AcademyHow to Type 100 WPM: What It Takes and a Plan

To type 100 WPM, you need to produce 500 correct characters a minute: one every 120 milliseconds, with almost no time to fix mistakes. Typists who get there tend to press every key with the same finger, keep their eyes on the text and read ahead, let one key overlap the next, and train with short, focused pushes above their comfortable pace. It is a high bar: in a study of 168,960 volunteers, even the fastest tenth averaged about 90 WPM.^{Source 1} Here is what 100 WPM asks of you, and a plan to work toward it from where you are.

Key takeaways

• 100 WPM is 500 characters a minute, about 8.3 a second. A “word” is five characters, spaces included.
• It is above the average of the fastest tenth of 168,960 typists in a keyboard study, and no volunteer in a 37,370-person phone study reached it.
• The fastest typists differ mostly between keys, not on them: half the time between keypresses, fewer errors and more overlap between keys.
• Accuracy is part of the target. At 100 WPM, a fix only pays if it takes less than about 0.7 seconds.
• Train in short pushes above your pace, then hold the new pace over a full minute. Nobody can promise how long it will take.

What 100 WPM takes, in numbers

Words per minute counts five characters as one word, so 100 WPM is 500 characters a minute. On TYPETRANCE’s 1,000 common English words, an average word with its space is about 5.7 characters, so the target looks like this in each format:

Format	Characters to type	About this many words	One word left wrong costs
Sprint (15 seconds)	125	22	4.6 WPM
Grand Prix (1 minute)	500	88	1.1 WPM
5-minute test	2,500	439	0.2 WPM

Those characters only count if they are right: TYPETRANCE’s corrected WPM gives a word credit only when it is typed exactly, so a word left with a mistake is lost whole. Fixing a slip costs time instead. At 100 WPM, the time to type a word is about 0.7 seconds, so a fix pays only if it is faster than that: one or two Backspaces inside the word, not a trip back after the space.

Keystrokes come even faster than characters, because corrections add keystrokes that earn nothing. The fastest tenth pressed about 1.10 keys for every character they produced.^{Source 1} At that rate, 100 WPM means about 550 keystrokes a minute: one every 109 milliseconds.

How rare is 100 WPM?

Rare, though the research we cite doesn’t count exactly how rare. In the 2018 keyboard study, volunteers averaged 51.56 WPM; the fastest tenth typed above about 78 WPM and averaged 89.56; and the fastest reached 120 WPM or more.^{Source 1} The study doesn’t report the share of typists above 100 WPM, so we don’t guess one. What it does show: 100 WPM sits above the average of the top 10% of volunteers who chose to take a typing test.

On phones, the gap is wider. In a 2019 study of 37,370 volunteers on mobile devices, the average was 36.2 WPM,^{Source 5} and the fastest touchscreen typist the researchers saw reached 85 WPM.^{Source 6} On TYPETRANCE, 100 WPM falls in the Surge speed class (90 to 109 WPM); the typing speed chart shows what each range asks of your fingers.

What the fastest typists do differently

The 2018 study reported each measure for all its volunteers and for the fastest tenth:

Measure	All volunteers	Fastest tenth
Speed	51.56 WPM	89.56 WPM
Time from one keypress to the next	239 ms	122 ms
Time a key is held down	116 ms	104 ms
Text left wrong	1.17%	0.71%
Keypresses spent on Backspace or Delete	6.3%	3.4%
Keystrokes with the previous key still down	25%	49.9%
Fingers used, self-reported	6.95	8.40

Three things stand out.^{Source 1}

• Speed is won between keys. The fastest group held each key only about 12 ms less than average, but moved to the next key in about half the time.
• Fewer errors, fewer fixes. They left less wrong and used Backspace or Delete about half as often, so more of their keystrokes became finished text.
• Keys overlap. Half of their keystrokes came while the previous key was still down. Across all volunteers, this overlap, called rollover, correlated strongly with speed (r = 0.73).

Do you need touch typing for 100 WPM?

The researchers who motion-captured everyday typists put it plainly:

If you want to consistently type sentences over 100 words per minute, learn the touch typing system.

They add two qualifications. Self-taught typists can reach the performance of touch typists, even with fewer fingers, and pressing each letter consistently with the same finger was one of the habits that predicted high performance. And reaching the level of their fast typists with the touch typing system takes several hundred hours of deliberate practice, by their estimate.^{Source 2} So if you look at the keys or type with two fingers, start with touch typing. If you already type by feel with a fixed finger for each key, keep your method and train speed.

A plan from where you are

The bottleneck moves as you get faster. Find your typical one-minute speed, then start at your stage:

1. Under 60 WPM: accuracy and method. Give every key one finger, keep your eyes on the screen and aim for steady accuracy before speed. The accuracy drill holds you on each word until it is right.
2. 60 to 80 WPM: read ahead and push. Look at the next word while your fingers finish this one. When skilled typists are prevented from looking ahead, their advantage shrinks almost to the level of novices.^{Source 3} Add short pushes above your pace (below).
3. 80 to 95 WPM: smooth transitions. After each test, the keyboard heatmap shows your slowest and most error-prone keys; drill those transitions, and stop waiting for each key to come back up before you press the next.
4. 95 WPM and up: hold the pace. Your Sprints will likely reach 100 before your Grand Prix does. Close the gap by racing longer at the new pace, not by forcing more bursts.

Each stage keeps the habits of the one before it. How to type faster covers the full method behind them, with a sample week.

Practice above your pace, then hold it

Typing a lot is not the same as training speed. Early studies of highly skilled typists suggested pushing speed beyond its comfortable level for short, concentrated periods of 10 to 15 minutes a day, then working on the difficulties those periods reveal, such as errors and slow transitions.^{Source 3} On TYPETRANCE:

• Race a pace a little above yours. In Settings, under Ghost & Telemetry, set Ghost to Custom pace a few WPM above your recent average, and stay ahead of it.
• Burst. The 15-second test is a safe place to type faster than feels comfortable.
• Then hold it. Bring the new pace into the Grand Prix, then into a 2- or 5-minute test.

Effort alone has a floor. In a series of experiments, skilled typists could trade accuracy for speed but could not type faster than about 100 milliseconds per keystroke.^{Source 4} 100 WPM needs about 109 to 120 milliseconds per keystroke, not far above that floor. Pushing harder on the day mostly trades accuracy for speed; the lasting gains come from practice.

Race it now

60secondsGrand Prix1-minute typing test

Measure where you are: three Grand Prix runs, and keep the middle result.

• 1-minute test
• 1,000 common words

Start Grand Prix

Check your progress honestly

• Measure the same way every week: three one-minute runs on the same keyboard, and the middle result, not the best.
• Count corrected WPM. A raw speed of 100 with words left wrong is not a 100 WPM result.
• Expect your Sprint to lead. A 15-second run ends before slips and lost rhythm add up; your one-minute result is the one to bring to 100.
• Watch the trend, not a single run. If it stays flat for weeks, see breaking a typing plateau.