The most-cited number for adult silent reading of English is ~225 WPM — words per minute. It's the sober median across large empirical studies. Your blog's "5 min read" widget is probably assuming something else.
The numbers that matter
- Silent reading, general prose — 225 WPM median. College-educated readers average closer to 250–300.
- Reading aloud conversationally — 150 WPM. This is what you budget for presentations.
- Technical content (code, math) — 150–180 WPM. Backtracking drops the effective rate.
- Speed reading — claims of 500+ WPM exist but comprehension craters above ~350. Studies consistently find the tradeoff.
Why widgets disagree
Medium uses 275 WPM. Many WordPress plugins default to 200. Some SEO tools use 250. There's no industry standard because reading speed varies enormously by reader, genre, and purpose. Most widgets pick a number that makes posts look short — a 1,000 word article reads as "4 min" at 250 WPM but "6 min" at 180 WPM. Both are defensible; neither is a law of nature.
A defensible estimate
For a typical blog post with a general audience, 225 WPM lands near the empirical median. For technical or data-heavy content, drop to 180. For presentations, budget 150. Show the read time as a floor ("5 MIN" rather than "4 min 37 sec") — the precision implied by the second figure is false.
Paste text, get word count, character count, read time, and speak time. All live in the browser.