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Short answer: Yes, 60 WPM is good. It is roughly 50 percent faster than the adult average of around 40 WPM and qualifies you for nearly any keyboard-intensive job. It is comfortably above what most office work requires, but well below conversational speaking speed of 130 to 150 WPM.

If you have just clocked in a typing test result of 60 words per minute and are wondering whether to be proud or disappointed, here is the short answer: yes, 60 WPM is good. It is meaningfully above the adult average, comfortably above what most office jobs require, and faster than the vast majority of people you will work with. But "good" is a slippery word, and whether 60 WPM is good enough for you depends on what you are trying to do.

This article gives you the honest context — what 60 WPM means in practical terms, how it compares to other benchmarks, and what comes next if you want to write faster. The answer to that last question is not what most typing blogs will tell you.

The Short Answer

The average adult typing speed sits somewhere around 38 to 44 words per minute. That range has been measured consistently across decades of typing research, and it lines up with what most casual keyboard users produce when tested. If you type at 60 WPM, you are roughly 50 percent faster than the average person. That puts you well into the "above average" bracket — not exceptional, not record-breaking, but solidly competent.

For most knowledge work, 60 WPM is more than enough. Email, chat messages, documents, notes, code comments — none of these require blistering speed. The bottleneck in writing an email is rarely the keyboard. It is usually thinking about what to say.

How 60 WPM Compares to Other Benchmarks

To put 60 WPM in context, here is roughly where common typing speeds fall:

So 60 WPM lands you firmly in the "competent touch typist" zone. You are faster than most people, but there is still meaningful headroom above you if you want to push higher.

Is 60 WPM Good for a Job?

For the vast majority of office jobs, 60 WPM is more than sufficient. Most listings that include a typing speed requirement ask for somewhere between 35 and 50 WPM. Some specific roles have higher expectations:

If you are applying for a job where typing speed appears on the requirements list, 60 WPM clears almost all of them. If you are eyeing transcription specifically, you may want to push higher — but 60 is a reasonable starting point.

Is 60 WPM Good for a Student?

For a student, 60 WPM is very good. Most adults never reach this speed, and students typically test lower than working adults simply because they have spent fewer years at a keyboard. A teenager or young adult at 60 WPM is well-positioned for college, where the volume of typed work increases dramatically.

Note essays, lab reports, discussion forum posts, and exam responses all benefit from faster typing. At 60 WPM you can keep up with most of your own thinking when writing essays and finish typed exams with time to spare. Most students who hit this speed without formal training have absorbed it from years of messaging and casual writing.

How Accurate Is the Test You Took?

Before getting too attached to your 60 WPM result, it is worth understanding what that number actually measures and where it can mislead you.

Most online typing tests calculate WPM by counting your characters typed, dividing by five (the average word length), and dividing by the test duration in minutes. They usually subtract errors. A one-minute test on common words tends to inflate scores because the brain anticipates familiar patterns. A test with punctuation, numbers, and uncommon words usually drops your speed by 10-20 percent.

Your real-world typing speed — when composing original text rather than copying — is usually 30-40 percent lower than your test score. So a 60 WPM test result probably translates to around 40-45 WPM of actual writing speed. That is still good. But it explains why test scores feel disconnected from real productivity.

How to Push Past 60 WPM

If 60 WPM is not enough and you want to push higher, the path is well-trodden. The honest version of "how to type faster" is:

  1. Use proper touch typing. If you are still looking at the keyboard occasionally, that is your biggest single bottleneck. Fix this first.
  2. Practice with adaptive tools. Sites like Keybr identify your weakest keys and drill those specifically.
  3. Measure consistently. MonkeyType and similar tools let you track progress over weeks.
  4. Practice with realistic text. Common-word tests inflate scores. Practice with prose, code, or whatever you actually write.
  5. Prioritize accuracy over speed. Errors cost more time than slow keystrokes. Slow down, then speed up.
  6. Be patient. Going from 60 to 80 WPM usually takes weeks of consistent practice. From 80 to 100 takes months.

This is the path, and it works. Most people who commit to 15-30 minutes of practice per day can move from 60 to 80 WPM in a couple of months. From 80 to 100 takes longer and demands more deliberate practice.

The Diminishing Returns Problem

Here is the catch nobody wants to mention. The gap between 60 WPM and 80 WPM is significant in test scores but barely noticeable in real productivity. Why? Because typing speed is rarely the bottleneck.

When you write an email, most of the time is spent thinking. When you write a report, most of it is researching and structuring. When you draft a message, most of the delay is deciding what to say. The actual keystrokes are a small fraction of the total time. Doubling your typing speed does not double your writing output. In practice, going from 60 to 80 WPM might save you a few minutes a day, not hours.

This is why the typing speed self-improvement project tends to plateau emotionally even before it plateaus physically. You realize that being able to type faster is not the same as being able to write more.

The bottleneck in writing is rarely the keyboard. It is the gap between thinking and getting words on screen.

The Real Speed Ceiling

Even if you commit fully and push your typing to 100 WPM — which would put you in the top few percent of all typists — you are still hitting a hard ceiling. The fastest sustainable typing speeds for most people, with years of practice and deliberate training, top out around 100-120 WPM. Beyond that requires alternative keyboard layouts, stenography, or other specialized tools.

Meanwhile, you already speak at 130-150 words per minute. You have been speaking at that speed since you were a child. Comfortable conversational speech runs at around 150 WPM. Excited speech can hit 200. Auctioneers and rapid speakers can sustain 250 to 300 WPM.

The asymmetry is brutal. The ceiling for typing — after years of dedicated practice — is roughly the floor for casual speech. Your voice is naturally faster than your hands can ever be on a standard keyboard.

The Question Worth Asking

So is 60 WPM good? Yes, in the sense that you are above average and faster than most. But the more interesting question is whether typing speed is the right metric to optimize at all.

For decades, the answer was yes, because there was no realistic alternative. Voice recognition was clumsy, error-prone, and required clear enunciation in quiet rooms. It made sense to train your hands.

That has changed. Modern AI transcription — the same Whisper-family models used by Voice Keyboard Pro — produces accurate text from natural speech, including accents, casual phrasing, and background noise. Latency is under a second. Accuracy rates are typically above 95 percent on conversational English. Voice has become a genuinely faster way to produce text.

Voice Typing as the Real Speed Upgrade

Voice Keyboard Pro is a native macOS menu bar app that turns voice into text anywhere you can type. Hold the hotkey, speak, release — the text appears at your cursor in whatever application you are using. Email, chat, notes, documents, code comments, search bars. It works system-wide.

The speed difference is not subtle. A comfortable speaking pace is around 150 words per minute. That is roughly 2.5 times your current 60 WPM. The first time you draft a long email by voice, you notice the difference in seconds, not minutes.

The features that make this practical for everyday work:

The free tier is generous enough to test against your normal writing for a few days. Pro is $4.99 per month or $34.99 per year for unlimited use.

When to Type, When to Speak

Voice typing is not a complete replacement for the keyboard. Keep typing for:

For everything else — emails, messages, documents, notes, brainstorms, journaling, blog drafts — voice is faster. A lot faster. And the 60 WPM you worked hard to achieve still helps you with the editing and refinement that comes after.

The Bottom Line

Yes, 60 WPM is good. It puts you above the adult average, qualifies you for almost any job that lists a typing requirement, and represents real keyboard competence. There is nothing wrong with stopping there.

But if you came here because you want to write faster — not just type faster — then the path forward is not another month of typing drills. It is changing how you produce text in the first place. Your voice is already 2.5 times faster than your hands. Voice Keyboard Pro just makes that available everywhere you can type.

Practice your typing for the work that needs a keyboard. But for the volume of text you produce every day — the emails, the messages, the notes — try speaking it instead. The speed difference is the kind you feel immediately, not after weeks of practice.

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