A words-per-minute chart from first lessons to professional speed, with what each band feels like in practice and which jobs ask for it. Take the test to find your own row.
The bands are net words per minute on ordinary prose at 95% accuracy or better. They are ranges, not thresholds: a typist at 58 WPM and one at 62 are doing the same thing. Domain text — code, medical terminology, legal drafting — reads ten to thirty per cent lower for the same typist, so compare like with like: a prose score against the prose chart, a code score against a code test.
Accuracy is the second axis the chart cannot show. A 60 WPM result at 92% accuracy belongs in a lower band than the number suggests, because the eight per cent of errors are either being corrected (costing time) or left in (costing net words). Most people move up a band by fixing accuracy before they move up by getting faster.
Administrative and reception roles typically list 40 to 50 WPM. Data entry and clerical positions ask for 50 to 60, often measured over five minutes and sometimes in keystrokes per hour instead. Transcription, captioning and legal secretarial work expect 70 to 90. Medical transcription and court reporting sit above that, the latter on a specialised keyboard measured in the hundreds. Software roles rarely test typing at all, though a developer's effective speed on code is a real productivity factor.
Sustained speeds above 120 WPM are rare and above 150 rarer still; the fastest recorded sustained speeds on standard keyboards and ordinary prose are around 200 WPM, which is close to the physical limit of finger movement. Competition typists on short bursts reach higher. For everyone else, 80 WPM is a realistic long-term target from touch typing and regular practice, and 60 is where typing stops being a bottleneck at all.
From beginner to average, the whole gain comes from learning touch typing — a finger for every key, eyes on the screen. From average to fast, it comes from accuracy and from eliminating the slow transitions between specific keys, which is what the coach on this site is for. From fast to professional, it is mostly practice volume on the vocabulary you actually type.