Average Typing Speed by Job (and What Chat Agents Need)

In this article:

1. What is the average typing speed?
2. What is a good typing speed?
3. How is typing speed measured?
4. What typing speed do jobs require?
5. What typing speed do live chat agents need?
6. How can agents type faster and make fewer mistakes?
7. How LiveAgent helps chat agents reply faster

What is the average typing speed?

The average typing speed is about 52 WPM on a keyboard. That figure comes from Dhakal et al., presented at the CHI conference in 2018 by researchers at Aalto University and the University of Cambridge, who called it the largest-ever dataset on typing speeds. They measured 168,960 volunteers who typed 15 English sentences, which produced more than 136 million keystrokes. The exact mean was 51.56 WPM, with a standard deviation of 20.2.

The spread is wide. The slowest 10% typed below about 26 WPM, and the fastest 10% typed above about 78 WPM. The University of Cambridge news release says the fastest users reached 120 WPM.

If you want the average WPM for adults, there is one catch. The volunteers chose to take a test on a commercial typing site, and most were teenagers and young adults (mean age 24.5). So 52 WPM describes people who were interested in typing, not every adult.

Phones are slower. A 2019 study by Palin et al. at the MobileHCI conference measured 37,370 volunteers and found an average of 36.2 WPM on mobile devices.

Both studies are a few years old. We cite them because they are the largest measured data we could find, and newer pages that quote an “average” rarely name who measured it.

What is a good typing speed?

A good typing speed is anything at or above the 40 WPM that US federal typing jobs ask for, as long as the text is accurate. A fast typing speed starts at about 78 WPM, which is the point where you type faster than 90% of the people in the Dhakal study.

Use the table below to place your own result. Every row comes from the study or from the US federal standard in the next sections.

So, is 60 WPM good? Yes. It is above the study average and below the fastest 10%.

Accuracy counts as much as speed. In the study, the average uncorrected error rate was 1.167%, and slow typists left significantly more errors in their final text. In our view, 40 WPM with few errors is enough for most office and support work. Past 60 WPM, the extra speed saves less time than good tools and good answers do.

How is typing speed measured?

Typing speed is measured in words per minute, and the WPM meaning is simple: the typed text is divided into “words” of five characters each, spaces included, then divided by the minutes taken. The Dhakal study uses this rule, and so does the LiveAgent typing test. Real words are longer or shorter, so the five-character word keeps results comparable across texts.

Some employers and tools use characters per minute or keystrokes per hour instead. The table converts three common speeds. These are our own calculations from the five-character rule, counting every character as one keystroke and ignoring Shift and corrections.

Test length changes the result. A short test rewards a quick burst, while a longer one shows your steady pace and your mistakes. The US Office of Personnel Management uses a 5-minute sample. The free LiveAgent typing test offers 1, 3 and 5 minutes and shows words per minute, characters per minute and mistakes per minute.

What typing speed do jobs require?

Official typing standards are modest, and the highest numbers are for stenography, not typing. The US Office of Personnel Management (OPM) publishes its qualification standard for clerical and administrative support positions with exact numbers. The National Court Reporters Association (NCRA) sets the bar for court reporters in its Registered Professional Reporter skills tests .

OPM counts typing WPM on a 5-minute sample with three or fewer errors. Applicants can prove their speed with a performance test, a certificate or self-certification, and agencies may check self-certified speeds with a test. Test results and certificates are accepted for 3 years.

The court reporter speeds are for stenography, which means typing shorthand on a steno machine, not on a normal keyboard. Do not compare them with the keyboard numbers above.

Private employers set their own bar, and many job ads simply state a WPM. We found no measured average speed by profession, so this article does not give one.

Join our newsletter

The latest tips and deals delivered straight to your inbox.

Email address

Subscribe

What typing speed do live chat agents need?

No official standard exists for live chat agents, so any exact number you see online is a guess. What we can do is show how fast chat moves and work from there.

LiveChat, a competitor, publishes a customer service report built on 2 billion chats (data last updated in 2024). It shows a global average first response time of 35 seconds in chat and an average chat length of 8 minutes 25 seconds.

Here is an example of what that means for typing alone. A 50-word reply takes about 75 seconds at 40 WPM, 50 seconds at 60 WPM and about 38 seconds at 80 WPM. These figures leave out the time to read the question and find the answer.

Our recommendation is a hiring floor of 40 WPM with high accuracy. Typos show in a live conversation and cost trust, so a candidate who types 40 WPM cleanly is a better hire than one who types 70 WPM with many errors. Test candidates with a timed test of 3 to 5 minutes, which is closer to a real shift than a 1-minute sprint.

Above that floor, speed matters less than how much you type at all. With canned messages for repeat questions, an agent inserts those replies instead of typing them. Our guide on how to reduce average handle time covers saved replies and other ways to shorten each conversation.

How can agents type faster and make fewer mistakes?

Short, regular practice works better than long sessions, and tracking errors matters as much as tracking WPM. Take a 1-minute test each day, write down both numbers and aim to lower the mistakes first.

Touch typing helps less than people assume. In the Dhakal study, trained typists were only 5 WPM faster on average than untrained ones, and 72% of all participants said they had taken a typing course. The fastest typists did something different. According to the Cambridge release, they pressed the next key before lifting the previous one for 40 to 70 percent of their keystrokes, a technique called rollover typing.

For a chat agent, the biggest gain is often not in the fingers. Keep shortcuts and saved replies for questions you answer every day, and learn the product well enough that you never type while searching. Our guide to live chat agent skills and the academy lesson on live chat etiquette cover the rest of the job.

How LiveAgent helps chat agents reply faster

Disclosure: LiveAgent is our product.

LiveAgent is a help desk with live chat software built in. Two features cut typing time in chats.

• Canned messages are predefined plain-text replies for common questions. Agents insert one with the canned message button or the shortcut Control + Space or Control + K (Command + K on a Mac), and search by keyword. A message can be available to one agent, a department or all agents. See canned messages .
• Show customer typing text lets agents see what a customer is typing before the message is sent, so they can start on the answer early. You can turn it off in Configuration > Chats > Chats settings if the law in your country does not allow it. See real-time typing view .

To find your own result, take the free typing test and compare it with the tables above.