Measure it, then train it: seven free browser tools for reaction, aim, typing and clicking
Disclosure first: I built one of the seven, CPSBench. It’s at number seven, and I’ve tried to be as fair to it as to the others.
Most “test yourself” sites give you a number and nothing else. Useful once, boring by the third visit. The ones worth bookmarking either show you why you got that number, or give you something to do about it. I sorted these by that difference.
Quick picker
- Want one number to compare with friends tonight? Human Benchmark.
- Want to type faster this month? keybr to learn, Monkeytype to measure.
- Want to type faster under pressure? TypeRacer.
- Not typing in English? 10FastFingers.
- Warming up before a shooter? Aim Trainer.
- Clicking, spacebar, rhythm, or checking a dodgy mouse? CPSBench.
1. Human Benchmark
Tests: reaction time, aim, several kinds of memory, typing · Measures or trains: measures · Best habit: one pass through every test, once
The classic. Each test takes a minute, and afterwards you see where you fall on a histogram of everyone else’s scores, which is the part that makes people come back. The reaction test is the famous one (red screen, wait for green, click). It doesn’t really coach you, but no site does the “how do I compare?” moment better.
2. Monkeytype
Tests: typing speed and accuracy · Measures or trains: measures, and tracks history with an account · Best habit: a 60-second test a day
Minimal on the surface and endlessly adjustable underneath. You can pick timed or word-count modes, switch to quotes, add punctuation, change the theme. It’s open source, and its strength is consistency. If you take the same test daily, the history graph tells you honestly whether anything is improving.
3. keybr
Tests: typing technique · Measures or trains: trains · Best habit: 10 to 15 minutes, several times a week
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The one on this list that most directly makes you better. It starts you on a handful of letters and generates practice text aimed at the keys you’re slowest on, adding new letters as you master old ones. Painful if you’ve typed with four fingers for years. That’s the point.
4. TypeRacer
Tests: typing under time pressure · Measures or trains: trains, through competition · Best habit: a few races when you’re bored
You race other people, live, through a quote from a book or film. Speed in a race is a different skill from speed alone in a quiet tab, and some people find it the only format that keeps them practising.
5. 10FastFingers
Tests: typing, in many languages · Measures or trains: measures · Best habit: the one-minute test in whichever language you actually write in
A one-minute test built from the most common words, available in dozens of languages, plus competitions. If you type a lot in something other than English, this is where your real speed shows up.
6. Aim Trainer
Tests: mouse aim · Measures or trains: trains · Best habit: five minutes before playing
Target drills in the browser, aimed at people who play first-person shooters. There’s nothing to install, so it works as a warm-up on a machine where you can’t put a full aim trainer.
7. CPSBench
Tests: click and spacebar speed, rhythm, reaction, the health of your keyboard and mouse · Measures or trains: both · Best habit: a 10-second run, then two minutes in Rhythm mode
My own, so weigh this accordingly. The idea was a click test that explains the number: after a run you see your peak second, how even your gaps were, whether you faded in the second half, and a guess at your technique (one finger, jitter, butterfly). Rhythm mode plays a metronome and scores how many ticks you land, which trains control rather than raw speed.
The less glamorous half turned out to be the useful one: a keyboard tester that catches keys registering twice, a double-click test for worn mouse switches, and a scroll test for wheels that jump backwards.
A routine that uses three of them
- Monday: baseline everything on Human Benchmark. Write the numbers down.
- Most days: 10 minutes of keybr, one Monkeytype test to log the result.
- Before games: five minutes on Aim Trainer, a 10-second click run and one Rhythm round on CPSBench.
- A month later: redo the Monday baseline. The tests that “only measure” are what make the training ones worth it.
All seven are free and run in a browser tab. Between them they cover most of what your hands and eyes do at a computer.
