Six keyboards testedFree in a browserMarked by hand

Find the typing game your fingers will thank you for

Thistledowplay is a small desk of keyboard enthusiasts who spend their lunch breaks racing strangers, chasing a cleaner accuracy line and shooting down words in space. We picked six free browser games, played each one long enough to form a grudge, and wrote down which deserves your evenings and which suits a two-minute warm-up.

Browse the six →Match me to one

6games played to the bone

4marks on every review

0sign-ups needed to read

2long reads on technique

TeaselEyes on the passage, wrists loose, and never look down at the keys.

Letters from readers

What people ask us about typing faster

keybr.com, without much hesitation. It refuses to throw the whole alphabet at you, which sounds limiting but is exactly what a beginner needs. You build speed on a few letters, then the next arrives. Once your hands know where home row lives, move to Monkeytype for testing and keep keybr for warm-ups. The racers are more fun when you are not hunting for keys.

Because each one feeds you different text. A test made from the most common two hundred words is far easier than a TypeRacer quote packed with commas, capitals and names. Some sites also treat errors differently, either forcing you to correct them or simply docking accuracy. Compare yourself against yourself on one site, in one mode, and the numbers become meaningful again.

Not to start. You can open every one of the six and type immediately. Accounts become useful when you want history: Monkeytype and TypeRacer keep a record of your results if you sign in, and Nitro Type ties your car, cash and team to a login. If you only want a quick check or a warm-up, you can stay anonymous happily.

Mostly they want a physical keyboard, and that is reflected in the device line on each review. ZType is the exception, with official mobile apps alongside the browser version. Touchscreen typing is a different skill, with autocorrect and thumbs doing the work, so for genuine keyboard practice a laptop or desktop is the honest recommendation.

It can make practice more pleasant, which matters, because pleasant practice gets done. But the speed comes from habit, not hardware. Our 55 words per minute tester improved more on a cheap laptop keyboard with keybr than our fast typist did after changing switches. Fix technique first; treat a new board as a reward rather than a shortcut.

Little and often beats long and rare. Fifteen minutes most days will move your numbers further than a two-hour session at the weekend, because the habit is built in your hands overnight. Keep a note of your speed once a week rather than after every test, so a bad morning does not convince you that you are getting worse.

Several are widely used in classrooms. Nitro Type and ZType in particular feel like games first, which keeps younger typists at it. Each site has its own rules on accounts and ages, so check those on the official page before signing up. For reading this site, nobody needs to register for anything.

The six on our desk

Six ways to put a keyboard through its paces

Two pure speed tests, one patient trainer, two live racers and a space shooter. Each card below shows where the game shines, how much of your week it tends to swallow, and which device it really wants. Ranked by how often we reached for it unprompted once the review was filed.

Our first pick01

Minimalist speed test

Monkeytype

The cleanest typing test on the web. Words sit quietly on a plain background and the test starts the moment you press a key. Choose time or word-count runs, quotes, zen or your own text, pick from a huge wardrobe of colour themes, and read a detailed chart of speed and errors once you finish.

Many test modesHundreds of themesDetailed result charts

Desktop browser

Honest measuring10

Real improvement8

Fair on a free footing10

Pull of the next session8

Open Monkeytype Full write-up

Best teacher02

Adaptive trainer

keybr.com

A patient touch-typing tutor that starts with only a few of the most common letters and invents pronounceable practice words from them. New keys appear only once you hit your target speed, and lessons keep circling back to whichever letters slow you down. Slow at first, remarkably effective after a fortnight.

Adaptive lessonsPer-key statisticsMultiplayer mode

Desktop browser

Honest measuring8

Real improvement10

Fair on a free footing9

Pull of the next session7

Train on keybr Full write-up

Bookworm’s race03

Quote racing

TypeRacer

The veteran of online typing races, launched in 2008. You race other people by typing passages from books, films, songs and games, and every result goes into your record. Private tracks let you race friends with a shared link, and a practice mode lets you type quietly alone.

Real quote passagesPrivate race roomsWPM history

Desktop browser

Honest measuring8

Real improvement7

Fair on a free footing9

Pull of the next session8

Join a TypeRacer race Full write-up

Pure adrenaline04

Typing shooter

ZType

A space shooter in which your keyboard is the only weapon. Every incoming ship carries a word, and each correct letter fires a shot at it. Waves grow faster and the words grow longer, so accuracy decides whether you survive. Plays instantly in the browser, with official mobile versions too.

Arcade shooter actionRising wave speedInstant play, no sign-up

Desktop browser; mobile app also available

Honest measuring6

Real improvement7

Fair on a free footing10

Pull of the next session9

Launch ZType Full write-up

Garage builder05

Car racing typing

Nitro Type

Cartoon cars, live races and a garage to fill. Type a short passage as fast and accurately as you can to drive against other players, earn Nitro Cash and experience after each race, and spend it on new cars. Join a team, chase seasonal leaderboards and use nitros to leap ahead.

Live typing racesCollectible carsTeams and seasons

Desktop browser

Honest measuring6

Real improvement6

Fair on a free footing6

Pull of the next session9

Race in Nitro Type Full write-up

Many tongues06

Multilingual speed test

10FastFingers

A sixty-second typing test built from the two hundred most common words of each language, with more than forty languages to choose from. Day-long competitions, live races for up to twenty players and custom text practice round it out, which makes it unusually useful for anyone typing beyond English.

Tests in 40+ languages24-hour competitionsCustom text practice

Desktop browser

Honest measuring7

Real improvement6

Fair on a free footing8

Pull of the next session6

Test on 10FastFingers Full write-up

Sort and sift the full six →

Three questions, one match

Not sure which keyboard game fits? Let Teasel sort it

Tell us why you sat down, how long you have and what makes you grin. The quiz weighs your answers against the tags we gave each game and names the best first stop.

Teasel

Long reads

Technique notes from our longer pieces

Long read

Learning to touch type as an adult without losing heart

Most adults who try to learn touch typing give up in the first week, because they get slower before they get faster. Here is how to survive that dip and come out typing properly.

Long read

What your words per minute really says about you

A words-per-minute figure looks precise, but it depends heavily on what you typed, how errors were treated and whether you were having a good morning. Here is how to read the number without fooling yourself.

Keyboard duel

Weigh two typing games against each other

Opening pick

against

Challenger

Pick a temperament

Six typing temperaments and the game that suits each

People come to typing games for very different reasons. Here is how we would match a few familiar characters to the six.

measurer

The quiet measurer

You want a number you can trust and nothing shouting at you while you earn it. Monkeytype hands you a minimal screen, a choice of test lengths and a detailed chart afterwards, then lets you decide whether to try again.

Monkeytype →rebuilder

The habit rebuilder

You have typed with four fingers for twenty years and want to unlearn it. keybr.com starts you on a handful of letters, adds new ones only when you are ready, and keeps steering practice towards the keys you fumble.

keybr.com →bookish

The bookish competitor

You like a race but want it to mean something. TypeRacer drops you into a line from a novel, a film or a song alongside strangers, and logs every result so a slow evening still adds to a long record.

TypeRacer →arcade

The arcade fidget

Drills bore you within a minute. ZType turns each word into an enemy ship and each correct letter into a shot, so you practise accuracy without noticing, mostly because panic is a strong teacher.

ZType →garage

The garage tinkerer

You want something to show for your effort. Nitro Type gives you a cartoon car, a live race, Nitro Cash after every finish, and teams to join, so steady practice slowly fills a garage you actually care about.

Nitro Type →polyglot

The polyglot

You type in more than one language, or want to. 10FastFingers builds its one-minute test from the commonest words in each language it supports, and runs live races and day-long competitions alongside it.

10FastFingers →

How the marks are made

The Thistledowplay routine behind every mark

No score here comes from a feature list. Each game got weeks of ordinary use from more than one of us, on more than one keyboard, at the awkward times real people practise: before work, after tea, during the dull part of a phone call. Then we argued about it.

Weeks of ordinary typing, logged honestly

Every game was played across at least three weeks, mostly in short bursts because that is how typing practice actually happens. We noted our speed and accuracy when we started and again at the end, and wrote down the moments we closed the tab in a huff. Those moments matter as much as the good ones, because they decide whether you come back tomorrow.

Three weeks minimumShort and long sessionsBefore and after numbers

Two keyboards, two typists, one argument

One of us types around 110 words per minute on a clicky mechanical board; another hovers near 55 on a laptop with a British layout and a sticky full stop. If a game delighted only the fast typist, or only the learner, we said so. A typing game has to make sense at both ends of the speed scale to earn a high mark.

Mechanical and laptopFast and slow typistsUK layout tested

Four marks, each out of ten

We score every game on the same four criteria: how honestly it measures you, how well it actually improves your typing, how it feels to play on a free footing, and how much it pulls you back on a dull Wednesday. The marks are deliberately spread out. A seven here is a real compliment, and nobody gets a ten for being merely pleasant.

Same four criteriaSpread-out marksOpinion, clearly owned

Where the lights get paid for

Thistledowplay is a reading site and it stays free to read. Some of the play buttons may become partner links in future, and when they do we will mark them plainly on the page. The ranking was settled by play before any such arrangement existed, and it is the ranking we would defend over a pint. If you think we have marked a game wrongly, write in and make your case.

#1 · Our first pick

9.0/10 on our desk

Top of the board

Monkeytype

Monkeytype earns first place because it does the most important job in this niche better than anything else: it gets out of the way. Open the page, start typing, and a clean set of words simply responds to you.

Timed, words, quote, zen and custom modesOpen source under GPL-3.0Optional account keeps your history

Everything beyond that first test is optional, which is exactly why it works. Pick timed or word-count runs, quotes, zen mode with no end point, or your own custom text. Add punctuation and numbers when the plain lowercase stuff feels too easy. Swap the colour scheme on a whim. After each run a chart plots your speed and the moments you stumbled, so you can see whether a bad score came from one tangled word or a slow fade. It is open source, quick to load and, crucially, honest about your numbers.

Start a Monkeytype test →Read the full test

Fingers on home row

Pick one game and give it a fortnight

The best typing game is the one you will open again tomorrow. Choose a single site from the six, practise for a quarter of an hour on most days, and check your numbers at the end of two weeks. Then come back and tell us how it went.

See the full six →Games you kept