Reading time calculator
How long a book takes to read at slow, average and fast speeds, from a study of 190 studies.
- Slow reader
- 6 h 40 min
- Fast reader
- 4 h 10 min
- Words
- 80,000
- At 30 min a day
- 11 days
Slow and fast are the ends of the range most adults fall in, from Brysbaert's 2019 meta-analysis. Want your own speed? Take the reading speed test.
Rather have a pro handle this? Our studio can: book marketing.
Short answer
Divide the word count by your reading speed. A 2019 meta-analysis of 190 studies puts the average adult at 260 words a minute for fiction and 238 for non-fiction. An 80,000 word novel takes about 5 h 8 min: 6 h 40 min for a slow reader, 4 h 10 min for a fast one.
How to use it
- Choose Words or Pages, and enter the book's length.
- For pages, check the words per page. Count one full page of the book if you can.
- Pick fiction or non-fiction: they have different average speeds.
- Add the minutes you read a day to see how many days the book takes.
- Copy the result, download it, or copy the share link.
How it works
Reading time is the number of words divided by words a minute. The speeds come from Marc Brysbaert's 2019 meta-analysis of 190 studies: an average of 260 words a minute for fiction and 238 for non-fiction, with most adults between 200 and 320 for fiction and between 175 and 300 for non-fiction.
Reading time = words / words a minute
Words (from pages) = pages x words per page
Days to finish = reading time / minutes a day, rounded up
Worked example: 80,000 words of fiction / 260 = 5 h 8 min. A slow reader at 200 takes 6 h 40 min and a fast one at 320 takes 4 h 10 min. The same length of non-fiction takes an average reader 5 h 36 min. Reading 30 minutes a day, the novel takes 11 days.
Reference
Reading time at the average speed for each kind of book.
| Words | Fiction (260 wpm) | Non-fiction (238 wpm) |
|---|---|---|
| 1,000 | 4 min | 4 min |
| 5,000 | 19 min | 21 min |
| 20,000 | 1 h 17 min | 1 h 24 min |
| 50,000 | 3 h 12 min | 3 h 30 min |
| 80,000 | 5 h 8 min | 5 h 36 min |
| 100,000 | 6 h 25 min | 7 h 0 min |
| 150,000 | 9 h 37 min | 10 h 30 min |
Questions authors ask
What is the average reading speed?
Marc Brysbaert's 2019 review of 190 studies and 18,573 readers puts adult silent reading in English at 260 words a minute for fiction and 238 for non-fiction. Reading aloud averages 183.
What counts as a slow or fast reader here?
The same study says most adults read fiction at 200 to 320 words a minute and non-fiction at 175 to 300. We use the ends of those ranges as slow and fast.
Why is non-fiction slower to read?
Brysbaert found the gap is mostly word length: non-fiction uses longer words on average, so each word takes a little longer to read.
How long does it take to read 300 pages?
At our estimate of 332 words a page for a 6 x 9 in paperback, 300 pages is about 99,600 words, so about 6 h 23 min at the average fiction pace. Page sizes and fonts vary a lot, so edit the words per page.
How many days will it take me to finish a book?
Enter the minutes you read a day. At 30 minutes a day, an average reader finishes 80,000 words of fiction in 11 days. The pages per day calculator plans it by date.
Can speed reading make this much faster?
Not without losing the story. Brysbaert's paper cites a 2016 review by Rayner and colleagues explaining why reading more than 1,000 words a minute is impossible without a severe loss of understanding. Skimming is faster, but you take in less.
Before and after this step
- Previous stepAudiobook length calculator
- Next stepReading speed test
Related tools
Sources
Last verified against Brysbaert's 2019 reading rate meta-analysis. Words per page is our own estimate from the word count to pages model. Real readers vary, so treat the result as a guide.