer — pushing toward 80 WPM has a noticeable productivity payoff. If your job is mostly meetings, code, or design, pushing past 60 WPM does not give you back enough hours to be worth the practice.

Above 60 WPM: stop optimizing typing speed

Once you are above 60 WPM, the ceiling is no longer mechanical. You are typing fast enough that the bottleneck is your thinking. Hours spent practicing past 70 WPM produce vanity metrics, not real productivity. The professional medical transcriptionists who hit 100 WPM are not faster thinkers — they are faster transcribers, which is a different skill that only matters if you transcribe for a living.

The Question Hidden in This Data

Look at the table by profession again. Notice that even the fastest professional typists max out around 100 WPM. Court reporters get higher than that only by using an entirely different keyboard.

Now consider this: the average human speaks at 130 to 150 words per minute in normal conversation. Audiobook narrators read at 150 to 160. Sports commentators sustain 200+. Speaking is faster than even the world's best typists, by a large margin, with zero training.

The reason typing dominated knowledge work for fifty years is not that typing is the most efficient way to get text out of your head. It is that until recently, speech recognition did not work well enough to replace it. Voice transcription was a curiosity in 2010, a usable but flawed tool in 2018, and a genuinely good replacement for keyboard input in 2024.

Once accuracy crosses about 95% and latency drops below one second, the math changes. A 60 WPM typist composing original thought outputs maybe 30 effective WPM. A 60 WPM typist who can also dictate at 130 WPM has more than doubled their output for the tasks where dictation works — emails, Slack messages, notes, first drafts.

Voice Keyboard Pro is a native macOS app that lets you dictate into any text field — anywhere, in any app — by holding a hotkey, speaking, and releasing. Text appears at your cursor in under a second. We built it because we got tired of the gap between the speed at which we could think out loud and the speed at which our keyboards could keep up.

How to Compare Yourself Honestly

If you want a real assessment of your speed, do these three tests:

1. Typing test on common words. Take a 60-second test. This is your "best case" speed. Most people are 10 to 20% slower than this in real work.
2. Speaking speed test. Record yourself reading for 60 seconds. Almost every adult speaks at 120+ WPM, even people who type at 40.
3. The race. Type a paragraph, then dictate the same paragraph. The gap is usually larger than people expect.

Most people who run that third test are surprised. The "I'm a fast typist" identity is hard to give up — and you should not give it up entirely, because keyboard skills still matter for editing, coding, navigating, and any work that requires precision. But for raw text production, the keyboard is no longer the fastest tool you have.

The fastest typists in the world max out around 100 WPM. The average human speaks 130 to 150 WPM, untrained, every day.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a good typing speed for a 30-year-old?

50 to 65 WPM is solidly above average for any adult, including 30-year-olds. 70+ WPM is fast. 80+ is professional-tier.

Is 40 WPM slow?

40 WPM is exactly average for the general adult population. It is slow for someone whose job involves a lot of writing, and perfectly adequate for someone whose job involves meetings, design, or code.

How fast does Stephen King type?

Stephen King has said in interviews that he types at "about 60 WPM" but writes at his own composing pace, which is around 2,000 words per day. The takeaway: even prolific authors are not unusually fast typists. Output comes from sitting down, not from finger speed.

Why is my code typing speed lower than my prose speed?

Code requires symbols ({}[]();), capitalization, indentation, and frequent backspacing. The keys on the QWERTY layout are optimized for English prose, not for source code. A 30-to-40% drop from prose speed to code speed is normal.

Can voice typing replace keyboard typing entirely?

For text production, almost yes. For editing, navigation, coding, spreadsheets, and precision work, no. The realistic future is hybrid: dictate the first draft, edit with the keyboard. That combination produces more output than either tool alone.

The average typing speed is 40 WPM. The average speaking speed is 130. That gap has been there your whole life. The only thing that changed is that the technology to close it now actually works.