How many words is a 5-minute speech?

About 650 words at an average speaking pace of 130 words per minute. A slow, formal delivery at 100 wpm needs about 500 words; a fast conversational one at 160 wpm fits about 800. Write toward the lower number if you expect pauses, slides, or audience reaction.

How many words is a 10-minute speech?

About 1,300 words at 130 words per minute — between 1,000 words (slow) and 1,600 words (fast). Past the ten-minute mark, build in a buffer: real deliveries almost always run longer than the clean estimate.

How long is a 1,000-word speech?

About 7 min 42 sec at an average 130 words per minute. At a slow 100 wpm it stretches to 10 minutes; at a fast 160 wpm it compresses to about 6 min 15 sec.

How many words per minute do people actually speak?

Conversation runs roughly 150–190 wpm; prepared talks and presentations sit lower, around 100–160, which is why 130 is the standard planning number. AI voices vary just as much: the free voices on this site measured between 84 and 187 wpm at default speed.

Is silent reading faster than reading aloud?

Yes, by a wide margin. A large meta-analysis of reading-rate studies (Brysbaert, 2019) puts average adult silent reading at about 238 words per minute for non-fiction, versus about 183 wpm reading aloud — and prepared speech is slower still. Use the silent-reading preset when estimating reading time for an article rather than a talk.

Why is my generated audio a different length than the estimate?

Because a words-per-minute estimate is an average and a voice is not. Our measured free voices range from 84 to 187 wpm at default speed, punctuation adds pauses, and numbers or URLs expand when spoken ("1,024" becomes five syllables). The estimate gets you close; generating the audio gives you the exact runtime.

Does the calculator upload my script?

No. Counting and the time estimate run entirely in your browser. Your text is only sent to the server if you choose to generate audio from it.

Speech length, before you record

Words to Minutes Calculator

Paste your script or speech

No script handy?Enter a word count:

Speaking pace

Or a real voice, as measured

Estimated time at 130 wpm

0 sec

Convert words to time for a speech, a class presentation, a YouTube script, or a podcast segment. The estimate uses standard speaking speeds — or the measured pace of the AI voices on this site, so the number you plan around matches the audio you can actually generate.

Counts in your browserReal voice speedsExact runtime on demand

How it works

Three steps, about a minute

1
Paste your script — or just a word count
The word count updates as you type; there is nothing to submit.
2
Pick a pace
Preset speaking speeds, silent reading, or the measured pace of a real AI voice.
3
Read the time — or generate the exact one
The estimate is instant. For a runtime to the second, generate the audio below.

An hourglass beside a stack of blank script pages on a warm wooden desk

Examples

Scripts to time and hear

Every clip below was generated here on the free tier — no account, no credits. Play one to hear the voice on that kind of writing, or load the script into the generator and make your own version of it.

Phone greeting

IVR or voicemail line — the classic use for a consistent voice.

“Thank you for calling Northgate Supply. Our team is available Monday to Friday, eight until six. For an existing order, press one. For everything else, stay on the line and someone will be with you shortly.”

Read by Emma · British, calm

Product ad

Thirty seconds of ad copy, the hardest thing to read naturally.

“You already own the shoes. That's the annoying part. They're at the back of the cupboard, they still fit, and the only thing standing between you and Saturday morning is the fifteen minutes it takes to find them. We can't help with that. But everything after it, we can.”

Read by Poppy · British, bright

Podcast opener

Cold open that sets up the episode without a sponsor read.

“This week: a bank that lost four hundred million dollars because of a rounding error, the intern who found it, and the eight months it took anyone to believe her. It's a story about arithmetic, and it is somehow also a story about how hard it is to be right early.”

Read by Dan · Casual, grounded

Included

What you get

Free without an account: Thousands of characters a day as a guest, no sign-up and nothing to install. An account raises the limit; it is not a gate on the tool.
Commercial use included: Monetised videos, client work and ads are all fine on every tier. You own what you generate.
MP3 and WAV export: MP3 for editors and uploads, WAV where you need uncompressed audio. Speed is adjustable from 0.75× to 1.5× on engines that support it.
Long text, one file: Text past the per-request limit is split at sentence boundaries, generated in order, and stitched back into a single download.
Voices across 18 languages: Several languages are read by voices trained on that language rather than an English voice reading foreign words — the difference is audible immediately.
Credits that never expire: Premium and ultra voices are billed in credits. One-time packs never expire; monthly plans refill every billing cycle instead.

How the words-to-minutes conversion works

Speaking time is word count divided by pace: minutes = words ÷ words per minute. The whole question is which pace to divide by. Prepared talks run slower than conversation — slides, emphasis, and nerves all cost time — so planning guides settle on about 130 wpm for an average delivery, 100 wpm for a slow formal one, and 160 wpm for a quick conversational one.

Those three numbers are the presets above, and they match what teachers and speech coaches assume. If the time slot is strict — a 10-minute class presentation, a conference talk with a hard cutoff — write to the slow estimate and treat anything saved as breathing room, not as space for one more section.

Real AI voice speeds, measured on this site's engines

Generic calculators stop at 100/130/160. We synthesized a fixed passage through our own free voices at default speed and timed the audio — because if you are converting words to minutes for a voiceover, the voice’s real pace is the number that matters.

Voice	Engine	Character	Measured wpm	500 words takes
Harper	Zonos	American, deliberate	84	5:57
Miles	Zonos	American, relaxed	125	4:00
Bella	Kokoro	Warm narration	152	3:17
Tara	Orpheus	Conversational	157	3:11
Dan	Orpheus	Casual, grounded	157	3:11
Emma	Kokoro	British, calm	181	2:46
Adam	Kokoro	Clear, confident	187	2:40

Method: each voice read the same passage at default speed through our production engines on 2026-08-21; durations come from the audio files themselves. Kokoro voices read a 137-word passage; Orpheus and Zonos voices a 42-word one, because those APIs cap request length. The spread is the finding: the same 500 words runs 2:40 on Adam and 5:57 on Harper, which is why a one-number estimate can miss by a factor of two.

How many words is a speech of each length?

Working backwards from a time slot: multiply the minutes by your pace. At the standard 130 wpm, a 5-minute speech is about 650 words; a 10-minute one about 1,300.

Speech length	Slow (100 wpm)	Average (130 wpm)	Fast (160 wpm)
1 minute	100	130	160
2 minutes	200	260	320
3 minutes	300	390	480
4 minutes	400	520	640
5 minutes	500	650	800
10 minutes	1,000	1,300	1,600
15 minutes	1,500	1,950	2,400
20 minutes	2,000	2,600	3,200
30 minutes	3,000	3,900	4,800

How long does each word count take to say?

The same conversion, forwards: divide the word count by the pace. These are clean estimates — pauses for slides, laughter, or emphasis add 10–15% in real delivery.

Word count	Slow (100 wpm)	Average (130 wpm)	Fast (160 wpm)
250 words	2:30	1:55	1:34
500 words	5:00	3:51	3:08
750 words	7:30	5:46	4:41
1,000 words	10:00	7:42	6:15
1,500 words	15:00	11:32	9:23
2,000 words	20:00	15:23	12:30
2,500 words	25:00	19:14	15:38
5,000 words	50:00	38:28	31:15

Stop estimating — generate the audio and read the runtime

Every table above gives you an approximation. This gives you the answer: turn the script into speech with a real voice, and the file's length is your exact duration. The sample below is the very passage our measurements used.