Captain Ratatype
WPM and CPM: one speed, two units
WPM (words per minute) — how many words you manage to type in sixty seconds. CPM counts characters instead of words. Neither tells you anything different — they simply measure the same thing from two sides.
There is a snag, though: words come in wildly different sizes. “A” runs to a single letter, while “uncharacteristically” runs to twenty. So that nobody is judged by the text they happened to get, typists everywhere have settled on one convention: any 5 characters count as a “word”, and that includes spaces and punctuation.
Which means the two units convert into each other in one step:
WPM = CPM ÷ 5
So 200 CPM works out at 40 WPM.
This is why your Ratatype results carry both figures: CPM for English-language texts, and WPM, the international benchmark that an employer anywhere will recognise.
Working the speed out: two everyday examples
Example 1. A message to a colleague
Say you have just fired off a long message in the team chat explaining that a deadline has shifted — 420 characters in all. It took you ninety seconds.
- 420 ÷ 1.5 = 280 CPM
- 280 ÷ 5 = 56 WPM
Respectable! Bear in mind, though, that you were choosing your words as you went, so your purely “mechanical” speed is very probably higher still.
Example 2. A one-minute test
Now you sit a test and get through 230 characters in a minute, 7 of which come out wrong.
- Speed: 230 ÷ 5 = 46 WPM
- Accuracy: 223 characters right out of 230 = 97%
Why the two figures belong side by side
A Ratatype test hands you two results: speed and accuracy. Keeping them apart is deliberate — that way you can see at a glance which of the two actually needs the practice.
Compare these two sets of results:
- Sophie: 46 WPM, accuracy 97%
- Liam: 52 WPM, accuracy 88%
On paper Liam has the edge. In practice, roughly one character in ten comes out wrong, so an email or a report means stopping and correcting himself over and over — and Sophie will almost certainly hand her work in first. What Liam needs is not another gear, but a slower pace until the accuracy catches up.
Accuracy: the multiplier nobody sees
The price of a mistake is never just the mistake. You have to spot the typo, reach for Backspace (more than once, as a rule), put the right letter in and pick your rhythm back up. That is three or four extra movements and a lost second, all from one wrong key.
Put it this way: 50 WPM at 90% accuracy will often finish a real job behind 40 WPM at 98%. One typist keeps doubling back; the other simply carries on.
Worse still, errors bed in. Type “and” as “adn” ten times over and it is that movement your fingers will learn. Hence the rule we come back to in every lesson of the tutor: accuracy first, speed afterwards.
So what counts as a good typing speed?
We went through more than 506,000 tests taken on Ratatype. Here is where everybody landed:
| CPM band | WPM | Proportion of people | |
| “Hunt and peck” | under 100 | under 20 | 15% |
| Beginner | 100–150 | 20–30 | 27.5% |
| Intermediate | 150–200 | 30–40 | 25.1% |
| Assured | 200–250 | 40–50 | 16.1% |
| Pro | 250–300 | 50–60 | 9.1% |
| Master | 300–350 | 60–70 | 6.1% |
| Legend | 350–400 | 70–80 | 1.1% |
The median sits at 30–40 WPM, so anything above 40 WPM already puts you ahead of the majority. Reach 60 WPM and you are into the top 5% — the band where developers, journalists and translators tend to “live”.
The quickest typist on record is reckoned to be Stella Pajunas, who hit 216 WPM on an electric typewriter back in 1946. Somewhere around 18 characters a second — picture that, if you can.
Every band is broken down in our article “What typing speed is considered good? Real data from 506,000 tests”.
Sharpening your accuracy through games
Drilling accuracy on the same exercises wears thin fast. The brain adapts to the monotony, concentration slips, and the same old errors creep back in. That is precisely what our typing games were built for.
Ratashooter: each word is a shot fired
In Ratashooter the way to “shoot down” a word is to type it correctly. Get it right and you have scored a hit and banked the points; slip up and the word sails past you. Each level tightens the screw, and the bonus words demand a sharp reaction.
Where does the accuracy gain come from? The game keeps your eyes on the screen rather than the keys, and it drills one lesson into you: hurrying without precision gets you nowhere. If you want the mega-explosion, type cleanly.
Ratarace: every correct key takes you forward
In Ratarace your rivals are the Ratatype characters, and they match themselves to your pace. Each correct keystroke pushes your character along, which makes every typo a metre of track quite literally thrown away.
It is a neat demonstration of speed and accuracy pulling together: the race goes not to whoever hammers the keys hardest, but to whoever keeps an even, error-free rhythm.
A tip: if Ratarace keeps slipping away from you on the final stretch, ease off by 10–15% and put your attention on accuracy. Nine times out of ten that is where the breakthrough comes from.
It is all free to play from a computer, a laptop or a tablet with a keyboard — no sign-up, nothing to install.
Where to begin today
- Establish your baseline. Sit the typing speed test and take note of both figures — the speed and the accuracy.
- Get touch typing under your belt. If your eyes are still hunting for letters, begin with the lessons in the Ratatype tutor. The hands on screen show you, keystroke by keystroke, which finger belongs on which key.
- Put in 10–15 minutes a day. Short sessions done regularly beat an hour once a week, because muscle memory is built by repetition.
- Bring in a game. The moment your concentration starts to go, switch over to Ratashooter or Ratarace — the same practice, just a good deal more entertaining.
- Review your progress weekly. And do not judge it on WPM alone: speed up while accuracy drops and the sensible response is to slow back down.
Once you have a result worth showing off, pick up a typing speed certificate — it goes nicely on a CV or a LinkedIn profile.
Right then — shall we find out your WPM?
