readtime

readtime is a tiny, zero-dependency Node.js reading-time estimator for plain text, Markdown, and HTML. It provides seconds, rounded minutes, human labels, detailed statistics, streaming, and a practical CLI while keeping its core below 5 KB.

Install

npm install github:prasad-a-abhishek/readtime

Quick start

const readtime = require('readtime');
const text = '# Hello\n\nA useful article.';
console.log(readtime.seconds(text));
console.log(readtime.minutes(text));
console.log(readtime.human(text));

CommonJS only — import syntax requires you to add an ESM wrapper yourself.

API

| API | Result | |---|---| | seconds(text, options?) | Integer seconds, rounded up | | minutes(text, options?) | Minutes rounded to decimals, with threshold | | human(text, options?) | Human-readable label | | stats(text, options?) | Words, characters, sentences, paragraphs, time, WPM and format | | html(text, options?) | Stats after HTML stripping | | markdown(text, options?) | Stats after Markdown stripping | | new ReadtimeStream(options?) | Pass-through stream; sets readingTimeSeconds on completion |

Options

| Option | Default | Description | |---|---:|---| | wordsPerMinute | 200 | Positive reading speed | | decimals | 1 | Minute precision, 0–10 | | minMinutes | 0.5 | Minimum non-empty rounded-minute result | | format | short | short, long, tiny, or json | | countChars | nonWhitespace | Set to all to include whitespace |

The HTML parser is a compact state machine: it removes tags/comments and script/style contents, handles quoted attributes and decodes common/numeric entities. Markdown handling removes fenced code and frontmatter, preserves link/image labels, and normalizes common headings, emphasis, lists, quotes, rules, inline code, and embedded HTML.

CLI

readtime [options] <file|->
--stdin                 read stdin
--wpm <number>          reading speed
--format <short|long|tiny|json>
--html                  HTML mode
--markdown              Markdown mode
--help                  usage
--version               version

Examples:

readtime article.txt
echo 'hello world' | readtime --stdin
readtime --wpm 250 --format json article.md
readtime --format short --html page.html

Why another reading-time library?

Because this common calculation should not require a dependency tree. readtime uses only Node's standard library, offers HTML, Markdown, statistics, streaming and CLI support, and remains easy to audit.

Benchmark / feature comparison

Measured package characteristics rather than claiming universal runtime numbers (performance varies by machine and input):

| | readtime | reading-time | |---|---:|---:| | Runtime dependencies | 0 | 0 | | Core (count.js + format.js) | < 5 KB minified | package-dependent | | HTML + Markdown stripping | Yes | Basic word counting | | Detailed stats / CLI / stream | Yes | Different API/features |

For reproducible throughput comparisons, run both against the same corpus and Node release; this implementation performs a small number of linear passes.

License

MIT