The figures below are orientation, not standards. They exist because the question gets asked constantly and the answers on the web are usually a single number with no age, no accuracy and no source attached to it.
Read this as a range with a very wide spread rather than a target with a pass mark. Within any one of these bands the gap between the slowest and fastest typist is larger than the gap between the bands themselves, which is the single most important thing to understand about a table like this before using it on a real person.
| Age | Typical WPM | What actually matters at this stage |
|---|---|---|
| 6–8 | 5–15 | Locating keys at all. Speed at this age means nothing |
| 9–11 | 15–25 | The home row becoming habit; eyes leaving the keyboard |
| 12–14 | 25–40 | Typing overtakes handwriting for schoolwork |
| 15–18 | 35–55 | Adult range in sight; accuracy is what separates people now |
| 19–29 | 40–70 | Where most people stop improving — by habit, not by limit |
| 30–49 | 40–65 | Established technique; gains come from unlearning, not effort |
| 50+ | 35–60 | Raw speed dips slightly. Consistency and accuracy usually do not |
Two things are deliberately absent from that table. There is no column for what a person of that age should be able to do, because no such figure exists in a form worth publishing. And there is no accuracy column, because accuracy does not follow age the way speed does — it follows whether somebody was ever taught to touch type.
A fourteen-year-old who has typed daily for three years and a fourteen-year-old who has never had a lesson are separated by thirty words per minute. The average of the two describes neither. That is why the ranges above are wide, and why narrowing them would make them look more useful while making them less true.
The variable that actually predicts typing speed is not age. It is hours of deliberate practice and whether those hours were spent touch typing or hunting. A fifty-year-old who learned on a typewriter will outpace most people half their age, and a twenty-two-year-old who has never taken a lesson will sit near the bottom of their band and stay there.
Age matters mainly through two things it correlates with — hand size early on, and accumulated hours later — and both of those are visible directly. If you want to know whether somebody is progressing, measure them against themselves a month ago rather than against a row in a table.
At every age in that table, first-try accuracy is the better indicator of where somebody is heading. A child at 15 WPM and 97% accuracy is on a better trajectory than one at 25 WPM and 85%, because the second is rehearsing errors at speed and will eventually have to unlearn them. The same holds for an adult at 45 and 91%.
The reason is mechanical. Typing is a motor habit built by repetition, and repetition does not distinguish between correct and incorrect movements — it reinforces whichever one you make. Speed built on top of an unreliable movement is speed that has to be dismantled later.
Honestly: from a mix of published research, keyboard-vendor studies, and the aggregate figures typing sites report about their own visitors. Every one of those sources has a bias, and the last is the strongest — people who take a typing test online are not a random sample of people who type. They skew younger, more technical, and more motivated than the population.
So the ranges here are wide on purpose, and they are described as typical rather than average, because a single mean drawn from self-selected data would look far more authoritative than it deserves to. If you see a site quoting an average typing speed to one decimal place for eleven-year-olds, that number was not measured — it was reproduced from somewhere that did not measure it either.
The one figure on this site that is measured rather than estimated is your own, and it is measured the same way at every age: net words per minute, five characters to a word, counting only the characters correct the first time you typed them.
The bottleneck is different at each stage, which is why the same advice does not work across the table.
A typing test that reports only a speed cannot tell you which of those applies to you. One that records every keystroke can, which is what the test on this site is for.
Roughly 15 to 25 words per minute, with a very wide spread depending on whether the child has been taught touch typing or is still locating keys by sight. Accuracy at that age is a more useful signal than speed.
Around 40 words per minute for someone who never had formal instruction, and 60 to 75 for someone who touch types regularly. Professional typists work well above that, but they are not the comparison most people need.
Slightly, and later than people expect. Raw speed tends to ease off after about fifty, while accuracy and rhythm often hold or improve. Experience compensates for most of the difference in practice.
Almost certainly not. The spread within any age group is far wider than the difference between age groups, so a single figure below the range says very little on its own. Look at whether accuracy is improving month to month instead.
There is no should. Twenty-five to forty words per minute is typical at twelve, but a child at eighteen with good accuracy and a proper home-row habit is in a better position than one at forty who types with two fingers.