500 words at every rate
One row of this table is you. We will not pick a rate on your behalf, so here is the whole sweep in five-wpm steps, with our three measured presets marked. If you have never timed yourself, start at 165 wpm and read the rows either side of it as your realistic margin of error.
| Speaking rate | Running time | What that pace is |
|---|---|---|
| 100 wpm | 5:00 | — |
| 105 wpm | 4:46 | — |
| 110 wpm | 4:33 | — |
| 115 wpm | 4:21 | — |
| 120 wpm | 4:10 | — |
| 125 wpm | 4:00 | — |
| 130 wpm | 3:51 | — |
| 135 wpm | 3:42 | — |
| 140 wpm | 3:34 | Presentation preset |
| 145 wpm | 3:27 | — |
| 150 wpm | 3:20 | — |
| 155 wpm | 3:14 | — |
| 160 wpm | 3:08 | — |
| 165 wpm | 3:02 | Speech preset |
| 170 wpm | 2:56 | — |
| 175 wpm | 2:51 | — |
| 180 wpm | 2:47 | — |
| 185 wpm | 2:42 | Podcast preset |
| 190 wpm | 2:38 | — |
| 195 wpm | 2:34 | — |
| 200 wpm | 2:30 | — |
The span across that table is the point. From the slowest talk we measured (102 wpm) to the fastest (210 wpm), the same 500 words takes anywhere from 2:23 to 4:54. Between the two presets most speakers fall between, the gap is still 52 seconds — on a script this short, that is the difference between a tight three minutes and an awkward two-and-a-half.
What 500 words actually is
Five hundred words is long enough to make one argument properly with an example attached, and short enough that an audience never checks the time. For scale, this is roughly 2 double-spaced manuscript pages, and if your sentences average fifteen words it is about 33 of them. It turns up in real briefs as a best-man toast, a lightning-talk slot or a short explainer script — and, awkwardly, as the three-minute assignment, which it does not fit.
The three-minute problem
Five hundred words does not fit three minutes, and the median is not where the risk is: at 165 wpm it runs 3:02, over by only 2 seconds, but at the deliberate end of our measured set (140 wpm) the same script runs 3:34 — over by 34 seconds. To squeeze 500 words into exactly three minutes you would have to sustain 167 wpm. 18 of the 39 talks we measured did reach that rate, so it is plainly deliverable — but every one of them was a rehearsed performer working a script they had run many times, with the freedom to slow down wherever they liked. Holding 167 wpm cold, in a graded slot, with no margin to pause for emphasis, is a different proposition. The safer move is to cut to about 495 words. The 3-minute page gives the target for each pace.
Trimming a 500-word script without gutting it
When 500 words has to become 400, resist trimming evenly. Cutting a fifth from every paragraph leaves a script that is uniformly thinner and no clearer. Take the length out of one place instead:
- The wind-up. Most drafts spend 60–80 words explaining that they are about to begin. Delete it and open on the first concrete thing.
- The second example. If two examples make the same point, one of them is costing you 29 seconds for a repeat.
- Attribution scaffolding. "What I want to talk about today is how…" becomes "…". Written prose tolerates this; spoken prose does not need it.
- Anything on a slide. If the audience can read it, you do not have to say it. Read the slide only when the slide is the point.
Then re-time it aloud rather than recalculating.
Checking the arithmetic yourself
Every figure on this page is one division. 500 ÷ 165 = 3.030 minutes; the fractional part × 60 gives the seconds, which is where 3:02 comes from. The table above is the same division repeated at every rate, generated when this page is built rather than typed in, and each cell is asserted individually in the site's test suite. If you find a cell that disagrees with the calculator at the top, one of them is broken and we want to hear about it on the contact page.