5 Minute Typing Test
A longer, 5 minute typing test for measuring sustained speed and stamina. Great for anyone who types for a living and wants a realistic average.
A 5 minute typing test measures sustained speed over 300 seconds, so at 52 WPM, the average measured across 168,000 typists in the largest study available, you would type 260 words or 1,300 correct characters. Five minutes is long enough that stamina and concentration show up in the result, which is why it is the length most people reach for when preparing for an employment typing assessment.
Start typing, the clock starts on your first keyStart typing to start the clockTap the words to start typing
Copy the words shown on screen. The timer starts with your first keystroke, and a space moves you to the next word. Finalised words cannot be corrected, and pasting is blocked. Press Escape, or Tab then Enter, to start over.
No personal best yet at 5 min
Words come from the standard list of 240 common English words, reshuffled every run, so the test measures your typing rather than your vocabulary. Sample from this list: long if may add big in open does line study look story boy country.
The 5 minute typing test measures something a short test cannot: how fast you type when the novelty wears off and fatigue sets in. Five minutes of continuous typing gives you a sustained words per minute figure that better reflects real work, whether that is writing reports, answering support tickets or entering data for hours at a time. This test runs for 300 seconds by default, with shorter one and two minute options available if you want to warm up first.
As with every TypeBurst test, your WPM, accuracy, CPM and error count update live while you type. The passage is drawn from common English words so the challenge is your speed and consistency, not obscure vocabulary. Over five minutes you will notice your rhythm settle, and you may see your WPM dip slightly compared with a sprint style one minute test. That is normal and useful, because your sustained number is the one that predicts how much you can actually get done.
Longer tests are the best way to build typing endurance. If your accuracy holds steady from the first minute to the fifth, your technique is solid. If errors climb as you tire, that is a sign to relax your hands, sit up straight, and focus on smooth, even keystrokes rather than short bursts of speed. Use the 5 minute test regularly and you will train not just faster fingers but the stamina to keep them fast all day.
How much do you actually type in 5 minutes?
Five times as much as in a minute, which is what makes the number feel real. At 40 WPM you produce 200 words over the five minutes, roughly the length of a short email. At the 52 WPM study average you produce 260 words. At 80 WPM you produce 400 words, which is a full page of prose. The table below lists every band, in words and in the correct characters that WPM is actually calculated from.
That volume is the point of the longer format. A 10 or 15 second test tells you how fast your fingers can move; five minutes tells you how much work you can get through, which is the question anyone typing for a living actually cares about.
Is a 5 minute typing test what employers use?
Employment typing assessments vary a lot between employers and vendors, so no single duration is universal, although the best documented public standard, the US federal one described below, is written around exactly five minutes. What is consistent is the scoring: assessments almost always report net WPM, meaning total characters divided by five, minus uncorrected errors, per minute, and they usually set an accuracy floor alongside the speed requirement. A five minute sample is a common choice because a longer sample is harder to fluke.
Data entry roles often state a keystrokes per hour figure instead of a WPM one. The conversion is WPM multiplied by 300, so a 12,000 KPH requirement is about 40 WPM and 18,000 KPH is about 60 WPM. The words per minute page works through that conversion in full.
One realistic caveat worth knowing before an assessment: a test measures transcription, and most jobs involve composition. Karat and colleagues measured about 33 WPM for simple transcription against about 19 WPM when participants composed their own text. A strong five minute transcription score shows your hands are not the bottleneck, which is exactly what the assessment is designed to check.
Does your typing speed drop over five minutes?
For most people, a little. A one minute run lets you sprint; five minutes asks you to hold a pace you can actually keep. A modest gap between your 1 minute best and your 5 minute best is normal and is not a sign of a problem.
What is worth watching is accuracy rather than speed. If your accuracy is as high in the fifth minute as in the first, your technique is stable under load. If errors climb steadily as the clock runs, the usual causes are tension in the hands and shoulders and creeping posture, both of which respond faster to a deliberate reset than to more practice. Run the test twice in a session and compare the two accuracy figures rather than the two WPM figures.
How to read a 5 minute score
The clearest public benchmark for this length comes from the US Office of Personnel Management. Its qualification standard for clerical and administrative support positions sets a typing speed of 40 words per minute for clerk-typist and office automation roles, and defines that speed as words per minute based on a 5 minute sample with three or fewer errors.
Here is what that bar means on this test. Forty WPM for five minutes is 200 words, or 1,000 characters, so three errors works out to an accuracy of about 99.7 percent: much stricter than the 95 percent people usually aim for on a one minute sprint. If your result shows 40 WPM or more with three errors or fewer, you clear that standard. If the speed is there but the errors run to six or seven, accuracy is the only thing standing between you and it.
One more detail is specific to the long format. On the strict net WPM figure an uncorrected error over five minutes costs only 0.2 WPM, because net WPM divides the error count by the minutes elapsed. A five minute net score therefore hides sloppiness that a one minute net score would expose, which is why a standard built on a five minute sample sets a separate error limit instead of trusting the net figure alone. Read the error count on your results screen as carefully as the speed.
5 minute typing tests for jobs and exams
When a typing test is part of a job application or an exam, expect it to be longer and stricter than a casual speed check. The one public standard with a written rule, from the US Office of Personnel Management, measures clerk-typist and office automation applicants on a 5 minute sample and allows three or fewer errors at 40 WPM. Rehearse in those conditions: five minutes, no restarts, and an eye on the error count from the first line rather than the last.
Know which speed you are being judged on. Gross WPM is every character you typed, right or wrong, divided by five, per minute. Net WPM takes uncorrected errors per minute off that figure. The results screen here shows gross WPM, net WPM and TypeBurst's own correct-characters WPM side by side, so you can read your run the way an assessor would before anyone else does.
If the employer quotes keystrokes per hour instead, the KPH calculator converts the requirement, and if you want something to attach to an application, the typing certificate page prints a dated record of a five minute run, clearly marked as self-generated.
Five minute benchmarks, translated into this test
| Benchmark | Speed | Errors allowed | What it means over 5 minutes |
|---|---|---|---|
| US federal clerk-typist and office automation standard | 40 WPM | 3 or fewer | 200 words, 1,000 characters, about 99.7 percent accuracy |
| Average in the 2018 study of 168,000 typists | 52 WPM | Not a pass mark | 260 words, 1,300 characters |
| Simple transcription, Karat et al. 1999 | About 33 WPM | Not a pass mark | About 165 words |
| Composing your own text, Karat et al. 1999 | About 19 WPM | Not a pass mark | About 95 words, a realistic five minutes of writing |
Speeds and the error limit are quoted from the sources below. Words, characters and accuracy follow from the five-character word definition.
How many words is that in 5 minutes?
A WPM word is five characters including the space that follows it, so over 5 minutes each speed produces exactly this much text. Use it to turn a target score into something you can picture.
| WPM | Words in 5 minutes | Correct characters in 5 minutes |
|---|---|---|
| 20 WPM | 100 | 500 |
| 30 WPM | 150 | 750 |
| 40 WPM | 200 | 1,000 |
| 50 WPM | 250 | 1,250 |
| 60 WPM | 300 | 1,500 |
| 80 WPM | 400 | 2,000 |
| 100 WPM | 500 | 2,500 |
Calculated as WPM x 300 / 60 for words, then x 5 for characters. Rounded to whole words.
Frequently asked questions
Why take a 5 minute typing test instead of a 1 minute one?
A five minute test measures sustained speed and stamina, which matches real world typing far better than a sprint. It is also much harder to fluke: a single lucky or unlucky word barely moves a 300 second result, while it can shift a 60 second one by several WPM.
How many words do I type in a 5 minute typing test?
Your WPM multiplied by five. At 40 WPM that is 200 words, at the 52 WPM study average it is 260 words, and at 80 WPM it is 400 words, roughly a full page. In correct characters, multiply the word figure by five again: 80 WPM over five minutes is 2,000 characters.
Is a 5 minute typing test what employers use for a typing assessment?
Durations differ between employers and testing vendors, so there is no universal length, but five minutes is a common choice because a longer sample is harder to fluke. What is consistent is that assessments score net WPM, which subtracts uncorrected errors, and usually set a minimum accuracy alongside the speed target.
What typing speed do US federal clerical jobs require?
The Office of Personnel Management qualification standard for clerical and administrative support positions asks 40 words per minute of clerk-typist and office automation roles, measured on a 5 minute sample with three or fewer errors. On this test that is 200 words in the five minutes with no more than three errors, about 99.7 percent accuracy.
Will my speed be lower on a longer test?
Often slightly, yes. Most people can sprint faster over 60 seconds than they can sustain for five minutes, and a small drop simply reflects a more realistic, repeatable pace. Compare your accuracy in the fifth minute with the first: if that holds, your technique is stable.
How do I build typing endurance?
Practise longer tests regularly, keep your wrists floating rather than pressed on the desk, and watch whether accuracy stays steady as the minutes pass. Tension is the usual cause of a late-test error spike, so relaxed, even keystrokes beat tense bursts for lasting speed.
Do typing tests for jobs score gross or net WPM?
Usually net WPM, which takes uncorrected errors per minute off the gross figure, often with a separate limit on the number of errors as well. The US federal clerical standard, for example, asks for 40 WPM on a 5 minute sample with three or fewer errors. Your results here show both gross and net, so you know which number you would be judged on.
Sources
- US Office of Personnel Management, Qualification Standards for Clerical and Administrative Support Positions (typing proficiency)
- Dhakal, Feit, Kristensson & Oulasvirta, Observations on Typing from 136 Million Keystrokes, CHI 2018
- Karat, Halverson, Horn & Karat, Patterns of Entry and Correction in Large Vocabulary Continuous Speech Recognition Systems, CHI 1999
Related pages
- 2 minute testA steadier score without the fatigue
- Data entry testScored in keystrokes per hour
- Typing certificateTake a test, then print a free record of it
- Keystrokes per hourKPH to WPM calculator and what job adverts mean
- Typing testThe main test, with four word lists
- Average typing speedWhat the research actually measured
- Words per minuteThe formula, plus CPM and keystrokes per hour
- MethodologyExactly what TypeBurst counts and ignores