Free typing certificate
Proof of your typing speed that anyone can check: a five-minute test, checked keystroke by keystroke, with its own page and an Add to LinkedIn button.
Five minutes, a passage from Austen, Dickens, Conan Doyle or Carroll, and your browser. Type it, and once the server has checked every key press you get a certificate with your net speed, accuracy and errors. There is no charge for the test, the certificate or its page.
What the certificate shows
- Your full name, as you entered it for certificates.
- Your net speed in words per minute, your accuracy and your errors.
- How long the test lasted: five minutes.
- Whether the result reaches 40 WPM with three errors or fewer over five minutes, the line used for US federal clerical jobs.
- Its own page on CamelKeys, at /cert/ followed by a ten-character code, where anyone with the link can check it.
How the test works
You need a free CamelKeys account: sign in with Google, or with a name and a password. An email address is optional. Before your first certificate you type your full name as it should appear. It is printed on your certificates and shown nowhere else on the site.
If your account has no year of birth yet, you are asked for it. Certificate pages can be opened by anyone with the link, so there are no certificates for children under 13, and the Add to LinkedIn button appears only from 16, LinkedIn's own minimum age. Accounts in a school class cannot take the certificate test; teachers can print class certificates from the Classes screen instead.
The test is five minutes of continuous text from one of four public-domain classics: Pride and Prejudice, A Christmas Carol, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes or Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the same books you can type page by page on CamelKeys. The passage keeps its capital letters and punctuation, and you type it in the browser. The five minutes start with your first key press. Reloading the page before you start typing is fine, but once you have pressed a key, that is your attempt. You get one certified attempt every 24 hours, and as many practice runs on the same kind of text as you like.
How it is scored
Net speed counts the characters of the words you typed correctly, with the space after each one, and divides by five and by the minutes. That is the standard words-per-minute measure used across CamelKeys, with wrong words left out of the count. Accuracy is the share of your key presses that were right, including mistakes you fixed with Backspace. Errors are the words still wrong when the five minutes end.
An example. In five minutes, the words you got right add up to 1,150 characters with their spaces, which is 1,150 ÷ 5 ÷ 5 = 46 WPM. You pressed 1,240 keys and 1,190 of them were right, so your accuracy is 96%. Two words were still wrong at the end, so you have two errors. That clears the federal line of 40 WPM with three errors or fewer.
Employers count errors in different ways, and some take far more off for each one. What typing speed do jobs ask for? compares their rules.
Checked keystroke by keystroke
Every key press of the test is replayed on the server before a certificate is made, so pasted text, scripts and impossible speeds are rejected. That is what makes the link worth sharing: the result on the page was typed, key by key, in the five minutes it says.
What it does not prove matters just as much. Nobody watched you type, so the certificate shows that the test was typed as recorded, not who typed it. It is not a proctored test, so it does not meet rules that ask for one: California state jobs, for example, accept only certificates from tests proctored in person or virtually. And an employer may give you its own test whatever certificate you bring.
What employers accept
US federal jobs. For clerical and office automation posts, the application often lets you certify your own typing speed, and the agency may test you to check. The CamelKeys certificate does not replace that test, but it gives you an honest, checked number to certify against.
California and many counties. These want a certificate from a supervised test, often no more than two or four years old. This certificate will not count there; look for a proctored test at a state job centre, an adult education centre or a business college instead.
Private employers. Practice varies. A link that opens a checked result is more convincing than a number typed into a form, and it fits on a CV, in an application or on a LinkedIn profile. Some employers will still test you, and it is worth practising for that too.
Add it to LinkedIn
On the certificate page, Add to LinkedIn opens LinkedIn's form for a new licence or certification. LinkedIn no longer always fills in the fields from the link, so the certificate page also lists each one with a copy button: the certification name, the issuing organisation (CamelKeys), the issue date, the credential ID (the certificate's code) and the credential URL (its page). Paste them into the form and save. The certificate then appears in the licences and certifications section of your profile, with a link back to the page that verifies it.
Print it or save it as a PDF
Open the certificate page and use your browser's own print command: Ctrl+P, or Cmd+P on a Mac. Choose a printer for a paper copy, or Save as PDF to attach it to an application. Add the link as well where you can, because the link is the part anyone can check for themselves.
Your certificate, your choice
You can withdraw a certificate at any time. Its link then says that it was withdrawn, so a result you no longer want shown stops being shown. Certificate pages are kept out of search engines: people see one when you give them the link.
Practise first
Practice runs use the same kind of text and are unlimited, so take a few before your certified attempt and save that for a day when you feel ready. The 5-minute typing test builds the stamina, and the typing test with punctuation gets you used to capitals and commas. If errors are what hold you back, start with how to improve typing accuracy.
Questions
Is the typing certificate really free?
Yes. You need a free account; the test, the certificate and its page cost nothing.
Will employers accept it?
It depends on the employer. The test is checked keystroke by keystroke but not proctored, so it does not meet rules that require a proctored test, such as those for California state jobs. US federal jobs often let you certify your own speed.
How often can I take the test?
One certified attempt every 24 hours. Practice runs on the same kind of text are unlimited.
What does “40 WPM with 3 errors or fewer” mean?
It is the line US federal clerical jobs use: at least 40 words per minute on a five-minute sample, with three errors or fewer. Your certificate says whether your result reaches it.