How long does it take to read 100 pages?

The time for 100 pages comes from three numbers: the pages, the words on one page, and the words you read in a minute. You multiply the pages by the words on a page. Then you divide by your words a minute.

For an average reader that comes to 1h 57m of reading. You do not have to do it in one sitting. Two made-up readers show how.

Anna reads her 100 pages on a Sunday afternoon, with a break in the middle. She is done the same day. Ben reads for 20 minutes every evening. 117 minutes divided by 20 is a little under six, so Ben finishes on the sixth evening. Both of them read for the same two hours.

The table shows the time for other numbers of pages, for a slow, an average and a fast reader. The speeds come from a large review of studies of reading speed. It found that most adults read between 175 and 300 words a minute.

Every time in the table is reading time only, for a page of 278 words.

Reading 300 pages takes about 5h 50m at an average speed. The sum is the same as before. 300 pages are 83,400 words, and 83,400 divided by 238 is about 350 minutes.

At 30 minutes a day, that is 12 days. At an hour a day, it is six days. A slow reader needs about 7h 57m for the same pages, and a fast reader about 4h 38m.

Reading a book takes about 7h 30m, if it is a novel of average length and you read at an average speed. That figure comes from a small study inside the same review.

In that study, 48 people who read a lot each timed themselves reading one book. The books were novels. On average they had 385 pages and 107,000 words. 107,000 words divided by 238 words a minute is about 450 minutes.

This page takes its words on a page from the same books: 107,000 words divided by 385 pages is about 278 words a page.

A real book fits the sum. The review reports that a company that makes e-readers looked at the novel Mockingjay, which has 101,000 words. Its average reader finished the book in seven hours.

At 20 minutes a day, those hours take 23 days. To finish more books in a year, see how to read more.

Three things change the time for 100 pages: how many words are on the page, what kind of book it is, and where you read it.

The size of the page.

A page with small print holds more words, so it takes longer. To find the number for your book, count the words in five full lines. Divide by five, then multiply by the number of lines on a page. If your page holds 400 words, then 100 pages are 40,000 words, and an average reader needs about 2h 48m.

The kind of book.

Novels go a little faster. The review found an average of 260 words a minute for novels and 238 for other books. At the speed for novels, 100 pages take about 1h 47m. Reading out loud is slower, at about 183 words a minute. Then 100 pages take about 2h 32m.

Where you read.

Reading at home can take much longer than the sum says. The review describes a study in which students read one chapter of a textbook. Students who read it in a room at the university, with a researcher watching, took 34 minutes. Students who read it at home took 1h 9m. Both groups did equally well on a quiz about the chapter. The review says that people who read with nobody watching rarely keep their mind on the page the whole time.

So give yourself more time than the sum says. If you want to get through your pages sooner, see how to read faster.

Every reading speed on this page comes from the review below, which we read again in full for this page. The times are our own sums, worked out from its averages.

1. Brysbaert (2019). How many words do we read per minute? A review and meta-analysis of reading rate. Journal of Memory and Language.