What's a Good Typing Speed?
This is one of those questions where the honest answer is "it depends," but I'll try to give you something more useful than that.
A good typing speed for most people is somewhere between 50-70 WPM. At that range, typing stops being a bottleneck. You can write emails, take notes, and chat without feeling like your fingers are slowing you down.
Below 40 WPM, typing probably feels like work. Above 80 WPM, you're faster than you need to be for most tasks. The returns diminish pretty quickly after that.
Context Matters
"Good" depends entirely on what you're doing.
If you're a student taking notes in lecture, 50 WPM is probably enough. If you're a programmer, 60-70 WPM helps — you spend a lot of time typing, even if it's not continuous prose. If you're a transcriptionist, 80+ WPM is baseline.
For most office jobs, nobody will ever test your typing speed. But the difference between 40 WPM and 65 WPM shows up in how your day feels. Faster typing means less cognitive load on the mechanical act of getting words onto screen.
Accuracy Matters More
Here's something people miss: a "good" typing speed includes accuracy.
Someone typing at 80 WPM with 90% accuracy is actually slower than someone at 65 WPM with 99% accuracy. Why? Backspacing takes time. Fixing errors takes attention. The person with fewer errors finishes first and spends less mental energy on corrections.
Aim for 97% accuracy or higher. If you're making more mistakes than that, you're typing too fast for your current skill level.
How You Compare
Since you're probably curious: if you type 40 WPM, you're average. If you type 60 WPM, you're faster than about 75% of people. If you type 80 WPM, you're faster than about 90%.
The top typists hit 120-150 WPM, but they've specifically trained for speed tests. It's not a useful comparison for everyday typing.
Most people who haven't practiced end up around 35-45 WPM. Most people who practice for a few weeks end up around 55-70 WPM. The improvement curve is steep at first and flattens out over time.
The Honest Answer
If you're typing 50 WPM and it feels comfortable, you're probably fine. If typing feels slow or if you're looking at the keyboard, there's room to improve.
The goal isn't a number. The goal is for typing to feel invisible — for your fingers to keep up with your thoughts without conscious effort. Whether that happens at 55 WPM or 85 WPM varies from person to person.
Take a typing test. If you're unhappy with the result, practice for a few weeks. If you're satisfied, spend your time on something else. There's no magic number you need to hit.