Free Script Timer

The script timer converts words to minutes with one division: spoken time equals words divided by words per minute. A 300-word script at 150 words per minute takes 2 minutes (300 divided by 150). The same text and pace always give the same time.

A word is any run of characters between spaces that contains at least one letter or digit. That holds in any writing system, so Hindi in Devanagari is counted the same way as English. With the skip option on, the timer leaves out text in [square brackets] and (parentheses), and a speaker label in capital letters at the start of a line, such as HOST:.

The three presets are planning paces: slow is 130 words per minute, conversational is 150 and fast is 170. They are not a measurement of you. For reference, the National Center for Voice and Speech gives about 150 words per minute as the average rate of speech for English speakers in the United States. You can type any pace from 80 to 250.

The most reliable pace is your own. Baruch College's Tools for Clear Speech describes a simple test: record yourself speaking for one minute, then count the words you said. Type your number into the custom pace box.

If you have not measured yet, published figures give a starting point. VirtualSpeech lists conversational speech at 120 to 150 words per minute, and audiobooks, radio hosts and podcasters at 150 to 160. Its own 2026 measurement of 32,809 practice presentations found a median of 111 words per minute, with the middle half of presenters between 86 and 133.

So for a live presentation, even the slow preset may be faster than you speak. Set a custom pace instead.

Decide the slot first, then cut to its word count. Used this way the timer is a script length calculator: it shows the smallest slot your script fits, from 15 seconds to 10 minutes, and how many words to cut to reach the next smaller one.

A word count cannot hear pauses, emphasis or breaths. After you cut, read the script aloud once against a stopwatch. Where to cut first: