APM test

No study has timed this test. The nearest published figure comes from a study of 3,360 StarCraft 2 players, from beginners to full-time professionals, whose own games averaged 117 actions per minute^[1]. A game counts what its own rules call an action, and there every action follows a decision; this test counts every key and every click, with nothing to decide, so most people reach far more here. The first view of your result sets you beside that average as a mark, never as a rank, and How we measured this draws your earlier runs of the same length as short ticks on a ruler.

Your own numbers still tell you a lot. A run that starts fast and fades shows in the ten-second rows. A big share of keyboard actions says your hands rely on keys, and a big share of clicks says they rely on the mouse. Neither is better, and neither tells you how well you play anything.

Every action is stamped with the time the browser recorded for it. A run counts the actions whose stamps fall from your first action until the length you chose has passed, and nothing else. An action that arrives a little late, because the browser was busy, still counts if its stamp is inside the time. So the result is the same on a fast computer and on a slower one.

Mouse buttons are counted as they go down, and a second button pressed while the first is held counts too. A run with more actions a second than a human hand makes, or with actions spaced as evenly as a machine's, is labelled and kept apart. Your result stays in this browser and nowhere else: it never goes into a link, and it is never sent to us. You can read about us to see who makes the site.

The easiest way to a higher count is to use more fingers on more keys. Tapping a row of keys with a different finger each, as a drummer tapping a rhythm, makes far more actions than hammering one key. The mouse adds to the count too: clicking while your other hand types means two streams of actions at once.

• The length of the run: a shorter run gives a higher number than a longer one, because nobody keeps a sprint up.
• Your keyboard: a light, short key travel returns quicker than a stiff one.
• Your posture: a relaxed wrist resting on the desk tires more slowly than a hand held in the air.
• Warming up: the first run of the day is often slower than the third.

The test is made for a computer with a keyboard and a mouse. A phone has neither, and its screen keyboard does not report keys the way a real keyboard does. If you are on a phone or a tablet, the CPS test counts your taps instead, and the spacebar clicker counts key presses if you have a keyboard but no mouse.