The best speed reading apps

When the reading piles up faster than you can get through it, a speed reading app sounds like the obvious fix. The catch is that reading faster only counts if you still understand what you read. Understanding is where these apps differ the most. And you can start with Elevate, a brain training app whose reading games train speed and understanding together.

Quick answer: What are the best speed reading apps?

• Elevate is the best speed reading app if you want to read faster without losing the meaning. Elevate's reading games practice speed, tone, and vocabulary.

• Elevate Premium costs $39.99 a year with a seven-day free trial, or $9.99 a month, as of November 2026, and prices vary by country, platform, and promotion.

• Reading research finds it's unlikely you can double or triple your speed and understand just as well. Aim for a steady gain you can keep.

• For the articles and books you already have, pick a reader app with a pacer (a highlight that moves along the page) when you need every detail, and a one-word reader (which flashes the words one after another) when the gist is enough.

Does speed reading really work?

Speed reading works up to a point, and past that point, you trade understanding for speed. Normal reading speed is around 250 words a minute. A 2016 review of the research on reading found it unlikely that anyone can double or triple that speed while still understanding a text as well as they do at their normal pace.

Skimming is a different job. When you only need the gist of something, like a long email thread you were copied on, reading faster or skimming gets you through it with moderate understanding. Often, that's all you need.

How do speed reading apps work?

Speed reading apps work in one of three ways, and each one suits a different kind of reading:

• Training: games and exercises that practice reading itself, such as timed passages, vocabulary games, or eye exercises.

• A pacer: A highlight moves along the lines of a normal page at the speed you set, and you keep up with it. The words stay on the page, so you can still glance back at one you missed.

• One word at a time: The app flashes each word in the same spot on the screen, so your eyes don't have to travel along a line. This method is called rapid serial visual presentation, or RSVP.

Glancing back at a word you missed helps you understand what you read. In a 2014 study, readers who couldn't go back to a word once their eyes had moved past it understood less of what they read. And at 700 and 1,000 words a minute, readers in a 2017 study did better with normal text on a page than with words flashed one at a time.

How do I train myself to speed read with an app?

Training yourself to speed read comes down to the two things the 2016 review recommends: practicing reading and building a bigger vocabulary. That's the kind of practice Elevate's reading games are built for:

• Processing works on your reading speed while making sure you don't lose the meaning. It's the game for getting through a long article before a meeting.

• Connotation helps you understand meaning and tone as you read, like when the wording of an email leaves you wondering how the sender feels.

• Agility builds the vocabulary you need for advanced books and articles, so fewer words stop you in the middle of a page.

Every day, Elevate puts together a workout around the skills you need most, so your practice takes a few minutes instead of an hour. As you play, Elevate shows which skills are your strengths and how you compare with other players, and weekly reports show how you're doing over time. It's also the app Apple named its iPhone App of the Year in 2014.

The reading games sit alongside 40+ games for memory, math, writing, and speaking. Elevate adjusts the difficulty as you improve, so each session stays challenging without getting frustrating. Elevate's free version gives you one three-game workout a day, a game of the week, and basic performance tracking. The reading games come with Elevate Premium. If you'd like to read faster without losing the thread, try Elevate's reading games.

Other training apps take a drill-based approach. Readlax has speed reading drills, such as letter grids and an exercise for subvocalization (silently saying each word in your head), next to memory games, touch typing, and a habit tracker. Superead pairs eye movement and peripheral vision exercises with speed tests and reading comprehension tests that give you instant feedback. On Android, Speed Reading by Green Key Universe has number-grid drills called Schulte tables, attention and memory exercises, and courses. For techniques you can use on any page without an app, see our guide to reading fast and remembering more. For a wider look at apps that train more than reading, see our list of the best brain training apps.

Which apps help you read your own books and articles faster?

Reader apps work on what you already have to read, whether that's a web article, a PDF, or a book.

Two of them pace you with a highlight. Outread moves a highlighter along web articles on iPhone, iPad, and Mac, has a one-word Flash Mode, and its Outread+ plan adds ePub, PDF, and Word files. ZipWeasel has five reading modes, including a highlight pacer, chunking (a few words at a time), and a mode that bolds the start of each word. ZipWeasel opens PDFs, Word files, EPUBs, web pages, and photos of printed pages on iPhone, iPad, and Android.

The rest flash the words in one spot, usually one at a time. Spreeder works on iPhone, iPad, Android, Mac, Windows, the web, and in Chrome and Safari, and its free web app takes up to 200 words. Spritz shows each word with one letter in red for your eyes to rest on, in its iPhone and Android app and its Chrome and Safari extensions. AccelaReader runs in your browser: You paste in text and choose how many words it shows at once. Speeedy is free and open source, needs no account, and reads your PDFs and EPUBs in the browser while keeping your files on your own device.

Which speed reading app should you choose?

Pick by what you're reading and what you need from it:

• To read faster and keep the meaning: Elevate's reading games.

• To get through the article or PDF in front of you: a reader app with a pacer that runs on the device you read on.

• To skim a long document for the gist: a one-word reader.

• To try it for free: Take our free reading speed test (more on it below) to see where you stand, then use one of the free readers in the table below.

How can you tell if a speed reading app is working for you?

The surest way is to measure your speed and your understanding before you start and again after a couple of weeks. Take the free reading speed test. You read a short story at your normal pace. The test times you and then asks three questions about what you read, so each question is a third of your score. Two weeks of practice looks like this:

• Day 1: Take the reading speed test and write down your words per minute and your score.

• Days 2 to 13: Spend a few minutes a day in Elevate's reading games or reading with a pacer, at a speed that feels a little fast but still makes sense.

• Day 14: Take the test again with a different story, so you aren't answering from memory, and compare both numbers with Day 1.

Reading faster with the same score is real progress. Reading faster with a lower score means you've traded some understanding for speed, so ease off a little and let your understanding catch up.