How many pages can you read in an hour?

At the adult average of about 238 words per minute and roughly 250 words per page, about 57 pages an hour (our calculation). Reading to study cuts that to around 24, because people who need to remember a text read at about 100 words per minute (Brysbaert, 2019).

Does reading speed change with age?

Yes. Children read more slowly while word recognition is still developing, and older adults and people reading in a second language are slower on average too (Brysbaert, 2019). Compare yourself with readers like you, not with one number for everyone.

Is reading faster than listening to an audiobook?

Not by as much as people think. Average silent reading runs at about 238 to 260 words per minute, and young adults can still follow sped-up speech at about 260 (Brysbaert, 2019). Reading pulls ahead mainly when you skim.

Average Reading Speed: 238 WPM for Adults, and What It Means

Q: What is a good reading speed?

For adults reading non-fiction, anything from about 175 to 300 words per minute is typical, with an average near 238 (Brysbaert, 2019). A good speed is one you can understand at: if you get fewer than 70% of the questions right, slow down.

The real average is lower than 300

For decades, textbooks and websites have said that the average adult reads 300 words per minute. The best evidence says otherwise. In 2019, psychologist Marc Brysbaert pooled 190 studies with 18,573 adult readers. Reading silently for understanding, adults averaged about 238 words per minute on non-fiction and 260 on fiction (Brysbaert, 2019).

The 300 figure came mostly from older studies that timed short passages, and from a theory that set “normal” reading at 300. Short texts inflate the result. Real reports and chapters bring it down.

Reading-speed norms

Each row is a measured group, not a target. Pick the one that matches what you are doing.

Readers	How it was measured	Words per minute	Source
Adults in a meta-analysis of 190 studies	Silent reading, non-fiction	238 (most 175–300)	Brysbaert, 2019
Adults in a meta-analysis of 190 studies	Silent reading, fiction	260 (most 200–320)	Brysbaert, 2019
Adults in 77 studies (5,965 readers)	Reading aloud	183	Brysbaert, 2019
Adults reading to remember (several studies)	Silent reading before a test	about 100	Brysbaert, 2019
Good college-educated readers	Review of reading research	about 200–400	Rayner et al., 2016

Why your number moves

Your reading speed is not one fixed number. It changes with:

The text. Longer words slow everyone down. Fiction reads faster than non-fiction largely because its words are shorter (Brysbaert, 2019).
Your purpose. Reading to remember runs near 100 words per minute. Skimming can be two to four times faster than reading, but you lose comprehension (Rayner et al., 2016).
Your vocabulary. Familiar words get shorter looks from the eyes, so the more words you know well, the faster you read (Rayner et al., 2016).
Who you are. Children, older adults and people reading in a second language read more slowly on average (Brysbaert, 2019).

Speeds differ by language

Words per minute only compares readers of the same language. The International Reading Speed Texts study (IReST) gave young adults in 17 languages the same ten short passages, translated and matched for content, and timed them reading aloud (IReST, 2012).

Readers	How it was measured	Words per minute	Source
25 English speakers aged 18–35	Standard texts, read aloud	228	IReST, 2012
25 Turkish speakers aged 18–35	The same texts in Turkish, read aloud	166	IReST, 2012
436 adults in 17 languages	The same texts in each language, read aloud	184 on average	IReST, 2012

The Turkish readers were not slower. Turkish packs the same content into fewer, longer words: the Turkish versions averaged about 109 words against 154 in English, and Turkish readers got through slightly more characters per minute (1,054 against 987). Silent reading shows the same spread, from about 181 words per minute in Arabic to 285 in Italian (Brysbaert, 2019). So never judge a reader of another language by English norms.

What is a good reading speed?

If you land between 175 and 300 words per minute on non-fiction, you read like most adults. Above 300, you are faster than most. Past about 400, check that the meaning came with the speed: in one study, a speed-reading class lifted adults from about 280 to 400 words per minute while comprehension slipped from 81% to 74% (Rayner et al., 2016). Claims of 1,000 words per minute with full comprehension have not held up in testing, as our evidence review explains.

As the course behind Speed Readingo puts it, understanding a text matters far more than reading it fast.

At work and in study

The norms make planning easier. A 2,000-word report takes an average reader about eight to nine minutes (2,000 ÷ 238, our calculation). If you have to remember it for a meeting, plan on 20 minutes, the pace of reading to remember. Skim long email threads for the gist, then slow down for numbers, names and anything you will sign.

Try it

Take the reading speed test. It times you on a real passage, then hides the text and asks questions. A speed counts only if you get at least 70% right, the cut-off a classic study of more than 12,000 readers used (Brysbaert, 2019). Compare your result with the row above that matches your purpose, and when you retest, pick the other passage rather than the same one.

Next: how to read faster without losing the meaning.

Average Reading Speed: What the Research Says