Reading time calculator (+ Flesch + TTS duration)

Frequently asked questions

What words-per-minute should I use?

238 wpm is the peer-reviewed adult silent reading average (Brysbaert 2019, a meta-analysis of 190 studies covering 17,887 participants). Older internet wisdom of 200-265 wpm overlaps; 238 sits in the middle. Skimming is 400+ wpm. Audiobook narration is intentionally slowed to 150-160 wpm so listeners can absorb without rewinding.

Should I show 'reading time' on my blog?

Marginal SEO benefit, real UX benefit. Medium-style 'X min read' labels increase scroll-through completion ~6-8% in published A/B tests because they set expectations. Google has confirmed reading time is not a ranking factor, but engagement metrics (dwell time, scroll depth) are loosely correlated — and these increase when readers commit to the article up front.

What is Flesch reading ease?

A 1948 formula that scores text on a 0-100 scale based on average sentence length and syllables per word. Higher = easier to read. The formula is `206.835 − 1.015 × (words/sentences) − 84.6 × (syllables/words)`. 60-70 is plain English (8-9th grade); 90+ is conversational; below 30 is academic prose.

What Flesch score should SaaS content aim for?

60-70 for the bulk of your content marketing — that's 'plain English', accessible to 80%+ of US readers. Technical documentation can dip to 50-55. Below 50 is hard work for readers; sentences get long and word-syllable count climbs. The Hemingway editor enforces ~60 by default.

Why does the calculator give a different TTS duration?

Spoken English is slower than silent reading. Podcast TTS engines (ElevenLabs, OpenAI TTS, Coqui XTTS) target 150-160 wpm — that's 2/3 the speed of silent reading. A 10-minute read is a 15-minute podcast episode. The TTS slider lets you adjust if you've cloned a voice at a different pace.

Is this Flesch calculation accurate?

Within ±2 points of the canonical implementation on most English prose. The syllable count uses a vowel-cluster heuristic (counting groups of consecutive vowels per word) which is the standard approximation used by Word, Hemingway, and Readable.io. Edge cases: technical jargon with many silent letters can be off by 5-10 points.

Does reading time affect SEO?

Not directly. Google's John Mueller stated in multiple Q&As that reading time is not a ranking signal. Indirectly, longer well-structured articles tend to satisfy more search intents and earn more backlinks — so the 1500-3000 word range happens to rank well, but the cause is comprehensiveness, not length per se. Pad an article to hit a word count and rankings won't follow.

What's the ideal article length in 2026?

Whatever fully answers the query. Studies have shown the average top-3 ranking for informational queries sits around 1900-2400 words, but this is a correlation, not a target. For pillar / 'best X' / comparison queries, 2000-3500 words is competitive. For tactical how-to queries, 800-1500 words can outrank 3000-word competitors if the answer is more direct.

Should I cite the reading time prominently?

Top of the article, near the byline. Below the H1, beside the publication date. Mobile readers especially appreciate the cue — a 25-minute read on a phone is a commitment. We display 'X min read · Y words' on stats pages because long stats pages benefit most from the expectation-setting.

Can I use this for non-English text?

Word count and reading time work for any space-separated language. Flesch reading ease is calibrated for English only — for German, French, or Spanish, use language-specific readability formulas (Wiener Sachtextformel for German, Gulpease for Italian, Inflesz for Spanish).