Updated 19 September 2026
Monkeytype alternatives
Monkeytype is excellent at one job and does nothing else, so the right alternative depends entirely on which missing job you need.
You cannot touch type yet → TypingClub or keybr. Monkeytype will not teach you; it has no lessons and no finger guidance. The same keys keep failing → keybr, which drills letters, not words. You stopped practising → a game. You want a score that means something → stay on Monkeytype but change the settings.
Most people who look for a Monkeytype alternative do not need a different test. They need something Monkeytype was never trying to be.
Before you switch: your number is probably inflated
This is the single most discussed thing about Monkeytype in the typing community, and almost nobody mentions it on comparison pages.
The default word list is 200 words. Not 200 words per test — a vocabulary of 200 common English words, shuffled forever. Combined with the default of not stopping on errors and no punctuation, it produces a number well above what you type in real work.
A widely upvoted comment from the community: “records in Monkeytype are just muscle memory of those 200 special words and it doesn't affect your real world typing.” Another: “this 95 wpm is relative to MonkeyType's default settings, which draw from a vocabulary of just 200 words and without stopping on errors. So it's easier than most real typing, resulting in an inflated wpm.”
You can fix that in about fifteen seconds without leaving:
- Switch the language from english to english 10k
- Turn punctuation on
- Set stop on error to word
- Use 60 seconds, not 15
Your number will drop. That drop is the honest part. If it drops a lot, the problem was never Monkeytype and a different site will not help.
Credit where it is due. Monkeytype is free, open source under GPL-3.0, needs no account, and lets you switch ads off in the settings. Its own public stats show over 924 million completed tests. It is not a product trying to extract money from you, and there are about a hundred people funding it on Patreon from $1 a month.
What Monkeytype genuinely does not do
- No lessons. None. Across two full years of releases through 2025 and 2026 — roughly forty shipped versions — not one added a lesson, a course or a curriculum.
- No finger guidance. There is no on-screen keyboard, no finger colour coding, no home-row diagram anywhere in the product.
- No per-key analysis. It has a word burst heatmap and can re-drill missed words, but it is word-level. It will not tell you that your right little finger keeps missing P.
- No adaptive difficulty. Letters are never introduced gradually.
- Nothing for a complete beginner. The community is blunt about this: “monkeytype is literally not the website to learn”.
None of that is a flaw. It is a typing test, and it is the best one. It just means that if any of the above is what you came for, you are in the wrong place.
Five alternatives, by the job you need doing
keybr
If specific keys keep failing you
The most useful complement to Monkeytype, and the one the typing community recommends far more than any other. keybr models your per-letter speed and accuracy, then generates practice text weighted toward your worst letters.
It unlocks the alphabet gradually, so a beginner can start here too. Where Monkeytype tells you that you type 62 wpm, keybr tells you that your B and your semicolon are the reason.
- Per-letter analysis, which Monkeytype does not have
- Adaptive: new letters unlock only when you are reliable
- Free, no account
- Generated pseudo-words feel unnatural to some people
- No game layer at all
TypingClub
If you never learned finger placement
If you are still looking at the keyboard, Monkeytype is actively making things worse — you are drilling a bad habit at speed. TypingClub is a free sequential course of around 650 lessons that teaches which finger owns which key.
The standing community advice is roughly: a week on TypingClub, then keybr, then Monkeytype forever after.
- Actually teaches the keyboard
- Free and no account needed to start
- Free tier is ad-supported and EdClub confirms the ads are targeted
- Strict star grading can block you over 1 to 2 wpm
Pew Pew Type
If you know what to do and keep not doing it
The honest reason most people plateau is not technique. It is that opening Monkeytype and typing random words for ten more minutes is joyless, so they stop.
Here the words are alien ships heading for Earth and you type them to shoot them down. Same skill, same fingers, and you will do twenty minutes without noticing. Word sets are ordered like a real course: home row, then top, then bottom.
- No account, no ads, nothing uploaded
- Word sets follow touch-typing order, not random frequency
- Runs in the browser and saves progress locally
- Not a measurement tool — keep Monkeytype for that
TypeRacer
If you want real sentences and real people
Monkeytype gives you disconnected words. TypeRacer gives you actual quotes from books and films, with capitals, commas and proper nouns, raced against real opponents.
It also forces you to fix every typo before continuing, which is the opposite of Monkeytype's default and much closer to real writing. Expect to be 20 to 40% slower here than on Monkeytype. That gap is informative, not a bug.
- Real prose with real punctuation
- Genuine multiplayer, running since 2008 with 300m+ races
- Rebuilt on a new codebase in September 2026
- Ads unless you pay $12 a year
- Free accounts save only 10 races a day
- Race quitting inflates the public averages
Our typing test
If you want your weak keys named
A one-minute test that reports net wpm, raw wpm, accuracy and consistency — and then lists the specific keys that cost you the most, which is the bit Monkeytype leaves out.
No account, nothing uploaded, and your best score stays in your own browser.
- Names your worst keys so you know what to drill
- No sign-up, no ads
- Fewer languages and layouts than Monkeytype
- No leaderboards
One more thing worth knowing
Monkeytype has a real anticheat system, and the complaint you will find from actual users is not that cheaters run wild — it is false positives. Custom QMK keyboards can produce key events too brief for the system to believe, and swipe typing on mobile does not send the events it expects. Both get people flagged.
If that is you, there is a setting to opt out of leaderboards, which keeps your account usable. Not a reason to leave, but a reason not to panic.
Related
Frequently asked questions
What is the best alternative to Monkeytype?
It depends which job you need. keybr is the best complement, because it analyses your weakest individual letters and generates practice around them, which Monkeytype does not do at all. TypingClub is the answer if you cannot touch type yet. A typing game is the answer if you know what to do and have simply stopped doing it. There is no better pure typing test than Monkeytype.
Is Monkeytype good for beginners?
No, and the typing community says so consistently. Monkeytype has no lessons, no finger placement guidance and no on-screen keyboard. A beginner using it tends to build speed on top of incorrect finger habits, which is harder to fix later. Learn the keyboard first on TypingClub or keybr, then use Monkeytype to measure and build speed.
Does Monkeytype inflate your wpm?
The default settings flatter your score. The default language is a vocabulary of just 200 common English words, with no punctuation and no stopping on errors, so you build familiarity with a tiny word set that does not reflect real writing. Switching to english 10k with punctuation on and stop-on-error set to word gives a far more honest number, usually noticeably lower.
Is Monkeytype free, and does it have ads?
It is completely free and open source under the GPL-3.0 licence, with no account required. It does show ads, but uniquely they are a user setting with four levels, and you can set them to off. The default is a single ad on the results screen. You can also support it through Patreon from $1 a month or Ko-fi.
What does keybr do that Monkeytype does not?
Per-key analysis and adaptive difficulty. keybr tracks your speed and accuracy on each individual letter, generates practice text weighted toward your worst ones, and only unlocks new letters once you are reliable on the current set. Monkeytype's closest feature is a word-level burst heatmap and a practice-missed-words command, which works on whole words rather than letters.
Why is my TypeRacer speed lower than my Monkeytype speed?
Because they measure different things. TypeRacer uses real quotes with capitals, punctuation and proper nouns, and makes you correct every typo before continuing. Monkeytype's defaults use a 200-word list with no punctuation and let you type straight past errors. A gap of 20 to 40% between the two is normal and does not mean either number is wrong.