Words to Time Calculator

What this words to time calculator does

This words to time calculator answers two questions that writers and speakers ask constantly: how long will this text take, and how many words do I need to fill a set amount of time? Paste a script or type a word count and you get the speaking time and the silent reading time side by side. Switch to the Time to words tab, enter minutes and seconds, and you get a word target instead.

Most calculators give one number from one hidden speed. Speaking and silent reading are different activities, and a toast, a 30-second ad and a blog post call for different paces. This page keeps them apart, shows where each speed comes from, lets you set your own pace, adds pause time, and times every paragraph of a script so you know when each one starts.

How to use the calculator

To find the time for a text (Words to time tab):

1. Choose Paste text and paste your script, or choose Word count and type a number such as 1,500. Load sample fills the box with a short example.
2. Pick a Speaking pace; the note under it says whether the figure is from a study, a standard or a rule of thumb. For a custom pace, use the Words per minute slider.
3. Pick a Silent reading pace. The default of 238 words per minute is the average for adults reading English non-fiction.
4. Optionally switch on Add pause time and set the seconds per pause. With pasted text, pauses fall between paragraphs (or between lines, if you prefer). With a typed word count, enter the number of pauses.
5. Read the tiles: Speaking time, Silent reading, Words and Pauses. The table shows the same text at every preset pace, and Timing by paragraph lists when each paragraph starts. Copy result and Copy timings send the numbers to your clipboard.

To find the words for a time (Time to words tab):

1. Enter minutes and seconds, or tap a quick target: a 15, 30 or 60-second voice-over, podcast intro, wedding toast, 5-minute speech or TED-style talk.
2. Read the words to speak at your pace (after pauses are taken out), the words to read silently, and the speaking range from 130 to 180 words per minute.
3. If you have text on the other tab, a banner shows how far over or under target it is.

The formula, with worked examples

Everything on this page comes from one relationship between words, pace and time.

seconds = words ÷ words per minute × 60
words   = seconds ÷ 60 × words per minute

Example 1: a script. A 1,800-word talk has 12 paragraphs. At 150 words per minute the words alone take 1,800 ÷ 150 = 12 minutes. A 3-second pause between paragraphs adds 11 × 3 = 33 seconds, so the speaking time is 12 minutes 33 seconds. A silent reader at 238 words per minute needs 1,800 ÷ 238 × 60 ≈ 454 seconds, or 7 minutes 34 seconds, with no pauses.

Example 2: a slot to fill. You have 10 minutes and plan 15 pauses of 4 seconds. The pauses use 60 seconds, leaving 540 for speech: 540 ÷ 60 × 150 = 1,350 words, not the 1,500 you would get by ignoring pauses. Each 3-second pause costs about 7 or 8 words at that pace.

Times are rounded to the nearest second and word targets to the nearest whole word. Words are counted the way most word processors count them: any run of characters between spaces, tabs or line breaks is one word, the same rule the word counter uses.

Where the speeds come from

The silent reading figures come from a 2019 review and meta-analysis by Marc Brysbaert in the Journal of Memory and Language, which pooled 190 studies of adult reading. For English it reports an average of 238 words per minute for non-fiction and 260 for fiction, and 183 words per minute for reading aloud. These are averages across many readers and texts; individual readers vary widely, and a dense textbook chapter is read far more slowly than a novel, so treat 238 as a sensible middle, not a rule.

Speaking has no single authoritative number. About 150 words per minute is the figure quoted most often for conversational English, and comfortable presentations usually fall between 130 and 160. One industry reference is audiobook production: ACX plans finished audiobooks at 9,300 words per hour, which is 155 words per minute. The 183 figure measures people reading a page aloud under study conditions, not speaking to an audience, which is one reason it sits above a typical presentation pace.

The presets are labelled to match: study and standard figures name their source, and the slow, brisk, fast and very fast values are marked as rules of thumb. For anything that matters, time yourself. Read a paragraph of your script aloud with a stopwatch, count its words, and put that pace on the slider.

How many words for 1 to 30 minutes

Here is how many words fit each length of time. The first three pace columns are speaking speeds: 130 is slow, 150 is average and 180 is fast. The last column is the 238 words per minute silent reading average. These are the values the tool itself produces.

Time	130 wpm	150 wpm	180 wpm	238 wpm
1 minute	130	150	180	238
2 minutes	260	300	360	476
3 minutes	390	450	540	714
5 minutes	650	750	900	1,190
10 minutes	1,300	1,500	1,800	2,380
15 minutes	1,950	2,250	2,700	3,570
20 minutes	2,600	3,000	3,600	4,760
30 minutes	3,900	4,500	5,400	7,140

How long common word counts take

Going the other direction, this table shows how long popular word counts take to say aloud and to read silently. Times are minutes and seconds, or hours, minutes and seconds.

Words	Speaking at 130 wpm	Speaking at 150 wpm	Speaking at 180 wpm	Silent reading at 238 wpm
100	0:46	0:40	0:33	0:25
250	1:55	1:40	1:23	1:03
500	3:51	3:20	2:47	2:06
750	5:46	5:00	4:10	3:09
1,000	7:42	6:40	5:33	4:12
1,500	11:32	10:00	8:20	6:18
2,000	15:23	13:20	11:07	8:24
3,000	23:05	20:00	16:40	12:36
5,000	38:28	33:20	27:47	21:01
10,000	1:16:55	1:06:40	55:33	42:01

A 1,000-word text is a 4-minute read but a 6-minute-40-second speech at the average pace. A 5,000-word article takes about 21 minutes to read silently, and would take more than half an hour to read aloud. These figures contain no pauses; use the calculator's pause option for a script.

Voice-over, podcast, toast and talk lengths

A common planning figure for voice-over is about 2.5 words per second, the same as 150 words per minute. The quick targets use that pace as the centre of a range.

Format	Length	Words at 150 wpm	Range at 130 to 180 wpm
Voice-over spot	15 seconds	38	33–45
Voice-over spot	30 seconds	75	65–90
Voice-over spot	60 seconds	150	130–180
Podcast intro	45 seconds	113	98–135
Wedding toast	3 minutes	450	390–540
Short speech	5 minutes	750	650–900
Presentation	10 minutes	1,500	1,300–1,800
TED-style talk	18 minutes	2,700	2,340–3,240

The podcast intro and toast lengths are starting points, not standards, so edit the minutes and seconds to suit your situation. The 18-minute figure reflects the length talks in that format are commonly capped at. Nothing on this page is affiliated with or endorsed by TED.

At the audiobook standard of 9,300 words per finished hour, an 80,000-word novel narrates in about 8 hours 36 minutes.

Why some text reads and speaks slower

The word count treats every word alike, but words are not equally easy.

• Technical and dense material. Unfamiliar terms, long sentences and abbreviations slow readers and speakers. For legal, scientific or engineering text, choose the slow reading pace of 200 words per minute or lower.
• Second-language audiences. People reading or listening in a second language generally need more time. For a mixed or international audience, plan a slow speaking pace of 130 words per minute and keep sentences short.
• Numbers, names and acronyms. "2026" counts as one word but you say it as two ("twenty twenty-six"), and "$1.5 million" takes longer to say than its two written tokens suggest. Figure-heavy scripts run longer than their count implies.
• Stories and familiar ideas. Narrative and material you know well tend to move faster, so a story can pull you above your planned pace.
• Delivery choices. Emphasis, silences and audience reactions add time no word count can predict.

Practical uses

Toasts and short speeches. Nerves push most people to speak faster than planned, yet an overrunning toast loses the room. Enter three minutes, read the range, and write to the lower half of it.

Conference speakers and teachers. Paste the script, add a pause per slide, and use Timing by paragraph to mark where each slide should appear. If the total is over your slot, the Time to words tab shows how many words to cut.

Podcasters and video creators. Convert a target runtime into a script length before writing, then paste the finished script to confirm, using the pace you actually record at.

Copywriters and voice-over directors. Check that a 30-second read fits before the script goes to talent, and leave room for music, product names that need clear delivery and natural breaths.

Bloggers, editors and authors. The silent reading time is the number behind an "X min read" label, though platforms use slightly different speeds. Authors can estimate audiobook length with the audiobook narration pace.

Tips and common mistakes

• Using the reading speed for a speech. This is the most common error. A 1,000-word text reads silently in about 4 minutes 12 seconds but takes 6 minutes 40 seconds to say at 150 words per minute, nearly 60 percent longer.
• Forgetting pauses. Ten 3-second pauses cost 75 words in a 5-minute talk at 150 words per minute. Turn on pause time before you trust a tight slot.
• Counting what you will not say. Remove stage directions, speaker notes and slide titles before pasting. If text pasted from a PDF arrives chopped into short lines, the remove line breaks tool tidies it so lines are not counted as paragraphs.
• Speeding up to fit. If a script is over time, cut content rather than talk faster. Above about 180 words per minute many listeners lose the thread.
• Trusting an estimate over a rehearsal. Do one timed run-through out loud, then aim to finish about 10 percent under the slot so a slow start does not cost you the ending.
• Mixing up units. For page length, use the words to pages calculator; for limits set in characters, the character counter.

Privacy and limitations

Everything happens in your browser and your text is never uploaded. Pasted text is kept only in this tab's session storage so a refresh does not lose your work, and it disappears when the tab closes. Your pace and pause settings are remembered in local storage on your device. Clear removes the text immediately.

Keep these limits in mind. The times are estimates built on averages, and real people vary a great deal. The speeds are for English; other languages have different average word lengths, so time a sample and use a custom pace. Chinese, Japanese, Thai and other scripts written without spaces cannot be timed by word count, and the tool warns you when a text looks like one. Paragraph timing assumes an even pace and cannot know where you will slow down for emphasis. Treat the result as a planning number and confirm it with a rehearsal.