Fifteen minutes is the standard conference talk and the standard overrun. About 1,950 words on paper, and considerably fewer in practice once questions and pauses are counted.
A 15 min speech is about 1950 words at a natural speaking pace of 130 words per minute. The realistic range is 1650 words if you present slowly and deliberately, up to 2475 words if you speak quickly. Paste your script into the free calculator on this page to see its real length, measure your own speaking pace so the estimate matches how you actually talk, and load it straight into a free browser teleprompter to rehearse. No account is needed and nothing is uploaded.
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Presets are based on the situation, not where you are from. Measure yourself once and every page here uses your number.
Measure your speaking pace
Read this out loud at the pace you plan to speak. Tap start, read it, tap stop. Nothing is recorded, only the time is measured.
The trick to sounding natural on camera is not talking faster. It is knowing exactly where you are going, so the pauses land where you meant them to rather than where you ran out of road. Read this at the pace you would actually use, and the number at the end will be yours rather than an average.
| Pace | Words per minute | Words |
|---|---|---|
| Presenting | 110 | 1650 |
| Natural | 130 | 1950 |
| Conversational | 150 | 2250 |
| Fast | 165 | 2475 |
These are situation presets, not national averages. Published speaking rates vary more between individuals in one country than they do between countries, so measuring your own pace above is worth more than any figure in this table.
Fifteen minutes of words leaves nothing for the pause after your best line, the laugh you did not expect, or the slide that takes a moment. Write to about twelve minutes and you will finish on time.
Nobody has time to rehearse fifteen minutes repeatedly, and you do not need to. Rehearse the first minute, the last minute, and every transition between sections. Those are the only places a prepared speaker actually comes unstuck.
Frequently asked questions
About 1,950 words at 130 words per minute, though most experienced presenters write closer to 1,500 and let pauses, questions and slide changes fill the rest.
About fifteen and a half minutes at a natural pace, and longer in practice once you add pauses.
Cut the content to twelve minutes of words before you rehearse, not after. Overrunning is almost always a writing problem rather than a delivery problem.