CPS test

No scientific study has measured how fast people click, so there is no average of people we could honestly set you beside. What exists are figures that click-test sites publish. One says an average person clicks 5 to 7 (community range, not a norm)^[1] times a second over runs from several seconds to a minute^[1], and another puts an average user at 6 to 7 (community range, not a norm)^[2]. The first view of your result sets you beside the first of these. How we measured this adds the ranges a site gives for each way of clicking^[3]. We show all of them as what they are: community ranges, not norms, drawn with a dashed line.

The site that publishes these ranges says it asked professional players, but it publishes neither its method nor its data, so treat them as a rough picture. Your own results are a better yardstick: the first view of your result shows your best at the same length, and How we measured this draws your earlier runs as short ticks.

Every click is stamped with the time the browser recorded for it. The run counts the clicks whose stamps fall from your first click until the length you chose has passed, and nothing else. A click that arrives a little late, because the browser was busy, still counts if its stamp is inside the time. That is why two people with the same hand speed get the same result on a fast computer and on a slower one.

Besides the total, we count the clicks of each whole second, find your fastest second (any second, not only the whole ones), work out how evenly your clicks were spaced, and, on runs of 10 sec or more, how much less often you clicked in the last third than in the first. A human hand is never perfectly even. Clicks spaced like a machine's, at speeds where a machine would help, are labelled and kept out of every comparison, and so is a rate no single hand reaches.

Nothing about your clicks leaves this browser. The result is saved here, so you can see your history; it never goes into a link and is never sent to us. You can read about us to see who makes the site.

The biggest difference is the way you click. Ordinary clicking uses one finger and one press per click. Jitter clicking tenses the muscles of the arm so the hand trembles on the button; butterfly clicking puts two fingers on one button and lets them strike in turn; drag clicking pulls a finger across the button so it bounces several times in one stroke. Each gives a higher count than the one before, and each strains the hand more.

• The length of the run: you can keep up a burst for a second or two, but you slow down over half a minute.
• Your mouse: a light button with a short travel lets you click faster than a stiff one.
• A touch screen: a phone usually allows quick taps with two fingers or thumbs, but the screen may miss a tap that is too short.
• Warming up: the first run of the day is often slower than the third.

Fast clicking is a sprint for small muscles. Shake your hand loose between runs, stop when it starts to ache, and do not spend a long time on jitter or drag clicking. A mouse can wear out too: drag clicking in particular is hard on the switch under the button.