Baker Ventures › FlipStage › Speaking time

How long will your talk actually take?

Paste the script or your speaker notes, measure how fast you really speak, and see the number before you are standing in front of someone. Then see how it splits across your slides.

Free. Runs in your browser, makes no network requests, and keeps nothing. Updated October 13, 2026.

1. Your script

0 words.

2. Your speaking rate

A guessed rate is the reason these calculators are wrong. Read the passage below out loud at the pace you would actually present at, and this will work out your real rate.

Not measured yet.

Measured, or set it by hand.

How many you will move through.

Pauses, questions, finding your place.

Why the rate has to be yours

Every other calculator for this picks a words-per-minute number for you and hides it. That single number is the whole answer, and it is different for every person in every room. The same 1,400 word script is 10 minutes and 46 seconds at 130 words a minute and 14 minutes at 100. If the slot is twelve minutes, that choice decides whether you finish.

So this page does not tell you what your rate is. The 130 in the box is a starting value, not a finding, and the reading timer above replaces it with a measurement of you. Measure it once, at the pace you would actually use with someone sitting across from you, and reuse the number.

What the overhead field is for

A word count only prices the words. It does not price the pause after the line that matters, the question at slide three, the ten seconds spent finding your place, or the sentence you add because they looked confused. None of that is in the script and all of it is in the room.

Fifteen percent is the default here and it is an assumption, not a measurement. If you have timed a real run of this talk, use what the clock said instead. If you take no questions and read verbatim, set it to zero.

The app this sits next to

FlipStage splits one iPhone screen into two facing halves, one showing the slide to the person across from you and one showing your speaker notes, controls and a timer. It is free, on-device and has nothing to buy inside it.

To be clear about the division of labour: FlipStage does not do this arithmetic. It runs an elapsed timer you can pause, with optional targets of 5, 10, 15 or 20 minutes, and turns the timer red once you pass the target you set. Working out which target your script fits is this page's job, and you only need to do it once.

Get FlipStage on the App Store

Free. iPhone, iOS 16.4 or later.

One limit worth knowing before you download. FlipStage does not save decks yet. Photos you import, notes you type and any reordering last until you close the app, and then it returns to the built-in sample slides.

Questions

How long does it take to read 1000 words out loud?
At 100 words a minute, 10 minutes. At 130, 7 minutes and 42 seconds. At 160, 6 minutes and 15 seconds. The spread across ordinary speaking rates is about four minutes on the same script, which is why the rate is an input here and not a constant.
How do I measure my own speaking rate?
Read a passage of known length out loud at your real presenting pace and time it. Words divided by minutes is your rate. The timer above counts the passage, times your reading and writes the answer into the box.
Does this upload my script?
No. The page makes no network requests after it loads, there is no account and nothing is stored. Closing the tab discards it.
Why is my talk longer in the room than at my desk?
Because the script is only part of what you say. The overhead field is there so you can add that time on purpose rather than finding it at the twenty minute mark.
Is the per-slide split a plan I should follow?
It is an even division, nothing cleverer. Slides are never equal, and a split that says 1:36 each is a sanity check on whether you have too many slides for the time, not an instruction.

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