How long it takes to read 1,000 words out loud, by word count and speed

It takes about 5½ minutes to read 1,000 words out loud at an average pace. That pace is 183 words per minute, the mean across 77 studies of reading out loud. A speech at the 120 to 160 words per minute that Toastmasters recommends takes 6 min 15 s to 8 min 20 s. An audiobook narrator, at about 9,300 words an hour, needs about 6½ minutes. A text-to-speech voice in Chrome at normal speed takes 4½ to 5½ minutes by Chrome’s own figures, and four macOS voices we timed took a little over 5.

On October 19, 2026, the two highest-ranked pages in US Google results for this question were calculators that assume 130 words per minute without naming a source: 7 min 42 s for 1,000 words. The answer depends on the rate, so each rate below names its source, with a link where one exists.

How long it takes to read 100 to 5,000 words out loud

Minutes are words divided by words per minute. The table uses three rates from the sources in the next section: a slow speaker per Toastmasters (120), the ACX audiobook rate (155) and the average for reading aloud (183). Times are rounded to the second.

Words	Slow speaker, 120 wpm	Audiobook narrator, 155 wpm	Average reader, 183 wpm
100	50 s	39 s	33 s
250	2 min 5 s	1 min 37 s	1 min 22 s
500	4 min 10 s	3 min 14 s	2 min 44 s
750	6 min 15 s	4 min 50 s	4 min 6 s
1,000	8 min 20 s	6 min 27 s	5 min 28 s
1,500	12 min 30 s	9 min 41 s	8 min 12 s
2,000	16 min 40 s	12 min 54 s	10 min 56 s
3,000	25 min	19 min 21 s	16 min 24 s
5,000	41 min 40 s	32 min 15 s	27 min 19 s

Where these rates come from

The 183 is from a 2019 meta-analysis by Marc Brysbaert in the Journal of Memory and Language. It pooled 77 studies of adults reading aloud in their native language, 5,965 participants in all. Its 95% confidence interval runs from 177 to 189 words per minute. Only 27 of the studies were in English; the rest were in German, Spanish and other Latin-alphabet languages. The review adds that children, older adults and people reading English as a second language read more slowly. Silent reading is faster: 238 words per minute for non-fiction, or about 4¼ minutes for 1,000 words.

For speeches, Toastmasters’ speaking voice guide says: “The most effective speaking rate is between 120 to 160 words per minute.” It adds that you speak at about the rate you read aloud: “A slow speaker reads about 120 words per minute, while a fast speaker reads more than 190 words per minute.”

For audiobooks, ACX’s narration help says: “On average, most performers narrate about 9,300 words per hour.” That works out to 155 words per minute. The meta-analysis gives a wider range for audiobooks, 140 to 180 words per minute.

Conversation is about as fast as reading aloud, depending on how it is counted. A 2006 Interspeech paper from the University of Pennsylvania divided the words both people said in 2,438 recorded telephone calls by the total length of the calls: 196 words per minute overall, and 111 to 291 for single calls. Counted against each speaker’s own turns, the same calls came to 164. Radio news is in the same range: the meta-analysis cites a 2016 study by Rodero that puts its ideal rate at 170 words per minute for dense news and 190 for less dense news.

Why the average is too fast for hours of reading aloud

The meta-analysis itself warns against using 183 for long sessions. It calls it “an unrealistic rate for day-to-day use”, meaning someone reading aloud for several hours a day. For a full working day it cites a 2015 study of 10 adult men that judged 120 words per minute acceptable for 8 hours with 40 dB of background noise. At 120, 1,000 words take 8 min 20 s, almost 3 minutes more than at 183.

How many words fit in a 5-, 7- or 10-minute speech

Toastmasters’ range, 120 to 160 words per minute, fits this many words into a speech:

Speech length	Words at 120 to 160 wpm
5 minutes	600 to 800
7 minutes	840 to 1,120
10 minutes	1,200 to 1,600

So 1,000 words is too much for a 5-minute slot: fitting them in takes 200 words per minute, well above that range. In 7 minutes they need about 143 words per minute, which is inside it. In a 10-minute slot, a slow speaker at 120 finishes them in 8 min 20 s, with 1 min 40 s left for pauses.

Talks add time that a word count never shows. A slide change, a demo or a question from the room stops the words while the clock keeps running, so time a full rehearsal instead of trusting the division.

How long a text-to-speech voice takes

Chrome’s text-to-speech docs say the default rate, 1.0, is “normally around 180 to 220 words per minute”, that 2.0 is twice as fast and 0.5 half as fast. They add that many voices cap the rate. If a voice follows the documented rates, 1,000 words take:

Speed	Words per minute	1,000 words take
0.75×	135 to 165	6 min 4 s to 7 min 24 s
1×	180 to 220	4 min 33 s to 5 min 33 s
1.25×	225 to 275	3 min 38 s to 4 min 27 s
1.5×	270 to 330	3 min 2 s to 3 min 42 s
2×	360 to 440	2 min 16 s to 2 min 47 s

We timed four macOS voices reading 1,000 words of prose, the start of Arthur Conan Doyle’s “A Scandal in Bohemia”. We used macOS’s say command on a Mac mini with macOS 26.5, each voice at its default rate:

Voice	Accent	1,000 words took	Words per minute
Samantha	US English	5 min 7 s	196
Karen	Australian English	5 min 9 s	194
Daniel	British English	5 min 22 s	186
Moira	Irish English	5 min 25 s	185

At their default speed these voices read 185 to 196 words per minute, inside Chrome’s 180 to 220. A voice’s set rate can be lower than what you hear: set to 175 words per minute with say -r 175, Samantha read a 216-word excerpt at 198, the same as at her default setting. This is not a Chrome benchmark. Chrome passes its own rate to these voices, which may change the times slightly, and we did not measure Google’s online voices or Windows voices. Each voice read one text once.

To hear your script read by a voice, paste it into the Paste text tab of Read Text Aloud, our extension for Chrome. It speaks through Chrome’s speech engine, with a voice on your computer by default. The word count updates as you type. Press Read aloud, and it shows “Sentence n of N” next to the words left and “about M min left”. M is the remaining words ÷ (175 × speed), rounded up, for every voice: it assumes 175 words per minute at 1× and 350 at 2×. It is an estimate, not a measurement of the voice or of your own speech. Against our say timings it runs long: at 1× it shows 6 minutes for 1,000 words (5 min 43 s before rounding up), while the four voices took 5 min 7 s to 5 min 25 s. Its five speeds, 0.75× to 2×, go to Chrome as the voice’s rate. Its limits: it plays speech and saves no audio file. It cannot read Google Docs, Sheets or Slides from the page, so paste the text instead, and in a PDF it reads only a passage you select, without highlighting. With a voice marked Online, Chrome sends the text to Google. It needs Chrome 116 or later.

Time your own reading pace

To measure your own rate, you need a passage, its word count and a stopwatch:

1. Take a passage like your script and count its words with any word counter. Toastmasters’ guide prints a practice passage with a slash every 50 words for this.
2. Read it aloud in your everyday speaking style, with the stopwatch running.
3. Divide the words by the minutes to get your rate in words per minute.
4. Divide your script’s word count by your rate to get its length in minutes.

For example, 450 words in 3 minutes is 150 words per minute, so a 1,000-word script takes 6 min 40 s.