Book reading time calculator

How the calculator works

• Words = pages x words per page
• Reading time in minutes = words ÷ words per minute
• Days to finish = reading time ÷ minutes per day, rounded up

The average speeds come from psychologist Marc Brysbaert's 2019 meta-analysis in the Journal of Memory and Language, which pooled 190 studies with 18,573 participants. It put average adult silent reading at 238 words per minute for non-fiction and 260 for fiction, and reading aloud at 183 words per minute.

Words per page has no standard. Trim size, font and margins change it, so the calculator offers 250, 300 and 350 words per page to cover spacious through dense paperbacks.

Worked example

A 300-page novel at 300 words per page is 90,000 words. At 260 words per minute that is about 346 minutes, or 5 hours 46 minutes. Reading 30 minutes a day, you finish in 12 days.

Find your own numbers

• Words per page: count the words on three full lines, divide by three, then multiply by the number of lines on a full page.
• Your speed: read at your normal pace for exactly five minutes, count the pages, multiply by your words per page and divide by five.

Our article on how long it takes to read a 300-page book has a table for common page counts and speeds.

Limits

Dense non-fiction, technical books and books you study rather than read straight through take longer than these averages. Speed-reading claims well above 300 words per minute usually come with lower comprehension.