Type the phrase below as fast and accurately as you can. The timer starts with your first keystroke and your best result is saved on this device.
Dvorak Typing Speed Test
The typing speed test measures how fast and accurately you type. Retype the phrase shown above using your physical keyboard or by clicking the on-screen keys. The timer starts the moment you press the first key and stops automatically when the text matches.
Your speed is shown in words per minute (WPM), where one word equals five characters. Accuracy compares your keystrokes against the target text. Your best result is stored in this browser so you can try to beat it.
A unique feature: While you type, you can glance at the on-screen keyboard to see which keys to press. It is also a great way to discover how each character is produced - especially fascinating to watch for Korean and Japanese, where a single block of text is assembled from several keystrokes that light up one after another. You can also type directly on the on-screen keyboard if you do not have a localized physical keyboard.
Every layout comes with its own typing test, using real phrases in that language. Choose one under the test - from Russian and German to Korean, Japanese and Arabic - and the keyboard switches with it. For Korean and Japanese the highlight even walks through the individual jamo or romaji that build each character, so a quick speed test doubles as a lesson in how the script is typed.
The Dvorak keyboard layout (pronounced duh-VOR-ack) is an ergonomic alternative to QWERTY. QWERTY was laid out in the 1870s by Christopher Latham Sholes around the mechanics of early typewriters - back when touch typing did not yet exist - so it was never tuned for speed or comfort. In the 1930s Dr. August Dvorak (University of Washington, 1894-1975) and his colleague William Dealey set out to redesign the keyboard around the typist rather than the machine, drawing on studies of English letter frequency, the physiology of the hand, and how people actually type. Their layout was patented in 1936; the early variants were finally settled when the American National Standards Institute approved a standard in 1982 - the arrangement adapted for computers and reproduced here. Dvorak even worked out separate one-handed layouts for left- and right-handed typists.
The guiding idea is to put the busiest keys under the strongest fingers. On the home row Dvorak gathers all five vowels (a o e u i) under the left hand and the most common consonants (d h t n s) under the right, so ordinary words flow back and forth between the hands. About 70 percent of English keystrokes land on the Dvorak home row, against roughly a third on QWERTY. When one hand does type several letters in a row, the design tries to roll from the outer fingers inward - an inboard motion that is easier to drum out, as you can feel by tapping your fingers on a table. The next-most-used letters sit on the row above, since reaching up is easier than reaching down, and the rarest keys are left for the bottom row. Type minimum on QWERTY and then on Dvorak to feel the contrast.
Because real words - thousands of them - already live on the home row, many people find Dvorak quicker to pick up than the fff and jjj drills of a QWERTY class. There are no dead keys: every key prints its character directly, and Shift adds capitals and the number-row symbols. It is the very same physical keyboard as US QWERTY, so nothing changes in hardware - click the on-screen keys, type on your own keyboard to watch the mapping light up, or take the Dvorak typing test to practice on real phrases. Switching back to QWERTY is one click away.
If Dvorak is so carefully thought out, why is it not everywhere? Mostly inertia: by the time it arrived, millions of machines and trained typists were already committed to QWERTY, and that head start has carried it ever since. The size of Dvorak's advantage is debated too - independent reviews, most famously Liebowitz and Margolis in their 1990 paper The Fable of the Keys, note that many early favorable tests were run by Dvorak himself, and controlled studies find no decisive speed winner once the effort of relearning is counted. What is less disputed is that Dvorak asks for noticeably less finger travel, which is why its users prize it as much for comfort as for raw speed.
Want this typing test on your own website? You can embed it with a single line of HTML.
Frequently Asked Questions
Your speed is shown in words per minute (WPM). As is standard for typing tests, one "word" counts as five characters, so the score is the number of correctly typed characters divided by five and then by the time you spent. The timer starts the moment you press the first key and stops automatically when your text matches the phrase, so you never start or stop it yourself.
Accuracy is the share of your keystrokes that were correct. Every key you press counts, and each character that does not match the expected one is logged as a mistake - even if you delete it and retype it afterwards. A clean run with no wrong keys scores 100%, while fixing typos along the way lowers the figure. Speed and accuracy are tracked separately, so you can tell whether to push for pace or for precision.
Dvorak types the same English text as QWERTY, so the usual benchmarks apply: counting one "word" as five characters, an average typist runs around 40 WPM, a comfortable touch-typist 60-70 WPM and professionals well beyond. Dvorak's design goal is less finger travel rather than a guaranteed higher number - many people match or modestly beat their QWERTY speed once the relearning is behind them, while controlled studies find no dramatic across-the-board gain. The benchmark that matters most is your own best score, saved here for you to beat.
On your device only. Your best WPM is kept in this browser's local storage - it is not tied to any account and never leaves your computer, so there is nothing to sign up for. You will see it again on your next visit in the same browser, but not on a different device, and clearing your browsing data resets it. In a private or incognito window the score shows during the session but is not kept afterwards.
Yes. Everything happens in your browser. The practice phrases are the only thing fetched from the server; your keystrokes, your speed and your best score are computed and stored locally and are never sent anywhere. There are no accounts, and what you type is never recorded.
Yes, it is completely free, and there is nothing to download, install or sign up for. The test runs entirely in your web browser - just open the page and start typing.
Yes - that is the usual way to take it. Type on your physical keyboard and the matching on-screen keys light up as you go, so you can keep your eyes on the text. You can also click or tap the on-screen keys directly, which helps when you do not have a localized physical keyboard for the layout you are practising. Because the highlight shows exactly which key produces each character, the test doubles as a way to learn a new layout.
All twenty-three Qwertia layouts have their own typing test: English, German, French, Spanish, Russian, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Korean, Arabic, Japanese, Turkish, Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian, Polish, Czech, Greek, Azerbaijani, Hindi and Bengali, plus the alternative Dvorak layout and a calculator-style Numpad. Each test draws on real phrases in that language, and choosing a layout under the test - or with the language button on the keyboard - switches both the phrases and the on-screen keyboard. Pick one from the links below the test.
Dr. Dvorak rearranged the digits too, not just the letters: his original top row ran 7 5 3 1 9 0 2 4 6 8, putting every odd number under the left hand and every even number under the right so that typing figures would balance the two hands the same way the letters do. This odd-even ordering never caught on, and the standardized layout reproduced here restores the digits to the ordinary 1234567890 sequence. The classic arrangement survives today only in the enthusiast Programmer Dvorak variant.
Yes, and they are the most interesting tests to watch. The Korean test uses the standard Dubeolsik layout and assembles the jamo you type into full Hangul blocks; the Japanese test lets you type romaji (converted to kana as you go) or the JIS kana directly; and the Arabic test writes right to left on the Arabic 101 layout. Greek, Russian Cyrillic, and the Devanagari and Bengali INSCRIPT layouts for Hindi and Bengali are all here too. For Korean and Japanese the on-screen highlight even walks through the individual keystrokes that build each character, so a quick speed test doubles as a lesson in how the script is typed.
Instead of pangrams, the Numpad typing test serves up the kind of running calculations an accountant punches all day - sums, subtotals, percentages and price times quantity - so you build real ten-key speed on the calculator-style number pad rather than practising letters. Because the Numpad has no space bar, each set of figures is a self-contained phrase.
Yes. You can embed the test on your own site with a single line of HTML: click Embed (or the "embed it" link under the description) to copy a ready-made iframe snippet. It runs just as it does here, entirely in the visitor's browser.