Search for a typing speed chart and you will find a dozen tidy tables giving a WPM figure for every age from 6 to 70. Almost none of them say where the numbers came from.
That matters, because the largest typing study ever run publishes no average typing speed by age chart at all. Researchers at Aalto University and the University of Cambridge collected 136,857,600 keystrokes from 168,960 people, and their paper notes the sample was mostly young: mean age 24.5, with 75 percent aged 11 to 30. You cannot build an age curve from a sample with almost no older people in it. So here are the figures that do have a source, and why age turns out to be a weak predictor of typing speed. Our complete guide on how to learn to type covers the method itself.
What is the average typing speed by age?
There is no reliable average typing speed by age chart, because no one has measured a representative sample across every age group. What exists is school targets for children, one very large self-selected sample of mostly young adults averaging 51.56 WPM, and a classic laboratory study showing skilled typists do not slow down with age.
Here is every figure below with its actual source attached, which is more than most charts offer:
| Life stage | Typing speed | Where the number comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Grades 3 to 6 (ages 8 to 12) | 15, 20, 25, 27 WPM by grade | Utah State Office of Education standards (a target, not a measurement) |
| Grade 5 (age about 10), measured | 8.5 WPM boys, 10.5 WPM girls | Honaker, 1999 pilot study of 5th to 8th graders |
| Grade 8 (age about 13), measured | 17.7 WPM boys, 18.9 WPM girls | Honaker, 1999 pilot study |
| Grade 8, expected | 30 WPM with high accuracy | Buhler USD 313, Kansas, task force report |
| End of a high school keyboarding course | 45 WPM with high accuracy | Utah State Office of Education |
| Adults, self-selected online sample | 51.56 WPM average (SD 20.2) | Dhakal et al., CHI 2018, 168,960 participants |
| Skilled typists aged 19 to 72 | 17 to 104 WPM, no decline by age | Salthouse, 1984 |
Read it row by row and the pattern is not "speed rises with age, peaks at 30, then falls". It is that measured children are much slower than the targets set for them, and that among adults the spread inside any age group dwarfs the gap between age groups.
Where do average typing speed by age charts come from?
Most of them come from the site publishing them. Typing test websites aggregate their own visitor results, then present the output as a population average. That is not a technicality: people who take an online typing test skew young, skew toward heavy computer users, and often retake it to improve their score. The Aalto researchers were explicit about the same limitation in their own data, noting 68 percent of participants were from the US, over 70 percent had taken a typing course, and most were younger and already interested in typing.
Treat any age chart as rough orientation, never as a diagnosis. A 12-year-old at 20 WPM and one at 40 WPM are both normal, and the difference is almost always practice.
What is a good typing speed for a child?
For children, 10 WPM is the threshold that makes typing genuinely useful, because that is roughly when a child can word-process as fast as they handwrite. Below that, typing slows their writing down instead of helping it.
That benchmark comes from keyboarding research going back to 1986, and it lines up with handwriting data. Graham, Berninger, Weintraub and Schafer measured handwriting copying speed by grade in 1998: 4 WPM in grade 1, 10 WPM in grade 3, 15 WPM in grade 5, 23 WPM in grade 8. Typing only pays off once it beats that curve, and school standards set targets above it. Utah asks for 15 WPM in grade 3, 20 in grade 4, 25 in grade 5, and 27 in grade 6. A Kansas district sets no requirement until grade 8, then expects 30 WPM.
Pisha's 1993 study adds two useful findings. Grade 5 and 6 students learned keyboarding faster than grade 3 and 4 students, which is why most curricula start around grade 3 rather than earlier. And handwriting ability was not a factor in learning to keyboard, so a child with messy handwriting is not at a disadvantage. Our guide on touch typing for kids covers what readiness looks like.
What is a good WPM for a 12 or 13 year old?
For a 12 or 13 year old, 20 to 35 WPM is a reasonable range, and 30 WPM with high accuracy is the target used by school districts that set one. The measured average is lower than most parents expect: a pilot study of 8th graders found around 18 WPM.
The gap between the 18 WPM measured and the 30 WPM expected is the whole story of typing instruction. Children who get structured practice hit the target. Children who only type for homework and chat stay near the measured average, because unstructured typing reinforces whatever finger habits they invented at nine.
Accuracy matters more than speed here. A 13-year-old at 25 WPM with 97 percent accuracy is in better shape than one at 35 WPM with 88 percent, because the second is building muscle memory for the wrong keystrokes.
What is the average typing speed for adults?
The best measured figure for adults is 51.56 WPM, from 168,960 participants in the 2018 Aalto and Cambridge study, with a standard deviation of 20.2 WPM. The fastest exceeded 120 WPM. That sample was young and self-selected, so read it as the average for engaged computer users, not for all adults.
The standard deviation is the interesting number. At 20.2 WPM, roughly two thirds of that sample fell between 31 and 72 WPM. Any chart claiming 30-year-olds average 58 WPM and 40-year-olds average 54 is describing a difference far smaller than the noise inside either group. For what jobs actually require, our WPM benchmarks by profession is a better comparison than a birth year.
Does typing speed decline with age?
Not the way the charts suggest. The classic study on this, by Timothy Salthouse in 1984, tested typists aged 19 to 72 ranging from 17 to 104 net WPM, and found older typists were measurably slower at tapping and at choice reaction time but were not slower at typing.
The explanation is one of the more elegant findings in skill research. Older typists had a larger eye-hand span, reading roughly 254 to 360 milliseconds further ahead of the character they were typing. That anticipation offset their slower raw reaction time almost exactly.
"The keyboard rewards preparation over reflexes," says Alex Rica, founder of Typiq. "That is why a 60-year-old who touch types will beat a 20-year-old who hunts and pecks every single time, and why starting late is not the handicap people assume it is."
What does decline with age is untrained typing, which leans on visual search and reaction time. Learn the technique and the age effect largely disappears, which is the practical case for typing tutors aimed at adults rather than at children.
Typing speed, kids vs adults: what explains the gap
Adults type faster than children mostly because they have typed more, not because adult hands are better. Practice volume, finger technique and accuracy explain far more of the variance than age does, and all three are things you can change.
Five predictors that beat age:
How many fingers you use. Fast typists in the Aalto data averaged 8.4 fingers, slow typists 5.3, and finger count correlated with speed at r = 0.38.
Whether you look at the keyboard. Eyes on the screen is what makes preparation possible, and preparation is what carried the older typists in Salthouse's study.
Rollover, meaning overlapping keypresses. Fast typists pressed the next key before releasing the previous one on 40 to 70 percent of keystrokes, correlating with speed at r = 0.73, higher than anything else measured.
Accuracy, not raw pace. Slow typists left significantly more errors uncorrected, and every correction costs about four keystrokes. Our breakdown of typing accuracy vs speed has the arithmetic.
What you practice, not that you practiced. Having taken a typing course was worth only about 5 WPM, a small effect next to the finger and rollover numbers.
Structured lessons are the shortest path through all five, at any age. Typiq, a desktop typing tutor for Mac, Windows and Linux, runs fully offline with no account and no tracking, shows WPM and accuracy live as you type, and covers nine languages with correct diacritics. It is a one-time €18.99 for Personal or €39.99 for Family across five devices, with a free trial, so you can check where you actually stand first.
Bottom line
There is no trustworthy average typing speed by age chart, because no one has measured a representative sample across the full age range. The sourced numbers say this: children become useful at the keyboard from about 10 WPM, schools target 15 to 27 WPM through grades 3 to 6 and 30 WPM by grade 8, engaged adults average around 52 WPM with a very wide spread, and skilled typists show no decline between ages 19 and 72. Age is a weak predictor. Technique, finger use and accuracy are strong ones, and unlike your age, all three respond to a few weeks of practice.
Frequently asked questions
What is the average typing speed by age?
No representative study has measured typing speed across all age groups, so any precise per-age chart is an estimate from a self-selected sample. The best-sourced figures are 15 to 27 WPM as school targets for grades 3 to 6, around 18 WPM measured in 8th graders, and 51.56 WPM across 168,960 mostly young adults.
What is a good WPM for a 13 year old?
Between 20 and 35 WPM is normal, and 30 WPM with high accuracy is the target used by school districts that set one. Measured averages run lower, around 18 WPM in one pilot study of 8th graders, so a 13-year-old at 30 WPM is doing well. Accuracy above 95 percent matters more at this age than raw speed.
What is the average typing speed for a 12 year old?
Expect roughly 20 to 30 WPM for a 12-year-old who has had keyboarding instruction, and 15 to 20 WPM for one who has not. Utah's standards ask for 27 WPM by the end of grade 6, which is about that age. There is no measured national average for 12-year-olds, only school targets and small studies.
Does typing speed decline with age?
For trained typists, no. Salthouse's 1984 study found typists aged 19 to 72 showed no decline in typing speed, even though the older ones were measurably slower at tapping and reaction time tests. They compensated by reading further ahead of the keys they were pressing. Untrained typing, which depends on hunting for keys visually, does slow with age.
At what age should a child start touch typing?
Around age 8 to 9, or grade 3, is the usual starting point in school curricula. Research found grade 5 and 6 students learned keyboarding faster than grade 3 and 4 students, so starting later is not a loss. The practical trigger is hand size and reaching the keys comfortably, not a birthday.
