# Reading Time Calculator > Source: https://www.infinitelibrary.ai/calculators/reading-time Last updated: 2026-09-06 Words → hours and minutes At the average adult silent-reading speed of about 238 words per minute, 50,000 words takes about 3 hours 30 minutes to read, 80,000 words about 5 hours 36 minutes, and 100,000 words about 7 hours. A slow reader at 150 words per minute needs roughly half again as long; a fast reader at 300 finishes about a fifth sooner. ## Reading time for common word counts Silent reading, eyes on the page. Average is the Brysbaert (2019) figure for adult non-fiction reading; fiction runs a little faster at about 260 words a minute. | Words | Slow · 150 wpm | Average · 238 wpm | Fast · 300 wpm | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | 10,000 | 1 h 7 min | 42 min | 33 min | | 20,000 | 2 h 13 min | 1 h 24 min | 1 h 7 min | | 30,000 | 3 h 20 min | 2 h 6 min | 1 h 40 min | | 40,000 | 4 h 27 min | 2 h 48 min | 2 h 13 min | | 50,000 | 5 h 33 min | 3 h 30 min | 2 h 47 min | | 60,000 | 6 h 40 min | 4 h 12 min | 3 h 20 min | | 70,000 | 7 h 47 min | 4 h 54 min | 3 h 53 min | | 80,000 | 8 h 53 min | 5 h 36 min | 4 h 27 min | | 90,000 | 10 h | 6 h 18 min | 5 h | | 100,000 | 11 h 7 min | 7 h | 5 h 33 min | | 120,000 | 13 h 20 min | 8 h 24 min | 6 h 40 min | ## Where the reading speeds come from The **average** setting, 238 words per minute, comes from the largest review of reading-rate research to date: Marc Brysbaert's 2019 meta-analysis in the *Journal of Memory and Language*, which pooled nearly two hundred studies of adult readers. Its headline figures are about 238 words per minute for silent reading of English non-fiction and about 260 for fiction, with reading aloud slower at roughly 183. Those numbers sit well below the 300-plus figures that circulate online, which mostly come from tests of short, easy passages rather than sustained reading. The **slow** setting, 150 words per minute, covers careful reading — technical material, a second language, a book you are studying rather than enjoying — and is close to the pace of reading aloud. The **fast** setting, 300, is a fluent reader moving quickly through a familiar genre. Speed-reading claims above that come at the cost of comprehension; for a novel you actually want to remember, the average column is the honest one. ## What changes the number Reading speed is not a fixed property of a person; it moves with the text. Dialogue reads fast because the lines are short and the page is airy. Dense description, unfamiliar names, an invented vocabulary, or a sentence you have to read twice all slow the pace, which is why the fiction average of 260 words per minute hides a wide spread between a thriller and a literary novel. Non-fiction slows further when it asks you to hold an argument in your head, and further still when there are tables and footnotes. Then there is the reader's habit. Most people do not read a book in one sitting: they read in sessions, lose the thread, and re-read a paragraph to find it again. The calculator's figure is time spent with eyes on the page; the elapsed time across evenings is always longer. ## How many evenings is that? Divide the reading time into the sessions you actually have and a word count turns into a schedule. At the average pace, a **novella** of 30,000 words is about two hours — one long evening or two shorter ones. A **50,000-word novel** is about three and a half hours: five 45-minute sessions, or a lazy weekend. An **80,000-word novel** — the commercial standard for most adult fiction — is about five and a half hours, roughly a week of bedtime reading. A **100,000-word** fantasy or historical novel is a full seven hours, and a 120,000-word epic passes eight. Writers use the same arithmetic in reverse: if you want a book a reader can finish on a single long flight, you are writing 40,000–50,000 words; if you want the immersive week-long read, 90,000 and up. Our guides on [writing a 50,000-word novel](https://www.infinitelibrary.ai/guides/how-to-write-a-50000-word-novel) and [writing a 100,000-word novel](https://www.infinitelibrary.ai/guides/how-to-write-a-100000-word-novel) work through what each length asks of the story. ## Reading time from a page count If you know pages rather than words, convert first. A 6 × 9 paperback in 11-point type holds about 300–330 words a page; a 5.5 × 8.5 paperback about 275–300; a 5 × 8 about 250–280. A 300-page 6 × 9 novel is therefore about 90,000–99,000 words — six and a quarter to seven hours at the average pace — while a 300-page 5 × 8 paperback is closer to 75,000–84,000 words and five and a quarter to six hours. The [words to pages calculator](https://www.infinitelibrary.ai/calculators/words-to-pages) does the conversion for every trim size. ## Listening takes longer than reading Narration runs at about 155 words per minute — the pace audiobook producers plan around — so listening to a book takes roughly one and a half times as long as reading it silently. The 50,000-word novel that reads in three and a half hours is a 5-hour-23-minute audiobook; 80,000 words is about eight and a half hours. The [audiobook length calculator](https://www.infinitelibrary.ai/calculators/audiobook-length) converts any word count to finished hours at slow, standard and brisk narration. If you are the author, that difference is a feature: a listener spends more hours with your book than a reader does, and Bindery can produce the [audiobook edition](https://www.infinitelibrary.ai/audiobook) — three house narrators or your own cloned voice from about thirty seconds of audio, in 74 languages, with the first chapter playing free on the book's page. ## FAQ ### How long does it take to read 50,000 words? About 3 hours 30 minutes at the average adult reading speed of 238 words per minute. A slow reader at 150 words per minute takes about 5 hours 33 minutes; a fast reader at 300 words per minute about 2 hours 47 minutes. ### How long does it take to read 80,000 words? About 5 hours 36 minutes at 238 words per minute — a typical full-length novel. At 150 words per minute it takes about 8 hours 53 minutes; at 300 words per minute about 4 hours 27 minutes. ### How long does it take to read 100,000 words? About 7 hours at the average pace of 238 words per minute, 11 hours 7 minutes at a slow 150, and 5 hours 33 minutes at a fast 300. ### What is the average reading speed in words per minute? About 238 words per minute for adults reading English non-fiction silently, and about 260 for fiction, according to Brysbaert's 2019 meta-analysis of nearly two hundred studies. Reading aloud averages about 183 words per minute. ### How long does it take to read a 300-page book? Usually 5–7 hours. A 300-page 6 × 9 paperback holds about 90,000–99,000 words, which is 6 hours 18 minutes to 6 hours 56 minutes at 238 words per minute; a 300-page 5 × 8 paperback holds about 75,000–84,000 words, or roughly 5¼–6 hours. ### Is reading time the same as audiobook length? No. Narration runs at about 155 words per minute against a silent-reading average of 238, so an audiobook takes about one and a half times as long as reading the same book: 50,000 words is 3 hours 30 minutes to read and about 5 hours 23 minutes to listen to. ## Related - [Audiobook Length](https://www.infinitelibrary.ai/calculators/audiobook-length) - [Words to Pages](https://www.infinitelibrary.ai/calculators/words-to-pages) - [Novel Length](https://www.infinitelibrary.ai/calculators/novel-length) - [Writing Time](https://www.infinitelibrary.ai/calculators/writing-time) - [How to Write a 50,000-Word Novel](https://www.infinitelibrary.ai/guides/how-to-write-a-50000-word-novel) - [How to Write a 100,000-Word Novel](https://www.infinitelibrary.ai/guides/how-to-write-a-100000-word-novel) - [How Long Should Novel Chapters Be?](https://www.infinitelibrary.ai/guides/how-long-should-chapters-be) - [How to Write a Novella](https://www.infinitelibrary.ai/guides/how-to-write-a-novella) - [Book calculators](https://www.infinitelibrary.ai/calculators) - [Bindery — the Claude-powered book studio](https://www.infinitelibrary.ai/bindery) --- More from Infinite Library, as one map for AI agents: https://www.infinitelibrary.ai/llms.txt