Reading time: 3 minutes

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Displaying estimated post reading time for your pages is a subtle form of courtesy to your readers. It gives them a useful information on the time they will spend reading the page, so they can eventually bookmark it if they don’t have the time to read it right away. Combined with a reading progress bar, you are really providing a much better reading experience for your readers. Let’s see how to display estimated page reading time in WordPress.

1. The easy way: using a plugin to display estimated reading time

As for almost any feature you’d like to include on a WordPress site: there is a plugin for that. The Read Meter plugin does just what we need and even a little more, it gives you the estimated reading time (including time spent viewing images) and displays a progress bar as you are reading.

Installation is very straightforward, just install it as you would for any other WordPress plugin, then head to Settings > Read Meter and change the settings to fit your website. You can choose what to include in the time count (images, comments,…) and where to display the time count and progress bar. There is even a shortcode to place the bar very accurately on the site.

2. The harder way: using a code snippet

The other way, which is not that hard if you are a bit familiar with WordPress, is to use a code snippet that you include in your theme’s functions.php file. This is a bit lighter weight than adding a plugin just for that functionality, although this function doesn’t go as far as the plugin mentioned above.

To add the estimated reading time in your post, simply copy-paste this code in your functions.php file (or in a code snippet plugin if you use one).

// Main reading time calculation function
function calculate_reading_time($custom_words_per_minute = 200) {
    $post_content = get_post_field('post_content', get_the_ID());
    
    if (empty($post_content)) {
        return 'Less than a minute';
    }
    
    $clean_content = strip_tags($post_content);
    $word_count = str_word_count($clean_content);
    
    $reading_time_minutes = max(1, ceil($word_count / $custom_words_per_minute));
    
    // Format with proper pluralization
    if ($reading_time_minutes === 1) {
        return '1 minute';
    } else {
        return $reading_time_minutes . ' minutes';
    }
}

// Shortcode function
function reading_time_shortcode($atts) {
    // Parse shortcode attributes
    $attributes = shortcode_atts(array(
        'speed' => 200,  // words per minute
        'prefix' => 'Reading time: ',
        'suffix' => ''
    ), $atts);
    
    // Set custom reading speed if provided
    $reading_time = calculate_reading_time($attributes['speed']);
    
    // Return formatted output
    return $attributes['prefix'] . $reading_time . $attributes['suffix'];
}

// Register the shortcode
add_shortcode('reading_time', 'reading_time_shortcode');

Once this is done, your theme is ready to include the estimated reading time. Include it using the shortcodes, either directly in your template or in a Gutenberg block. See the instructions below to understand the shortcode usage and attributes.

<!-- Basic usage -->
[reading_time]

<!-- Custom reading speed (250 words per minute) -->
[reading_time speed="250"]

<!-- Custom prefix and suffix -->
[reading_time prefix="Estimated read: " suffix=" of content"]

<!-- Combined attributes -->
[reading_time speed="300" prefix="⏱️ " suffix=" to read"]

As you can see, you can change the reading speed, which is useful considering various language have various average reading speed.