Three minutes of continuous prose. This is the length that separates a fast start from a speed you can hold — and the one most employers mean when they ask for a typing certificate.
Almost everyone scores lower on a three-minute test than on a one-minute one, usually by five to ten words per minute. That is not the test being harder; it is the first minute being flattering. Concentration is sharpest at the start, the first sentences are short, and a small mistake early on has not had time to compound. Over three minutes your hands settle into the pace they can really sustain, and the result reflects that.
If you are measuring for a job application or a certificate, this is the number to report. Data-entry, transcription and administrative roles that quote a WPM requirement are almost always describing sustained speed over several minutes, not a sprint.
Rhythm. The live counter at the top shows your speed as you go, and on a three-minute test you will see it move. A steady line means your motions are automatic; a line that lurches up and down means you are alternating between bursts you have memorised and words you have to think about. The rhythm score in the result quantifies exactly that, and it is the metric that improves most reliably with practice.
Posture and hands. Three minutes is long enough for tension to build in the wrists if you are hovering rather than resting. Keep the home row under your fingers between words and let the thumb, not the whole hand, hit the space bar.
The result page shows where you sit against typical bands, and the coach has three minutes of keystroke timings to work from — enough to say with confidence which keys are slow reaches, which are genuine mix-ups, and which pairs of letters break your rhythm. A three-minute test followed by ten minutes on the drill it generates is a better use of a quarter of an hour than three more tests.
You can download a certificate with your name, net WPM and accuracy directly from the result, or take the test again with Enter. No account is needed for either.
At 40 WPM you will type about 600 characters in three minutes; at 70, over a thousand. That is enough text for the accuracy figure to be statistically meaningful — a single slip no longer moves it by a whole percentage point the way it can on a fifteen-second sprint — and enough keystrokes for the heatmap afterwards to show a real pattern rather than noise. It is the shortest test we would call a measurement rather than a sample.