How the minutes are counted
The calculator splits your text on spaces and line breaks, then drops any piece without a letter or digit. A stray dash or a bullet symbol is not a word. Numbers like 1,100 and addresses like toolexe.com/sitemap.xml each count as one.
reading seconds = words ÷ pace × 60 image seconds = 12 + 11 + 10 ... down to 3 per image total = reading seconds + image seconds label = total ÷ 60, rounded to the nearest minute, never below 1
Here is the sample worked through. Load sample fills the box with a 270-word post about splitting a sitemap and sets the image count to 2. At the default 238 words a minute, 270 ÷ 238 × 60 gives 68 seconds of reading. The two images add 12 + 11 = 23 seconds. The total is 91 seconds, which rounds to a 2 min read.
Set the image count to 0 and the same post drops to a 1 min read. Switch to the Fiction pace with both images kept and you land at 85 seconds, also a 1 min read. On short posts, a couple of images or a small change in pace moves the label more than the words do.
Which reading pace to pick
Most calculators hide their pace or use a round 200. The six presets here each come from somewhere, and you should know where before you trust one.
| Preset | WPM | Where the figure comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Technical docs | 150 | Our working figure for API docs, contracts, and code-heavy tutorials. No study pins this one down. |
| Out loud | 183 | Brysbaert (2019), adults reading English text aloud. |
| Non-fiction | 238 | Brysbaert (2019), silent reading of non-fiction. The default here. |
| Fiction | 260 | Brysbaert (2019), silent reading of fiction. |
| Medium | 265 | The pace Medium uses for the read time on its posts. |
| Skimming | 400 | A working figure for scanning headings and first lines. Recall falls off sharply at this speed. |
The Brysbaert figures come from How many words do we read per minute?, a review of 190 studies published in the Journal of Memory and Language. Older guides often quote a flat 200 or 300. Brysbaert found the popular 300 figure overstates how fast most adults read, and 200 understates silent reading of plain prose.
Match the pace to your audience, not to yourself. A developer reading a migration guide slows down to copy commands. A commuter reading a recipe intro skims. If you write for both, publish the slower label. Readers forgive a post finishing early. A 4 min label on a 9 minute tutorial loses their trust.
Images count, code and tables do not
Medium's published rule adds 12 seconds for the first image and one second less for each image after, down to a floor of 3 seconds from the tenth image on. A photo essay with 12 images picks up 81 seconds before anyone reads a word. This tool applies the same rule when you fill in Images in the post.
Code blocks, tables, embedded video, and charts get no special handling. Words inside a code block count at the prose pace, which undercounts real time, since readers trace code line by line. For a tutorial with long snippets, switch to the Technical docs preset. For a post built around a video, add the video length by hand.
When a read time label earns its place
- Long posts, 5 minutes and up. The label tells a reader whether to start now or save the post for later. Labels matter most here.
- Short posts, under 2 minutes. Rounding flattens everything here. Anything from a single sentence to 89 seconds of reading shows as "1 min read", so the label carries no signal.
- Docs and reference pages. Nobody reads a reference page top to bottom. Skip the label and put a table of contents there instead.
- Scripts and talks. Use the Out loud row as a floor. Add a minute for every few slides.
Where the estimate falls short
- Chinese, Japanese, and Thai text. These scripts put no spaces between words, so the word count comes out wrong. The tool shows a warning when the text contains them. Use a character-based estimate for those languages.
- Pasted HTML or Markdown. Tags such as
<div class="note">contain letters, so they count as words. Paste the rendered text from the preview, not the source. - Real readers skim. The number assumes someone reads every word. Compare the estimate against average engaged time in your analytics before planning a content calendar around the number.
- Layout and difficulty. Dense tables, footnotes, formulas, and unfamiliar terms slow readers down. The calculator sees words, not difficulty. The readability scorer measures difficulty.
To measure your own pace instead of using an average, time yourself on the reading speed calculator, then drag the slider here to your number.