Read Meter – Reading Time & Progress Bar
The Read Meter plugin displays the estimated reading time for blog posts along with a progress bar.
4.5(19 reviews)
·10K+ active installs·Updated 8 months agoAs of April 2026, Read Meter is a WordPress readtime plugin with 10K+ active installations and a 4.5/5 rating from 19 reviews. It has been downloaded 112K+ times in total. Requires WordPress 4.2+ and PHP 5.2+. Available on WordPress.org since 2019. Download volume is stable this week. Support resolution rate: 100%. Top alternative: Reading Progress Tracker.
4.5/519 reviews
10K+active installs
100%resolved
7 yearssince 2019
Overview
People often skip reading posts with the fear of the time they’ll spend reading it. Are you losing readers too?
The Read Meter plugin displays the estimated reading time for blog posts along with a progress bar. It works great to give visitors a quick idea about the time needed to read a post and encourages them to go on till the end.
Usually, visitors try to scan the entire post at first glance and grasp as much as information possible from the post. Reading time specified in minutes motivates users to read the post.
A handy progress bar will show the reader’s position on the post. As the reader scrolls the page, the progress bar indicates the remaining part of the post. This lets readers know how far have they reached and how much more do they have to go on.
Screenshots
Ratings & Reviews
4.519 reviews
5 ★
16
4 ★
0
3 ★
1
2 ★
1
1 ★
1
Recent Reviews
Nice and intuitive
by tampopo1969·1 year ago·1 reply
Works out of the box !
Does not count custom fields
by ranmma·3 years ago·1 reply
The plugin works, but it only counts the words on the blog itself. It does not count words in custom blocks and custom field text
Progress Bar is Cool; Read Time Broken
by steveoh88·3 years ago·1 reply
I really like the progress bar. This plugin is simple, which is good. No matter what, the read time is only 1 minute. I thought of reaching out to support, but then I saw that several people already have and the dev doesn’t seem to have fixed the issue.
Could be a great plugin, if the main feature worked.
I would also be cool if it had the option to display word count.
Nice and easy
by Jmarc·3 years ago·1 reply
Perfect for purpose. I just added a bit a margin below to separate it better from the start of the text and presto! It just works. Thanks!
Keep it simpel with this plugin
by imeco·4 years ago·1 reply
Excellent little plugin.
The features make it usable for most websites. The only thing I did not figure out yet is how to dynamically translate the text ‘Reading Time .. mins’ while using TranslatePress.
@brainstorm Force: Thanks for making this plugin available.
Download Trends
Today: 26Yesterday: 31This week: 171Period total: 27K
Compatibility
| WordPress | 4.2+ requiredTested up to 6.8.5 |
| PHP | 5.2+ required |
Version Adoption
v1.0
100.0%
Top Alternatives to Read Meter – Reading Time & Progress Bar
Frequently Asked Questions
Changelog
1.0.11
- Fix: Updated Readme file.
- Fix: Updated CSS selector to correctly apply styles to the read meter text.
Contributors
Plugin data sourced from WordPress.org. Analysis and metrics by PluginSift.