📖 Reading Time Calculator

Enter a book's page or word count and your reading speed to estimate how long it will take to finish.

Measure By

Amount

Reading Speed (words per minute)

Words first, then minutes

total words   = pages × 275   (or the word count you entered)
total minutes = total words / reading speed
display       = floor(minutes / 60) h, round(minutes mod 60) m

A 320-page book becomes 88,000 words, and at the default 250 words a minute that is 352 minutes: 5h 52m. The 275 words per page is fixed in the page and only applies in Pages mode – switch to Words and your figure is used exactly as typed. Speed is capped between 50 and 1,000 wpm, so the extremes of speed-reading marketing cannot be entered.

Two numbers decide the answer

275 words a page is a middling assumption. Large-print and dialogue-heavy fiction fall well below it; a densely set trade paperback or a textbook page runs past 350. If you know the real word count, use Words mode.
The 250 wpm default is slightly optimistic. Silent-reading meta-analyses put average adult reading of English prose closer to 238 words a minute, and the spread by text difficulty is wide – unfamiliar technical material commonly runs at half the rate of a familiar novel.
Re-set it to your own measured speed. One timed passage tells you more than any published average, and at 88,000 words the difference between 238 and 250 wpm is eighteen minutes.

The estimate assumes uninterrupted reading. It does not allow for pauses, re-reading a paragraph, or looking something up, all of which are normal and none of which are in the arithmetic.

Frequently asked questions

How long does it take to read a 300-page book?

About 5h 30m at 250 words a minute, using 275 words a page for a total of 82,500 words. At the 238 wpm average the same book takes 5h 47m.

How long does 1,000 words take to read?

Four minutes at 250 wpm, or a little over four and a quarter at 238. A 2,000-word article is therefore an eight-minute read, which is where most published read-time labels come from.

Which should I enter, pages or words?

Words, whenever you can find the figure – it removes the biggest source of error. Use pages for a physical book in your hand, and accept that the answer carries the 275-words-a-page assumption with it.