Estimate Reading Time for Your Content
Displaying reading time increases reader engagement and helps set expectations. The average adult reads 200–250 words per minute for online content — adjust for technical material.
Reading speed by content type
- Blog posts (casual): 200–250 wpm
- News articles: 200–230 wpm
- Technical documentation: 100–150 wpm
- Academic papers: 100–125 wpm
- Fiction/novels: 250–300 wpm
How platforms show reading time
- Medium: 265 wpm, shows 'X min read' in feed
- Substack: shown on articles
- Dev.to: estimated reading time in headers
- Best practice: always round up (4 min is better than 3.7 min)
Frequently Asked Questions
Does reading time include images?
Medium adds 12 seconds per image. Irreva calculates text-only reading time — add 10–15 seconds per image for a closer estimate.