You are reading, not composing
Both rounds give you the words, just like the study. Real writing adds thinking time to both methods, so the gap usually narrows when you have to decide what to say.
Speed test · about two minutes
By Junaid Khalid · Updated
Speaking vs typing: how much faster is your voice?
This speaking vs typing test takes two rounds: type a short passage, then read the same passage aloud. Both rounds are scored in words per minute on the same text, and your result is set against the research behind the famous “3x faster” claim.
Short answer: speaking is roughly three times faster than typing on a phone. In the peer-reviewed study behind the claim, 24 English speakers dictated at 152.9 words per minute and typed at 52.2. For comparison, adults average about 183 words per minute speaking when they read aloud, 196 in phone conversation, and type at 51.6 on a physical keyboard.
Two rounds, one passageRuns in your browserAudio never stored
By Junaid Khalid · Updated The test
Type it, say it, compare.
The test measures your typing speed and your speaking speed on the same passage of 55 to 59 words. Pick a passage, type it at your normal pace, then read it aloud the way you would dictate a message. Changing the passage restarts both rounds so the comparison stays fair.
Round 1: type the passage
The clock starts on your first key and stops on your last. Type at your normal pace; you can fix mistakes as you go.
Thanks for sending the draft over this morning. I read it on the train and I think the structure works well. The opening could be shorter, and the second section needs one clear example. If you can make those changes by Friday, I will share it with the rest of the team and we can plan the launch together.
0.0 s elapsed0 words per minute0 of 59 words
Where “3x faster” comes from
The 3x claim comes from one phone study. Here is what it measured.
Almost every page that says speaking is three times faster than typing traces back to a single Stanford-led experiment. The headline number is real, but it changed between versions, and the conditions matter.
- Aug 2016 · preprint3.0x“Speech Is 3x Faster than Typing for English and Mandarin Text Entry on Mobile Devices”
32 people (16 English, 16 Mandarin speakers). English: 161 words per minute by voice, 53 on the keyboard.
arXiv 1608.07323, version 1 - 24 Aug 2016 · press3x“Smartphone speech recognition can write text messages three times faster than human typing”
The Stanford News story that most pages cite. It reports the preprint’s 32-person numbers and quotes Sherry Ruan, the paper’s first author and then a Stanford PhD student: “we were actually quite surprised to find that it was almost three times faster than typing on a keyboard.”
Stanford News - Dec 2017 · peer-reviewed2.93xRuan, Wobbrock, Liou, Ng and Landay, IMWUT 1(4), article 159
Re-run with 48 people, 24 per language. English: 152.9 vs 52.2 words per minute. Mandarin: 123.0 vs 42.8 (2.87x).
doi.org/10.1145/3161187 - Today · everywhere“3x”Blogs, product pages and AI answers
The number travels on its own, usually without the sample size, the phone, the task or the newer 2.93.
What the study measured
- Copying short phrases shown on screen (28 characters on average, no punctuation), not writing your own thoughts.
- An iPhone 6 Plus touch keyboard with autocorrect, not a laptop or desktop keyboard.
- Baidu’s Deep Speech 2 recogniser running on a server over a fast university network.
- Students aged 19 to 32, seated in a quiet room. The authors call the result an upper bound and write that speech was “no doubt aided by a quiet environment and fast network speeds.”
What rarely gets quoted
- Before any fixes, English dictation ran at 178.9 words per minute (3.4x). Correcting mistakes brought it to 152.9.
- Speech left slightly more errors in the final text: 0.55% of characters, against 0.35% for the keyboard.
- People varied widely. The standard deviation for English dictation was 98 words per minute.
- In Mandarin, voice needed far fewer corrections than the keyboard: 6.67% of characters against 17.73%.
| Version | People | Voice, wpm | Keyboard, wpm | Voice vs keyboard |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 preprint (English) | 16 of 32 | 161.2 | 53.5 | 3.01x |
| 2017 peer-reviewed (English) | 24 of 48 | 152.9 | 52.2 | 2.93x |
Published averages
How fast people type, talk and read, from the original studies
Adults type about 52 words per minute on a physical keyboard and 36 on a phone, read aloud at about 183 and talk at about 196. Each number below is checked against the paper it comes from, with who was measured.
| What | Words per minute | Who was measured | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Typing on a phone | 36.2two thumbs: 38.0 | 37,370 volunteers, online typing test | Palin et al., MobileHCI 2019 |
| Typing on a physical keyboard | 51.6fastest tenth: above about 78 | 168,960 volunteers, online typing test | Dhakal et al., CHI 2018 |
| Typing on a phone, in the lab | 52.2 | 24 native English speakers, iPhone 6 Plus | Ruan et al., IMWUT 2017 |
| Dictating on a phone, after fixing errors | 152.9 | The same 24 people | Ruan et al., IMWUT 2017 |
| Dictating on a phone, before fixing errors | 178.9 | The same 24 people | Ruan et al., IMWUT 2017 |
| Reading aloud | 183 | 77 studies, 5,965 adults | Brysbaert, Journal of Memory and Language 2019 |
| Talking on the phone | 196236 not counting pauses | 2,438 recorded phone conversations (Switchboard) | Yuan, Liberman and Cieri, Interspeech 2006 |
| Reading silently, non-fiction | 238fiction: 260 | 190 studies, 18,573 adults | Brysbaert, Journal of Memory and Language 2019 |
About “100 to 150 words a minute”. Many guides give 100 to 150 words a minute for presentations and 150 to 160 for audiobooks. We could not trace either range to a primary study, so neither is in the table. The measured averages for reading aloud (183) and phone conversation (196) are both higher.
Use the table freely with a link back: download it as CSV (CC BY 4.0, checked 7 October 2026).
Reading your result
Why your multiple will not be exactly 3x
Your ratio depends on four things the 3x study held fixed: what you are writing, how many mistakes you fix, which keyboard you use and whether you speak the punctuation.
Fixing mistakes costs time
In the study, dictation ran at 178.9 words a minute before corrections and 152.9 after. A recogniser that mishears names or jargon raises that cost, which is why this test shows accuracy next to speed.
Your keyboard matters
The 3x compared voice with a phone keyboard. On a physical keyboard the average is 51.6 words a minute and the fastest tenth of typists pass about 78, so a fast typist may see closer to 2x.
Punctuation and formatting
The study phrases had no punctuation. Saying "comma" and "new paragraph" out loud slows dictation down, unless your dictation tool adds the punctuation and layout for you.
Method
How the test scores you
Both rounds use one rule: passage words reached divided by minutes taken, with accuracy reported separately.
- Same text twice. Each passage has 55 to 59 everyday words with no names or contractions, so neither round gets an easier text.
- Typing clock. It starts on your first key and stops on your last. Pasting is switched off.
- Speaking clock. Your browser’s speech recognition turns what you say into text. The clock starts when it first hears speech and stops when it hears the last word of the passage.
- Speed. Words of the passage reached, divided by minutes. Typing tests often count every 5 characters as a word; these passages average about 5.2 characters per word including spaces, so the two scales are close.
- Accuracy. Your text is lined up with the passage word by word, and every missing, extra or wrong word counts as one error (the word error rate). Mistakes lower accuracy, not speed, as in the study.
- Stopwatch mode. Runs from Start to Stop and counts the whole passage. It does not check words.
Privacy
Contextli never receives, stores or uploads your audio, and what you type never leaves this page. The speaking round relies on the speech service built into your browser. In Chrome, for example, the audio is sent to Google’s servers for recognition (MDN explains how), unless on-device recognition is available, in which case the test uses it and says so. The stopwatch uses no microphone.
Cite this page
Contextli (7 October 2026). Speaking vs typing speed test, with the published rates behind the "3x faster" claim. https://contextli.com/tools/speaking-vs-typing-test
FAQ
Questions people ask
Short answers, using the same primary studies as the table above.
Is speaking faster than typing?
For most people, yes. In the peer-reviewed study behind the famous claim, 24 native English speakers dictated short phrases on an iPhone at 152.9 words per minute after fixing errors, against 52.2 on the phone keyboard: 2.93 times faster. Against a physical keyboard the gap is smaller, because the average there is 51.6 words per minute and the fastest tenth of typists pass about 78. The test on this page measures your own ratio on the same passage.
How many words per minute do people speak?
It depends on the task. Adults read aloud at about 183 words per minute on average (Brysbaert, 2019, 77 studies). In recorded American phone conversations the rate is about 196 words per minute, or 236 if you leave out pauses (Yuan, Liberman and Cieri, 2006). Dictation in the Stanford-led phone study ran at 152.9 words per minute once errors were fixed.
Is 150 words per minute a good speaking speed?
Yes, 150 is a comfortable, clear pace for dictating or presenting. It is a little slower than the measured averages for reading aloud (183) and phone conversation (196), which is usually a good thing when someone, or a speech recogniser, has to follow every word.
Is 200 words per minute fast for speaking?
It is fast for reading aloud or presenting, and close to average for casual conversation: recorded American phone calls averaged 196 words per minute, and individual conversations ranged from 111 to 291 (Yuan, Liberman and Cieri, 2006).
What is a good typing speed in words per minute?
On a physical keyboard the average across 168,960 people was 51.6 words per minute; the slowest tenth typed below about 26 and the fastest tenth above about 78. On a phone the average was 36.2 words per minute (37,370 people). So 36 is average on a phone and below average on a computer keyboard.
How many words is a 10-minute speech?
At the average reading-aloud rate of 183 words per minute, about 1,800 words. If you speak more slowly for an audience, at 130 to 150 words a minute, it is 1,300 to 1,500 words. Time yourself with the stopwatch mode in the test above to get your own number.
Where does "speech is 3x faster than typing" come from?
From a Stanford-led study by Ruan, Wobbrock, Liou, Ng and Landay. The first version, posted in August 2016 with 32 participants, found English dictation 3.0 times faster than an iPhone keyboard (161 vs 53 words per minute). The peer-reviewed version, published in Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies with 48 participants, found 2.93 times (152.9 vs 52.2). Both measured people copying short given phrases on a phone, not composing their own text.
Does this test record or store my voice?
No. Contextli never receives, stores or uploads your audio, and the text you type never leaves the page. The speaking round uses the speech recognition built into your browser; in Chrome, for example, that audio goes to Google’s servers for recognition unless on-device recognition is available. If you would rather no audio leave your device at all, use the stopwatch option, which does not use the microphone.
Why does the speaking round not work in my browser?
The speaking round needs the Web Speech API. Chrome and Safari include it (Safari needs Siri turned on). Firefox does not ship it by default, and some other browsers expose it without it working, so the test offers a stopwatch instead: press Start, read the passage aloud, press Stop. If the microphone is blocked, allow it from the address bar and try again.
Sources
Every source was opened and checked on 7 October 2026. Where a paper is behind a paywall, the open copy is linked next to it.
- Ruan, S., Wobbrock, J. O., Liou, K., Ng, A. and Landay, J. A. (2017). Comparing speech and keyboard text entry for short messages in two languages on touchscreen phones. Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies 1(4), article 159. doi.org/10.1145/3161187, open copy on arXiv, data on the Stanford HCI project page.
- Ruan, S. et al. (2016). Speech is 3x faster than typing for English and Mandarin text entry on mobile devices. Preprint, arXiv 1608.07323 version 1.
- Carey, B. (2016, 24 August). Smartphone speech recognition can write text messages three times faster than human typing. Stanford News.
- Dhakal, V., Feit, A. M., Kristensson, P. O. and Oulasvirta, A. (2018). Observations on typing from 136 million keystrokes. CHI 2018. doi.org/10.1145/3173574.3174220, project page and data.
- Palin, K., Feit, A. M., Kim, S., Kristensson, P. O. and Oulasvirta, A. (2019). How do people type on mobile devices? Observations from a study with 37,000 volunteers. MobileHCI 2019. doi.org/10.1145/3338286.3340120, project page.
- Brysbaert, M. (2019). How many words do we read per minute? A review and meta-analysis of reading rate. Journal of Memory and Language 109, 104047. doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2019.104047.
- Yuan, J., Liberman, M. and Cieri, C. (2006). Towards an integrated understanding of speaking rate in conversation. Interspeech 2006. ISCA archive PDF.
- MDN Web Docs. Using the Web Speech API. developer.mozilla.org.
Keep going
Guide7 ways to write faster without typingPractical ways to turn a fast voice into finished text.PrivacyWhere your dictation is processedOn-device and cloud speech recognition, and what each means for your audio.ToolsMore writing toolsPrompt generator, email rewriter, meeting notes formatter and more, all in the browser.
Dictating on a computer? See voice to text on Mac and voice to text on Windows.
Keep the speed, skip the cleanup.
Contextli turns what you say into a finished email, message or note, with the punctuation and tone that fit the app you are typing in.