Reading Time Calculator
Enter a book’s length — as a word count or a page count — and your reading speed, and see how long it will take you to finish, plus how that changes at a slow, average, and fast pace.
From a page count to an evening’s reading
Knowing roughly how long a book will take is the difference between picking it up and leaving it on the shelf. Once you know you read about 250 words a minute, you can tell at a glance whether a 400-page novel is a weekend or a fortnight, plan a book-club deadline, or decide whether you can finish before a library due date.
Once you have a per-book time, the Books-Per-Year Goal Planner turns it into a daily habit, and the Reading Speed Test measures the words-per-minute figure this tool depends on.
Frequently Asked Questions
How is reading time calculated?
It is simply the number of words divided by your reading speed in words per minute. A 90,000-word novel read at 250 words per minute takes 360 minutes, or six hours. If you only know the page count, the tool multiplies pages by an assumed words-per-page (275 by default for a typical trade paperback) to get the word count first.
What reading speed should I enter?
A comfortable adult reading pace for prose is around 200 to 300 words per minute, and the tool defaults to 250. If you have measured your own speed with the reading speed test, use that number instead — dense nonfiction reads slower than a fast-moving thriller, so your real pace varies by book.
How many words are on a page?
It varies with trim size, font, and spacing, but a mass-market or trade paperback averages roughly 250 to 300 words per page, which is why the default is 275. Large-print editions and heavily illustrated books have far fewer; dense academic pages can have more. If you know a book's exact word count, switch to word-count mode for a better estimate.
Why are the slow, average, and fast times different?
Those columns show the same book read at 150, 250, and 400 words per minute, so you can see how much your pace changes the total. They are a reminder that a reading-time estimate is a range, not a fixed number — the figure at your own entered speed is the one to plan around.
Educational estimate. Real reading time shifts with the book, your focus, and interruptions — use it as a guide, not a stopwatch.