About SpeechMinutes
A free, browser-only speech timing toolkit for anyone who has to fit words into a fixed slot of time.
What this site is
SpeechMinutes converts word counts into speaking time, and time limits into word budgets. It ships as four focused calculators: the main words to time calculator, a Hindi speech reading time calculator built around the 105 words-per-minute planning pace for Hindi delivery, a speech to pages converter for scripts that have to land on paper as well as on a clock, and a podcast script timer that maps episode lengths to word counts.
Everything runs in your own browser. There is no account, no upload, and no server-side processing of anything you paste. The full details are in the privacy policy, but the short version is that your script never leaves your device.
Why it exists
Most speakers meet the problem too late: the slide deck says five minutes, the draft says 1,400 words, and the two do not agree. Writers, students, podcasters and presenters all need the same quick answer — how long will this actually take — and the usual way to get it is either a search result full of ads or a calculator that asks for an email address first.
This site takes the opposite approach. One page gives the number, a plausible range around it, and the section-by-section timings that show where the time goes. Nothing is gated, nothing is tracked, and the tool keeps working offline after the first load.
How the numbers are kept honest
Two kinds of number appear on this site and they are labelled differently on purpose. The 110, 130 and 160 words-per-minute presets are planning paces — round, usable values that show how much delivery speed moves a total. The reading figures come from measured research: Brysbaert's 2019 meta-analysis of 190 studies and 18,573 participants, cited with its sample size in the pace reference on the home page. Estimates are shown as ranges rather than promises, because a real room never delivers at a constant rate.
Contact
Questions, corrections and bug reports all go to hello@speechminutes.com. Corrections to the timing figures are especially welcome — if a number on this site disagrees with a source you trust, send the source and it will be checked. Feature requests for the calculators are read, though the site deliberately stays small.