60
seconds
Half a minute is long enough to settle into a rhythm and short enough to repeat five times in a row. A good everyday check.
Thirty seconds is long enough that one fumbled word does not wreck the score. A missed five-letter word costs about 2.4 WPM, half what it costs in a 15 second test. It is also short enough to run several times in a couple of minutes. That makes it the length for a quick daily check, or for comparing two ways of doing something.
Scoring is the standard one: correct characters plus one space per word, divided by five, divided by half a minute. The clock starts on your first key, and the results show net and raw WPM, accuracy, consistency and the words that slowed you down.
This is the best length for finding out whether you type better flat out or slightly held back. Try it:
Most people find the controlled set wins on net WPM, even with a lower raw WPM. An error costs you twice: once for the wasted keystrokes and again for the time spent fixing them. If your sprint runs show a wide gap between raw and net, ease off a little. If both sets come out the same, you have room to push.
The pace caret helps here. In settings, set it to a custom speed a few WPM above your usual score, then try to stay just ahead of it without letting accuracy slip.
Four 30 second runs make a quick routine you can actually keep. Treat the first as a warm-up and log the median of the other three. After a few weeks that number gives a more honest picture of progress than an occasional record, and the trend charts in the Stats panel will plot it for you. For a fuller plan, see how to build a typing practice routine.
Typists who practise in short gaps, people checking whether a new keyboard or layout is paying off, and anyone who finds a full minute slightly too long to repeat often. When you want a number to quote, move to the one-minute test. For something even shorter to warm up with, try the 15 second test.
It is a reasonable quick check. It is long enough to soak up one bad word but too short for fatigue to show, so your score will usually sit a little above your one-minute speed. Take several runs and use the median.
Try both and compare. Sprinting often raises raw WPM but costs accuracy, and uncorrected errors pull net WPM back down. Most typists get their best net score at a pace that feels slightly under their maximum.
About 150 correct characters including spaces, which is 30 standard five-character words. In real text that often works out at somewhere around 25 to 30 actual words, depending on how long they are.