Who Is the Fastest Typist in the World?
The records, the people behind them, and why there is no single official answer any more.
By Abhishek, Founder & Maintainer · Reviewed by The Ai-TypingTest Editorial Team
Published
Short answer: there is no single official title today. The best-documented record belongs to Barbara Blackburn, who could sustain 150 WPM for 50 minutes and reached 212 WPM in short bursts. Among modern competitors, Sean Wrona won the 2010 Ultimate Typing Championship, and elite online typists now post sprint scores above 250 WPM on easy word lists.
The records at a glance
| Record | Who | Speed | Context |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sustained typing (Guinness, retired) | Barbara Blackburn | 150 WPM for 50 min; 212 WPM peak | Dvorak keyboard; peak set in 1985 |
| Ultimate Typing Championship 2010 | Sean Wrona | Won the final 163 WPM to 110 | Live head-to-head competition on real text |
| Fastest phone typist in a 37,000-person study | Anonymous participant | About 85 WPM | 2019 study by Aalto, Cambridge and ETH Zürich; average was 38 WPM |
| US court reporter certification (RPR) | Certified stenographers | Up to 225 WPM at 95% accuracy | Stenotype chord keyboard, not QWERTY |
Barbara Blackburn: the record Guinness stopped counting
Blackburn, an American typist, appeared in the Guinness Book of World Records from the 1970s to the mid-1980s. She could maintain 150 WPM for 50 minutes — about 37,500 keystrokes — and in 1985 reached 212 WPM for a brief period. Unusually, she typed on the Dvorak layout rather than QWERTY, having struggled with QWERTY at school.
From its 1986 edition, Guinness dropped the category, saying records on electric and computer keyboards “cannot be compared with any accuracy.” That is why her record still stands — nobody has been able to officially beat it since.
Sean Wrona and competitive typing
Modern speed typing is mostly online. Sean Wrona won the 2010 Ultimate Typing Championship, beating Nate Bowen in the final 163 WPM to 110, and is widely cited as having beaten Blackburn’s endurance mark unofficially. Online platforms have since produced even higher numbers, but mostly on short tests of common words, which is a very different task from sustained typing of real prose with punctuation.
Why typing records are so hard to compare
- Test length. A 15-second sprint is far easier to peak on than 50 minutes of continuous typing.
- Text difficulty. Lists of short, common, lowercase words score much higher than real sentences with capitals and punctuation.
- Scoring. Gross versus net WPM, and how errors are penalised, can shift a result by 10–20%. See gross vs net WPM.
- Hardware and layout. Blackburn used Dvorak; stenographers use chord keyboards; phone typists use thumbs and autocorrect.
Where does that leave the rest of us?
| Speed | What it means |
|---|---|
| Around 40 WPM | Roughly average |
| 60–70 WPM | Genuinely good; clears most job requirements |
| 80–100 WPM | Fast; professional level |
| 120+ WPM | Elite; a small minority of dedicated typists |
| 150+ WPM sustained | World-class |
What the fastest typists share is not special hardware but technique: strict touch typing, reading several words ahead, an even rhythm and very few errors — plus thousands of hours of practice. Want to see where you land? Take a 1-minute typing test, then try to hold that pace over a 10-minute test — that gap is what separates sprinters from record-holders. Top scores appear on the leaderboard.
Frequently Asked Questions
Barbara Blackburn's records (150 WPM sustained, 212 WPM peak) are the last general typing-speed records Guinness published. It removed the category from its 1986 edition, so there is no current Guinness WPM record to beat.
In short bursts, yes — a handful of elite typists reach it. Sustaining 200 WPM on real prose for minutes at a time is exceptionally rare.
The Dvorak Simplified Keyboard, not QWERTY. There is no strong evidence that Dvorak makes most people faster, but it is often cited as more comfortable.
There is no official record. In the largest study to date — over 37,000 volunteers in 2019 — the fastest participants reached about 85 WPM, against an average of 38 WPM.
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