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Free tool . 18 voice speeds measured September 2026

Words to minutes calculator

Read aloud at a natural 150 words per minute, 500 words takes about 3 minutes 20 seconds and 1,000 words about 6 minutes 40. Paste a script to time it, or switch to Time to words to see how much you can write for your slot.

By the FreeTTS team . Updated
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150words / min

Pace and target

Pace from

YouTube, explainers, podcasts

Target length

Fits about 450 words at 150 wpm.

Count

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Estimates for spoken English. FreeTTS voice paces were measured on our servers on September 14, 2026. For a finished file, paste the script into FreeTTS and download the MP3.

Quick answer

Formula
Minutes = words ÷ words per minute. Add about 0.35 seconds per sentence for breaths.
Human narrator
130 wpm slow, 150 wpm natural, 170 wpm fast
AI voices
18 FreeTTS English voices averaged 185 wpm at normal speed (measured)
100 words
40 seconds at 150 wpm
500 words
3 min 20 s at 150 wpm
1,000 words
6 min 40 s at 150 wpm
1 minute
About 150 words
3 minutes
About 450 words
5 minutes
About 750 words
10 minutes
About 1,500 words
Words to minutes

How long common word counts take to read aloud

Speaking time only, at three human narration speeds. Pauses add a few percent.

WordsSlow, 130 wpmNatural, 150 wpmFast, 170 wpmAI voice, 185 wpm
100 words46 s40 s35 s32 s
250 words1 min 55 s1 min 40 s1 min 28 s1 min 21 s
500 words3 min 51 s3 min 20 s2 min 56 s2 min 42 s
750 words5 min 46 s5 min4 min 25 s4 min 3 s
1,000 words7 min 42 s6 min 40 s5 min 53 s5 min 24 s
1,500 words11 min 32 s10 min8 min 49 s8 min 6 s
2,000 words15 min 23 s13 min 20 s11 min 46 s10 min 49 s
2,500 words19 min 14 s16 min 40 s14 min 42 s13 min 31 s
3,000 words23 min 5 s20 min17 min 39 s16 min 13 s
4,000 words30 min 46 s26 min 40 s23 min 32 s21 min 37 s
5,000 words38 min 28 s33 min 20 s29 min 25 s27 min 2 s
7,500 words57 min 42 s50 min44 min 7 s40 min 32 s
10,000 words1 h 16 min1 h 6 min58 min 49 s54 min 3 s
20,000 words2 h 33 min2 h 13 min1 h 57 min1 h 48 min
Minutes to words

How many words fit in a speech or video

Write to the middle column unless you know your pace.

LengthSlow, 130 wpmNatural, 150 wpmFast, 170 wpmAI voice, 185 wpm
30 seconds65 words75 words85 words93 words
1 minute130 words150 words170 words185 words
2 minutes260 words300 words340 words370 words
3 minutes390 words450 words510 words555 words
4 minutes520 words600 words680 words740 words
5 minutes650 words750 words850 words925 words
7 minutes910 words1,050 words1,190 words1,295 words
10 minutes1,300 words1,500 words1,700 words1,850 words
15 minutes1,950 words2,250 words2,550 words2,775 words
20 minutes2,600 words3,000 words3,400 words3,700 words
30 minutes3,900 words4,500 words5,100 words5,550 words
45 minutes5,850 words6,750 words7,650 words8,325 words
60 minutes7,800 words9,000 words10,200 words11,100 words
By use case

Typical script lengths for speeches, videos and audio

Common ranges, not rules. Live audiences slow speakers down; ads and short-form speed them up.

FormatUsual lengthPace (wpm)Script words
Wedding toast2 to 3 min130 to 150300 to 450
Elevator pitch30 to 60 s150 to 16075 to 160
Radio or pre-roll ad30 s160 to 17075 to 85
TikTok, Reel or Short60 s160 to 180150 to 180
Class presentation5 min130 to 150650 to 750
Eulogy5 to 7 min120 to 140600 to 1,000
YouTube explainer8 to 10 min150 to 1601,200 to 1,600
Conference talk18 min140 to 1602,500 to 2,900
Podcast episode30 min150 to 1604,500 to 4,800
E-learning module10 min130 to 1401,300 to 1,400
Audiobook1 hour150 to 1609,000 to 9,600
Sleep or meditation audio10 min100 to 1201,000 to 1,200

Speeches run long in the room. Nerves speed people up in rehearsal, but pauses for laughs, applause and slides slow them down on the day. Write a 5 minute talk to about 650 words, not 750.

Short-form runs fast. A 60 second TikTok or Short usually carries 150 to 180 words, and creators using an AI voice often push past 180. If you are making those, our faceless video generator adds the voice and captions for you.

Audiobooks run steady. Narrators commonly work from about 9,000 to 9,600 words per finished hour, which is why a 90,000-word novel lands near 10 hours. For long documents, text to audiobook splits chapters automatically.

Famous speeches, by the clock

Word counts from published transcripts; times are approximate.

SpeechWordsDelivered inImplied pace
Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln (1863)272about 2 minabout 136 wpm
Inaugural Address, John F. Kennedy (1961)about 1,360about 14 minabout 97 wpm
"I Have a Dream", Martin Luther King Jr. (1963)about 1,650about 17 minabout 97 wpm

Great speeches are slower than conversation. Pauses are part of the delivery, so budget for them.

Original data

How fast AI voices actually talk: 18 voices measured

We rendered the same 206-word English passage with each FreeTTS voice at normal speed on September 14, 2026 and timed every file.

185 wpmAverage pace across 18 English voices, about 25% faster than the 150 wpm human rule of thumb.
161 to 212Range from Neerja to Ollie HD. Pick the voice first, then write to its pace.
-20% = 153 wpmAndrew slowed to -20% lands on a natural narration pace.
VoiceAccentType206 words tookWords per minute500 words1,000 words
NeerjaIndiaStandard76.9 s1613 min 6 s6 min 13 s
Ada HDUKHD76.7 s1613 min 6 s6 min 13 s
NatashaAustraliaStandard72.3 s1712 min 55 s5 min 51 s
Andrew HDUSHD71.6 s1732 min 53 s5 min 47 s
Adam HDUSHD70.7 s1752 min 51 s5 min 43 s
AriaUSStandard69.5 s1782 min 49 s5 min 37 s
ChristopherUSStandard68.5 s1812 min 46 s5 min 31 s
JennyUSStandard67.1 s1842 min 43 s5 min 26 s
Aria HDUSHD67.3 s1842 min 43 s5 min 26 s
RyanUKStandard66.3 s1862 min 41 s5 min 23 s
AndrewUSStandard64.6 s1912 min 37 s5 min 14 s
SoniaUKStandard64.8 s1912 min 37 s5 min 14 s
GuyUSStandard64.3 s1922 min 36 s5 min 13 s
AvaUSStandard63.9 s1932 min 35 s5 min 11 s
EmmaUSStandard64.1 s1932 min 35 s5 min 11 s
BrianUSStandard63.2 s1962 min 33 s5 min 6 s
WilliamAustraliaStandard60.4 s2052 min 26 s4 min 53 s
Ollie HDUKHD58.3 s2122 min 22 s4 min 43 s

What the speed setting does to pace

Andrew, same passage, at each speed setting.

Speed settingFile lengthWords per minuteFeels like
-30%93.0 s133Slow, calm
-20%81.0 s153Natural narration
-10%72.1 s171Brisk
0%64.6 s191Brisk
+10%58.9 s210Fast promo
+20%55.1 s224Fast promo
+30%50.3 s246Very fast
+50%42.5 s291Very fast

Method: FreeTTS production synthesis, MP3 length from ffprobe, words counted with numbers as written. Your results will differ slightly with punctuation and style.

By language

Words per minute in 16 languages

One short passage, translated, read by a native FreeTTS voice at normal speed. Japanese and Chinese are counted in characters.

LanguageVoicePassageRead inPer minute
English (US)Andrew78 words26.3 s178 wpm
Portuguese (Brazil)Francisca73 words25.2 s174 wpm
Spanish (Spain)Alvaro80 words29.0 s166 wpm
Spanish (Mexico)Dalia80 words29.6 s162 wpm
FrenchDenise74 words27.9 s159 wpm
ItalianIsabella78 words30.2 s155 wpm
DutchColette72 words30.9 s140 wpm
PolishZofia64 words27.8 s138 wpm
GermanKatja73 words32.1 s136 wpm
HindiSwara85 words39.7 s128 wpm
TurkishEmel61 words30.3 s121 wpm
RussianSvetlana58 words29.9 s116 wpm
KoreanSunHi53 words31.4 s101 wpm
ArabicHamed58 words34.8 s100 wpm
JapaneseNanami174 characters35.7 s293 chars/min
Chinese (Mandarin)Xiaoxiao118 characters28.0 s253 chars/min

The spread is mostly about words, not speed. The German passage used 73 words where English used 78, but took 6 seconds longer to say, because German words are longer. Arabic and Korean join words and endings together, so each "word" carries more syllables and the per-minute count drops to about 100.

Linguists measure this in syllables instead. Pellegrino, Coupé and Marsico (2011) found read speech ranged from about 5.2 syllables per second in Mandarin to 7.8 in Japanese and Spanish, with English at 6.2, and that faster languages carry less information per syllable, so the same message takes a similar time. The practical rule: time every translation on its own. FreeTTS has 2,250+ voices in 149 languages if you need a native voice, and you can dub a video into another language with one.

What changes length

Why your script runs longer or shorter than the math

Numbers

"$1,250" is one word on the page and five spoken words. A price list or statistics-heavy script can run 10% over its word count.

Abbreviations

"NASA" is one word; "FBI" is three letters. URLs and email addresses are the worst: spell them out or leave them on screen.

Punctuation

Every full stop is a breath and every paragraph break a longer one. Short sentences add pauses; one long sentence has none but sounds rushed.

Voice and style

Our measured voices ranged by 51 wpm. Calm, sad or whispering styles run slower; cheerful and excited run faster.

Adding a pause on purpose. In text to speech you can insert an exact silence with SSML, for example <break time="700ms"/> after a key line. Three of those add about 2 seconds. FreeTTS supports SSML breaks, emphasis and other ways to make a voice sound natural.

Hitting an exact length. Write to a word budget first, cut filler before touching speed, split sentences over 25 words, and only then change speed by 5 to 10%. The table above shows each 10% step moves pace by roughly 15 to 20 words per minute.

Pages and characters

Pages to minutes, and characters to minutes

AmountAboutAt 150 wpmAt 185 wpm (AI voice)
1 page, single-spaced500 words3 min 20 s2 min 42 s
1 page, double-spaced250 words1 min 40 s1 min 21 s
10 pages, double-spaced2,500 words16 min 40 s13 min 31 s
2,000 characters (FreeTTS, no account, per day)333 words2 min 13 s1 min 48 s
15,000 characters (free account, per month)2,500 words16 min 40 s13 min 31 s
50,000 characters (3-day PRO trial)8,333 words55 min 33 s45 min 3 s
1,000,000 characters (PRO, per month)166,667 words18 h 31 min15 h
5,000,000 characters (Creator, per month)833,333 words92 h 35 min75 h 4 min

Characters assume about 6 per English word, including spaces and punctuation. Comparing plans? See text to speech free trials compared and TTS API pricing.

FAQ

Words to minutes questions

About 3 minutes 20 seconds read aloud at 150 words per minute, a natural narration pace. A slow read at 130 wpm takes about 3 minutes 51 seconds and a fast read at 170 wpm about 2 minutes 56 seconds. A FreeTTS voice at normal speed reads 500 words in roughly 2 minutes 40 seconds.
About 6 minutes 40 seconds at 150 wpm, 7 minutes 42 seconds at 130 wpm and 5 minutes 53 seconds at 170 wpm. Add a few seconds for pauses between paragraphs.
About 150 words at a natural pace, 130 for a slow, deliberate delivery and 170 for a quick one. For a 60 second social video with an AI voice, 170 to 190 words usually fits.
About 450 words at 150 wpm. Aim for 390 words if you speak slowly or expect laughter or applause, and up to 510 for a brisk delivery.
About 750 words at 150 wpm, or 650 words at 130 wpm. Most people speaking in front of an audience slow down, so 650 to 700 words is a safe script length.
About 1,500 words at 150 wpm, 1,300 at 130 wpm and 1,700 at 170 wpm.
About 13 minutes 20 seconds at 150 wpm. At a slow 130 wpm it is closer to 15 minutes 23 seconds.
Faster than most people expect. We timed 18 English FreeTTS voices on the same 206-word passage and they averaged 185 words per minute at normal speed, from 161 (Neerja) to 212 (Ollie HD). Setting the speed to -20% brought Andrew down to 153 wpm, close to a human narrator.
Lower the speed setting. On FreeTTS, Andrew reads at 191 wpm at 0%, 171 wpm at -10%, 153 wpm at -20% and 133 wpm at -30%. For narration most people like -10% to -20%.
About 500 words for a single-spaced page in a 12 point font, and about 250 words double-spaced. Read aloud at 150 wpm that is roughly 3 minutes 20 seconds and 1 minute 40 seconds per page.
Yes. "$1,250" is one word on the page but five or six spoken words: one thousand two hundred fifty dollars. Dates, percentages and phone numbers do the same. The calculator counts numbers in full by default for that reason.
About 830 English words, which is roughly 5 and a half minutes at 150 wpm or about 4 and a half minutes at a typical AI voice pace. English averages close to 6 characters per word including spaces and punctuation.
The same message takes a similar time, but word counts change. When we read one passage in 16 languages, English came to 178 words per minute and German 136, because German packs the same meaning into fewer, longer words. Time each language version on its own.
Set a word budget before writing (minutes times words per minute), cut filler before changing speed, split sentences over 25 words, and only then adjust the voice speed by 5 to 10 percent.
It is an estimate. Pace changes with the voice, the style, numbers, names and pauses. The fastest way to be sure is the Hear it button, which renders your opening lines with a real voice and times the file.
Sources and method

Where the numbers came from

Voice speeds

Measured by FreeTTS on September 14, 2026: the same 206-word passage rendered through our production voices, each MP3 timed with ffprobe. Language rows use one translated passage per language.

Syllable rates

Pellegrino, F., Coupé, C. and Marsico, E. (2011). "A cross-language perspective on speech information rate." Language 87(3).

Tables

Calculated as words ÷ words per minute × 60, rounded to the nearest second. Use-case ranges and page sizes are common working figures, not standards.

Plan allowances

From the FreeTTS pricing page.

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