What does your typing actually cost you?
A typing speed test · free, no sign-up, nothing to install
Every typing test tells you how fast your hands are. This one also works out what those hands are costing you — in hours, over a year. Type the passage below as you normally would. Nothing is uploaded and nothing is stored; the sums happen on your own machine.
Type this
Now the part nobody measures
Your speed only matters multiplied by how much you write. Adjust these to match your day — the answer updates as you type.
At words per minute, writing minutes a day
How the sum works, so you can argue with it
Your typing speed is measured, not assumed — it is whatever you just did above.
For speaking, we do not use the raw dictation rate. People speak at roughly 130–150 words a minute, and the speech models keep up, so a naive comparison would flatter dictation enormously. Real dictation is slower than that in practice: you pause to think, you correct misheard words, and you still edit afterwards with the keyboard. So the figure here assumes an effective 100 words a minute — well below what a dictation demo will show you, and closer to what a normal working day produces.
If your typing is already faster than that, the calculator will tell you so, and the honest answer is that dictation will not save you time. It might still be worth it if your hands hurt — but not for speed, and we would rather say so.
What this does not tell you
- Editing does not disappear. Dictation is very good at producing text and poor at revising it. The hours above are for getting words down, not for the polish afterwards.
- There is an adjustment period. Composing out loud feels wrong for a week or two, and most people who quit dictation quit in the first three days. Budget for that before you judge it.
- Some work will not convert. Code, spreadsheets, anything with lots of names and numbers — dictation struggles, and correcting can cost more than typing would have.
- This is one person's arithmetic, not a study. The numbers you enter are guesses about your own day. Treat the answer as an order of magnitude.
If the number is large enough to act on
You do not need to buy anything to start. Windows has dictation built in — press Windows key + H in any text box. On a Mac, press the microphone key, or turn it on in System Settings under Keyboard. Both are free, both are on your machine now, and a fortnight with them will tell you more than any comparison page.
If you outgrow them, that is where we come in: UtterKey is dictation you buy once rather than rent, it types wherever your cursor already is, and it runs on your own OpenAI or Groq account rather than through our servers. How it compares with the subscription apps.