Reading time calculator
How long will it take to read this book? Enter the pages or the word count, pick your reading speed, and get the answer in hours and in days.
Every book on your shelf is a time commitment, and the number on the back cover does not tell you what it is. Nothing is sent anywhere, there is no signup, and no email is asked for.
How long this book takes at different daily commitments
| Read each day | Days to finish | Pages a day |
|---|---|---|
| 10 minutes | 31 days | 11 |
| 15 minutes | 21 days | 16 |
| 20 minutes | 16 days | 20 |
| 30 minutes | 11 days | 30 |
| 45 minutes | 7 days | 46 |
| 60 minutes | 6 days | 54 |
| 90 minutes | 4 days | 80 |
Based on 80,000 words at 260 words a minute. Miss a day and every row slides by one.
How the reading time is worked out
What counts as an average reading speed?
The figure worth trusting comes from a 2019 review by Marc Brysbaert in the Journal of Memory and Language, which pooled 190 studies and 18,573 participants. It found the average silent reading rate for adults in English is 238 words a minute for non-fiction and 260 words a minute for fiction, with most adults falling somewhere between 175 and 320 depending on what they are reading. Oral reading is slower, around 183 words a minute.
Treat those as starting points, not verdicts. Reading speed moves with the material, how tired you are, whether you are reading to remember, and how familiar the subject is. The presets in the calculator are anchored to that research, and the slider is there because your own number beats any average.
The presets, and where they come from
155 words a minute, audiobook pace. The narration rate Audible assumes at 1x speed, based on its 9,300 words per finished hour standard.
175 words a minute, slow or careful. The bottom of the typical adult range. Right for textbooks, philosophy, poetry, or reading in a second language.
238 words a minute, average non-fiction. The measured adult average for silent non-fiction reading.
260 words a minute, average fiction. The measured adult average for silent fiction reading. Fiction is faster because its words are shorter.
300 words a minute, fast. The top of the typical adult range for non-fiction. Anything much above this is closer to skimming than reading.
Pages to minutes: a quick reference
assuming 250 words a page| Pages | Slow (175 wpm) | Average (238 wpm) | Fast (300 wpm) | At 20 min a day |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 50 pages | 1h 11m | 53m | 42m | 3 days |
| 100 pages | 2h 23m | 1h 45m | 1h 23m | 6 days |
| 150 pages | 3h 34m | 2h 38m | 2h 5m | 8 days |
| 200 pages | 4h 46m | 3h 30m | 2h 47m | 11 days |
| 250 pages | 5h 57m | 4h 23m | 3h 28m | 14 days |
| 300 pages | 7h 9m | 5h 15m | 4h 10m | 16 days |
| 400 pages | 9h 31m | 7h | 5h 33m | 22 days |
| 500 pages | 11h 54m | 8h 45m | 6h 57m | 27 days |
| 700 pages | 16h 40m | 12h 15m | 9h 43m | 37 days |
| 1000 pages | 23h 49m | 17h 30m | 13h 53m | 53 days |
Words to reading time
If you have a word count rather than a page count, whether it is a novel manuscript, a long article or a report you have to get through before a meeting, switch the calculator to word count mode. No words per page assumption is applied, so the estimate is tighter.
| Words | Slow (175 wpm) | Average (238 wpm) | Fast (300 wpm) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 500 words | 3m | 2m | 2m |
| 1,000 words | 6m | 4m | 3m |
| 2,500 words | 14m | 11m | 8m |
| 5,000 words | 29m | 21m | 17m |
| 10,000 words | 57m | 42m | 33m |
| 50,000 words | 4h 46m | 3h 30m | 2h 47m |
| 80,000 words | 7h 37m | 5h 36m | 4h 27m |
| 100,000 words | 9h 31m | 7h | 5h 33m |
How long it takes to read well-known books
at 260 wpmWorked out at an average fiction pace of 260 words a minute and 250 words a page. Page counts vary between editions, so treat these as the ballpark and tap any title in the calculator above to adjust it. Our guide to reading more books is about finding the minutes, not reading faster.
| Book | Pages | Approx. words | Reading time | At 20 min a day |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Animal Farm George Orwell | 112 | 28,000 | 1h 48m | 6 days |
| The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald | 180 | 45,000 | 2h 53m | 9 days |
| The Alchemist Paulo Coelho | 208 | 52,000 | 3h 20m | 10 days |
| The Midnight Library Matt Haig | 288 | 72,000 | 4h 37m | 14 days |
| Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone J. K. Rowling | 309 | 77,250 | 4h 57m | 15 days |
| The Hobbit J. R. R. Tolkien | 310 | 77,500 | 4h 58m | 15 days |
| Atomic Habits James Clear | 320 | 80,000 | 5h 8m | 16 days |
| 1984 George Orwell | 328 | 82,000 | 5h 15m | 16 days |
| Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen | 432 | 108,000 | 6h 55m | 21 days |
| Sapiens Yuval Noah Harari | 443 | 110,750 | 7h 6m | 22 days |
| Dune Frank Herbert | 688 | 172,000 | 11h 2m | 34 days |
| It Stephen King | 1138 | 284,500 | 18h 14m | 55 days |
| War and Peace Leo Tolstoy | 1225 | 306,250 | 19h 38m | 59 days |
Frequently asked questions
How long does it take to read 100 pages?
At an average adult reading speed of 238 words a minute, and assuming a typical 250 words a page, 100 pages takes about 1 hour 45 minutes. A slower or more careful reader at 175 words a minute needs closer to 2 hours 23 minutes, and a fast reader at 300 words a minute finishes in about 1 hour 23 minutes. Page counts are a rough proxy, so if you know the real word count use the word count mode in the calculator instead.
How long does it take to read a 300 page book?
Roughly 5 hours 15 minutes of actual reading at an average pace of 238 words a minute. The more useful number is the calendar one: at 20 minutes a day that is about 16 days, and at an hour a day it is about 6 days. Almost nobody reads a 300 page book in one sitting, so plan it as a daily habit rather than a single block of hours.
What is an average reading speed in words per minute?
The best available figure comes from a 2019 meta-analysis by Marc Brysbaert covering 190 studies and 18,573 participants. It puts the average silent reading rate for adults in English at 238 words a minute for non-fiction and 260 words a minute for fiction, with most people falling between 175 and 320 depending on the material. Claims of 500 or 1,000 words a minute usually describe skimming, not reading with comprehension.
Do audiobooks take the same amount of time?
Usually longer, unless you speed up playback. Audiobook narration is produced at about 155 words a minute, which is the pace Audible assumes at 1x speed (9,300 words per finished hour). That is slower than the average silent reading rate, so the same book takes more hours as audio than in print. Set the calculator to the audiobook preset to see the 1x runtime, then divide by your playback speed. Listening at 1.5x brings it back in line with average silent reading.
Does reading speed vary by genre?
Yes, and the difference is measurable. The same meta-analysis found fiction is read faster than non-fiction, 260 words a minute against 238, mostly because fiction uses shorter words. Dense non-fiction, technical books, philosophy, poetry and anything you are reading to remember will run slower still, so use the slow preset for those. The most accurate figure is always your own, measured over a few real reading sessions.
Source: Brysbaert, M. (2019). How many words do we read per minute? A review and meta-analysis of reading rate. Journal of Memory and Language, 109, 104047.