How Many Words Is a 10 Minute Speech? Plus 5 and 20

A 10 minute speech is about 1,500 words at an average speaking pace of 150 words per minute, and anywhere from 1,300 to 1,800 words at a slow or fast pace. A 5 minute speech is about 750 words and a 20 minute speech about 3,000. Those counts assume nonstop talking, so a speech with slides, stories or pauses needs roughly 10 to 20 percent fewer.

Last reviewed September 30, 2026.

Quick answer

5 minutes: about 750 words (650 to 900 from slow to fast).
10 minutes: about 1,500 words (1,300 to 1,800).
20 minutes: about 3,000 words (2,600 to 3,600).
Formula: words = minutes × words per minute. If 10 to 20 percent of the clock is silence, multiply by 0.8 to 0.9.

Word counts from 1 to 30 minutes

Speaking pace is the only input, and no single figure is official. Commonly quoted numbers for conversational English run from about 120 to 160 words per minute, so the table spans that band and steps slightly past it. Every cell is minutes times pace, with no pauses yet.

Minutes	120 wpm	130 wpm	150 wpm	160 wpm	180 wpm
1	120	130	150	160	180
2	240	260	300	320	360
3	360	390	450	480	540
5	600	650	750	800	900
10	1,200	1,300	1,500	1,600	1,800
15	1,800	1,950	2,250	2,400	2,700
20	2,400	2,600	3,000	3,200	3,600
30	3,600	3,900	4,500	4,800	5,400

The 120 column is a reasonable starting point for a large room or a difficult topic. The 180 column is better treated as a ceiling for short stretches than a pace for a whole talk. Both are rules of thumb, not measurements.

One named benchmark: ACX, the audiobook marketplace, tells producers to divide a book's word count by about 9,300 to estimate finished hours, which is 9,300 ÷ 60 = 155 words per minute. It is a planning average that already includes narration pauses, not a rule. As of this writing, confirm the figure in ACX Help.

Why the raw count runs high

The table assumes you never stop. Real talks contain silence and time that belongs to others.

Pauses. Five seconds of silence costs 5 ÷ 60 × 150 = 12.5 words at the average pace, so a dozen such beats remove about 150 words.
Slides. Each change costs a moment while the audience looks: plan three or four seconds for a plain slide and ten or more for a chart. These are assumptions, not measurements.
Stories and jokes. A punchline needs room, and laughter is more silence. Keep a line you can drop.
Questions, introductions and video. Check whether the slot includes them. A 20 minute slot with 5 minutes of questions is a 15 minute talk: 15 × 150 = 2,250 words raw, or 2,025 after 10 percent silence.

Share of the clock in silence	Typical case	5 minutes	10 minutes	20 minutes
0%	Reading straight through	750	1,500	3,000
10%	Ordinary talk with slides and a few pauses	675	1,350	2,700
20%	A slide a minute, plus stories or audience questions	600	1,200	2,400
30%	Demos or audience activities	525	1,050	2,100

Each cell is minutes × 150 × (1 − silence share); for 10 minutes at 20 percent, 10 × 150 × 0.8 = 1,200. The case descriptions are judgment calls.

Speaking time versus reading time

A script is written for the eye and performed for the ear, and the speeds differ. Marc Brysbaert's 2019 review and meta-analysis in the Journal of Memory and Language, which pooled 190 studies, reports average adult rates in English of 238 words per minute for silent reading of non-fiction, 260 for fiction and 183 for reading aloud. Individual readers vary widely.

Activity	Pace (wpm)	Time for 1,500 words
Silent reading, fiction	260	5:46
Silent reading, non-fiction	238	6:18
Reading a page aloud	183	8:12
Speaking, average	150	10:00
Speaking, slow	130	11:32

The 183 figure comes from people reading text aloud in studies. A speaker facing a room pauses more, so 130 to 160 is a safer band.

The gap matters when you adapt an article into a talk. A 2,380-word article takes 2,380 ÷ 238 = 10 minutes to read silently but 2,380 ÷ 150 = 15.9 minutes (15:52) to speak. Fitting a 10 minute slot means cutting about 1 − 1,500 ÷ 2,380 = 37 percent of the text.

Find your own pace in three minutes

Choose three middle paragraphs from your draft. Stand up and say them with a stopwatch running, at the volume and speed you will use in the room. Paste them into the word counter for their word count. Your pace is words ÷ seconds × 60.

For example, if the counter shows 412 words and the stopwatch shows 2:50 (170 seconds), the pace is 412 ÷ 170 × 60 = 145 words per minute. These figures are illustrative, not measured. If two sets differ by more than about 10 words per minute, plan with the slower.

The counter counts written words, and you may say more. This site's counting rule, which splits on whitespace, gives 8 words for "We grew 40% in 2026 to $1.5 million." Said aloud, "We grew forty percent in twenty twenty-six to one point five million dollars" is 13 words by the same rule, about 63 percent more. A script packed with figures and dates runs longer than its count suggests. Write numbers as you will say them, using the number to words converter for long amounts, then count again.

A planning recipe with worked numbers

These inputs are made up. The words to time calculator can do the conversion in step 5: its Time to words tab takes minutes, seconds, pace and a pause count and returns a word target.

Start with the clock you own. A 12 minute slot with 2 minutes of questions leaves 10 minutes, or 600 seconds.
Subtract planned silence. Ten slide changes at 4 seconds is 40. Three story beats at 6 seconds is 18. One audience question at 12 seconds is 12. Total: 70 seconds.
Keep a cushion. Thirty seconds is 5 percent of the talk.
Find the speaking seconds. 600 − 70 − 30 = 500.
Convert to words. At the 145 words per minute found above, 500 ÷ 60 × 145 = 1,208. The target is about 1,200 words, roughly 20 percent below the raw table's 1,500.

Now check a draft. Suppose the word counter reports 1,640 words. Speaking them takes 1,640 ÷ 145 × 60 = 679 seconds (11:19). Add 70 seconds of silence and the total is 749 seconds (12:29), which is 2:29 over the 10 minute talk. Fitting by speed alone, with no cushion, means 1,640 ÷ 530 × 60 = about 186 words per minute, faster than the fast column. So cut 1,640 − 1,208 = 432 words, about 26 percent.

Rehearse with checkpoints

Turn the script into a timetable, so rehearsal tells you where you stand, not only when you finish. This one matches the 1,208-word plan at 145 words per minute, with pauses placed inside each section.

Section	Words	Pauses (s)	Should start at
Hook and story	240	15	0:00
The problem	200	10	1:54
Main idea and evidence	330	20	3:27
Example or demo	260	15	6:04
Close and ask	178	10	8:06

The total is 9:30, leaving the 30 second cushion (rounded to the second). If a rehearsal reaches the main idea at 4:30 instead of 3:27, you are 63 seconds behind and know which section to trim. Mark two or three passages you can drop mid-talk, and do at least one full run aloud and standing, because silent reading is far faster than speaking.

From minutes to pages

For a printed script, the words to pages calculator assumes about 340 words per double-spaced page in Times New Roman 12 pt with 1 inch margins. That makes 750 words 2.2 pages, 1,500 words 4.4 and 3,000 words 8.8. At 150 words per minute a page lasts 340 ÷ 150 = 2.3 minutes, close to the common shortcut of two minutes a page. Large podium print changes the page count, so judge length by words.

Common mistakes

Using reading speed for a speech. At 238 words per minute, 1,500 words feels like a 6 minute piece. Spoken, it fills 10.
Counting words you will not say. Slide titles, speaker notes and stage directions inflate the count. Text pasted from a PDF may also need the remove line breaks tool before it counts cleanly.
Counting figures as written. "2026" is one written word and two spoken.
Fixing an overrun by speeding up. The 1,640-word draft above would need 186 words per minute. Cut instead.
Planning to the last second. A nervous start or a long laugh can eat a minute.

This guide is independent and is not affiliated with ACX or the researchers it cites.

Frequently asked questions

How many words is a 10 minute speech?

About 1,500 words at 150 words per minute, or 1,300 to 1,800 from a slow to a fast pace. With slides, stories and pauses taking 10 to 20 percent of the time, plan on roughly 1,200 to 1,350 words.

How many words is a 5 minute speech?

About 750 words at the average pace, with 650 at a slow pace and 900 at a fast one. Ten percent silence brings it down to about 675.

How many words is a 20 minute speech?

About 3,000 words at 150 words per minute, or 2,600 to 3,600 across the slow to fast range. Allowing 10 to 20 percent for pauses and slides gives roughly 2,400 to 2,700. If the slot includes questions, subtract their minutes first.

How many pages is a 10 minute speech?

About 4.4 double-spaced pages, using 1,500 words and 340 words per page in Times New Roman 12 pt with 1 inch margins. Single-spaced it is about 2.2. Fonts, margins or an instructor's words-per-page rule change those numbers.

Is reading speed the same as speaking speed?

No. Brysbaert's 2019 meta-analysis found adults read English non-fiction silently at 238 words per minute on average and read aloud at 183. Presentations are usually planned at 130 to 160, so a text that takes 10 minutes to read silently takes roughly 16 to speak.