Typing vs. speaking: how much faster is your voice?
Type a short passage, then read the same passage aloud. In about two minutes you will know your typing speed, your speaking speed, and how much time dictation could give back to you.
Everything runs in this page. Nothing you type is sent or stored, and the microphone is never used.
This test needs JavaScript, which is off in your browser. You can still try it by hand: time yourself reading the passage below aloud. It has 60 words, so 24 seconds means 150 words per minute.
1Type the passage
Every morning I open my laptop with a cup of coffee and a long list of small things to write. A reply to a friend, a note about the meeting, a few lines for a report that is due on Friday. None of it is hard, but it all takes time, and my hands are always slower than my thoughts.
Type it as you normally would; fix mistakes with backspace if you like. Pasting is turned off.
Time
0:00
Speed
0 wpm
Accuracy
100%
2Read it aloud
Press Start, read the passage above aloud at your normal pace, as if you were telling it to someone, and press Stop. Nothing is recorded: this step is only a stopwatch, and the microphone stays off.
0:00.0
3Your result
Do steps 1 and 2 (or skip them) to see your result.
How much time would dictation save you?
Email, chat, documents, notes. 2,000 is a busy office day.
Dictation is not perfect: names, terms, a changed mind. This share is retyped at your typing speed.
About 230 working days, after weekends, holidays and vacation.
Typing
– min a day
Dictating, with fixes
– min a day
Saved
– min a day
Saved a year
– hours
Assumptions: typing time = words ÷ your typing speed; dictating time = words ÷ your speaking speed, plus the fixed share retyped at your typing speed. Thinking time is the same either way and is left out.
Volna types what you say in any Mac app. It runs offline, on your Mac, and it is free.
Typing speed follows the usual rule of typing tests: every 5 characters, spaces and punctuation included, count as one word. The clock starts with your first key and stops when the passage is done (or you press Finish). Mistakes you leave in are subtracted, one word per mistake; mistakes you fix with backspace only cost you the time they took.
Accuracy is the share of typed characters that match the passage.
Speaking speed is the passage's 60 words divided by the time between Start and Stop. The page cannot hear you, so it trusts you to read the whole passage.
Time saved compares typing a day's words with dictating them and then fixing a share of them by keyboard. Set that share to what feels true for you; the default of 15% is deliberately cautious.
What is typical
Most people type somewhere around 40 words per minute; practiced typists reach 60 to 80, and few go past 100. Conversational speech in English usually runs at roughly 130 to 160 words per minute. These are approximate figures, and people vary a lot, which is why the test measures you instead.
Reading a passage aloud is a best case for speaking, just as copying a passage is a best case for typing: in real writing you also stop to think. That pause is the same whether you type or talk, so the calculator leaves it out of both.
For most people, yes. Conversational speech runs at roughly 130 to 160 words per minute, while an average typist manages about 40. Once you add the time to fix what dictation got wrong, the gain is smaller, but for most people it stays large; the calculator above shows it with your own numbers.
Does this test record my voice?
No. The speaking step is a stopwatch: you press Start, read, and press Stop. The page never asks for the microphone, and our site does not allow pages to use it at all.
Is what I type sent anywhere?
No. The test runs entirely in your browser. What you type is compared with the passage on your device and is not sent or saved.
How is words per minute calculated?
For typing, every 5 characters count as one word, the standard used by typing tests, and mistakes left in the text are subtracted. For speaking, it is the passage's real word count divided by your reading time.
Why does the calculator ask how much I fix?
Because dictated text is rarely perfect: a name, a technical term, a sentence you want to say differently. The share you set is counted as retyped at your typing speed, so the time saved is not overstated.
How do I dictate on a Mac?
With Volna, tap the right ⌘ (or ⌥Space) in any app, speak, and tap it again: the text appears where your cursor is. Recognition runs on your Mac, offline, and Volna is free.