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FRENCH

French typing test — free, with accents and AZERTY support

Take a free French typing test online — with full native accents (é, è, à, ç, ê, î, ô, ù, û, ï, ë, ÿ) and support for both AZERTY and QWERTY layouts. The corpus is real French prose, not machine-translated English. Get WPM, CPM, accuracy, and per-key breakdown after every test.

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Français

LANGUAGE

Latin (with diacritics)

SCRIPT

None

LOGIN

Free

COST

French typing test that respects the accents

A real French typing test has to handle the full French character set — the acute accent (é), grave accent (à, è, ù), circumflex (â, ê, î, ô, û), cedilla (ç), diaeresis (ë, ï, ü, ÿ), and the special œ and æ ligatures. Many English-first typing test sites either omit these characters or substitute their unaccented forms — which isn't real French. Typetera handles the full character set throughout the corpus. Your keyboard layout (AZERTY in France, QWERTY in Canada, BÉPO for typing enthusiasts) doesn't affect anything — we measure what your keyboard outputs.

AZERTY vs QWERTY for French typing

Native French typists in France typically use AZERTY layout, where the accented characters have dedicated keys (é on the 2 key, è on 7, à on 0, ç on 9, etc.). Canadian French typists often use QWERTY with software-mapped dead-keys for accents — same characters, different finger paths. BÉPO is a modern ergonomic layout designed for French frequency analysis but used only by enthusiasts. Typetera works with any of them. If you're learning French typing for the first time, AZERTY is the practical default for typing in France; QWERTY-Canadian is the right choice for Quebec and other Canadian French contexts.

Why French typing speeds vary

French typing speeds for the same typist are typically 5-15% lower than English speeds, due to a few structural factors: French words are on average slightly longer than English words; dead-key sequences for circumflex accents (^ + a → â) require two keystrokes per character; and AZERTY layout has different number/symbol placement than QWERTY which affects punctuation-heavy passages. Once you're fluent with your chosen layout, the gap narrows. CPM is a fairer cross-language measure than WPM because the five-character word convention slightly disadvantages French's longer-word average.

French typing for concours and assessments

French government concours and many private-sector administrative roles include typing tests, typically asking 40-50 WPM at 95%+ accuracy over 5-10 minute formats. Canadian French civil-service roles have similar requirements. Use 5-minute or 10-minute tests for endurance practice, and Custom mode to drill specific concours passages you've collected from past years. For competitive typists in the French-speaking community, the same general advice applies as for English: focus on accuracy first, look at the screen not the keyboard, type in confident rhythm, and target weak bigrams revealed by the per-key breakdown.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

  • Does Typetera support AZERTY layout?

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    Yes. Typetera measures what your keyboard outputs, so AZERTY, QWERTY-Canadian, BÉPO, or any other French layout works.

  • Is the French typing test free?

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    Yes. No signup, no payment, no ads on the test page.

  • Are French accents and ç supported?

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    Yes, the full French character set — é, è, à, ç, ê, î, ô, û, ï, ë, ÿ, œ, æ — appears in the corpus and is fully measured.

  • Why is my French WPM lower than English?

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    French words are slightly longer on average and accent dead-keys add keystrokes. 5-15% slower is typical.

  • Can I practice for a concours with Typetera?

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    Yes. Use 5- or 10-minute French tests for endurance practice; use Custom mode to drill past-year concours passages.

  • Does the corpus include French-specific punctuation conventions?

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    Yes. Spaces before colons, semicolons, exclamation marks, and question marks (à la française) are respected in the corpus.

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