The Short Answer
Aim for about 140 to 160 words per minute for most videos. The National Center for Voice and Speech puts conversational American English at about 150, so that's a pace people are used to hearing. Go slower, around 120 to 140, for dense or technical material. Go a little faster for casual, high-energy video.
The number matters less than two things: knowing your own pace, and pausing. A video at 160 words per minute with real pauses sounds calmer than one at 140 with none.
Why You Speed Up on Camera
In a conversation, the other person's face tells you when to slow down. A camera doesn't. Add a bit of adrenaline and a fear of dead air, and most people talk faster on camera than they do anywhere else, often without noticing.
Fast delivery doesn't read as confident. It reads as nervous, and it gives viewers no room to take in what you said before the next point arrives. Going too slow has the opposite problem: it drags, and viewers drift.
A Good Pace for Each Kind of Video
These ranges are starting points, not rules. Your voice, your material and your audience all move them.
- Tutorials and technical explainers: 120 to 150 wpm. Viewers are following along, often while doing something. Give each step room. See teleprompter setups for tutorials.
- Presentations, pitches and talks: 130 to 150 wpm. A steady pace sounds prepared. Slow down further for the one line you want remembered.
- YouTube and talking-head videos: 140 to 170 wpm. Conversational, with the energy of someone telling you about something they care about.
- Short-form video: 150 to 180 wpm. TikToks and Reels reward energy, but rushed words still lose people. Cut words before you speed up. See teleprompter setups for TikTok and Reels.
- Live streams and podcasts: your natural conversational pace. You're reacting in real time, so read only the parts that need precision, like sponsor reads and intros. See teleprompter setups for live streaming.
How Many Words Fit in a Minute
At an average 150 words per minute, a one-minute video is about 150 words. Here's how that scales:
| Length | Deliberate (120 wpm) | Average (150 wpm) | Brisk (170 wpm) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 30 seconds | 60 words | 75 words | 85 words |
| 1 minute | 120 words | 150 words | 170 words |
| 2 minutes | 240 words | 300 words | 340 words |
| 5 minutes | 600 words | 750 words | 850 words |
| 10 minutes | 1,200 words | 1,500 words | 1,700 words |
For your own script at your own pace, paste it into the speech length calculator.
Measure Your Own Pace
Most people guess their pace wrong, and your pace on camera is usually faster than your pace in rehearsal. So measure it rather than guessing.
The quickest way is the pace test on our speech length calculator. Read a 144-word passage aloud, press Done on the last word, and it gives you your words per minute. Nothing is recorded. Then it tells you how long your own script will run at that pace.
For your on-camera pace, record yourself reading a script you know the length of, then divide the word count by the minutes the take ran. Do it with the camera on, because that's the pace that counts.
Slow Down Without Sounding Slow
Telling yourself to slow down mid-take doesn't work. You forget within a sentence, or you start stretching every word, which sounds worse. Change the script instead:
- Pause instead of stretching. Keep your words at their natural speed and add silence between ideas. A one-second stop after a key point does more than ten fewer words per minute.
- Write shorter sentences. Every full stop is a natural place to breathe. Long sentences push you to rush to the end before you run out of air.
- Mark the pauses. Put [pause] after the lines that need to land and [breathe] before long ones. Then the pacing is in the script, not something you have to remember.
- Cut instead of rushing. If the script runs long, take words out. Reading faster to fit a time limit is the most common way a video ends up rushed.
Set Your Teleprompter to Your Pace
A teleprompter scrolling faster than you talk pushes you to speed up, and one scrolling slower leaves you waiting. Set it to the pace you measured, not the pace you'd like to have.
In Avocado you set the scroll speed in words per minute, from 50 to 300, and nudge it with ⌘↑ and ⌘↓ mid-take. Both are free. Voice-activated scrolling goes further: the script moves as you speak and stops when you stop. Adaptive Speed learns your pace as you go, so there's no number to pick. Both are unlimited with Avocado Pro, and the free plan includes three Pro sessions a week.
With Pro, Smart Cues can add pause and breathe markers to your script for you, on Apple Silicon Macs running macOS 15.1 or later. Your session history tracks your pace over time, so you can see whether you're speeding up on camera. For the rest of the delivery, see how to read a teleprompter without looking like you're reading.
