Reading Time by ReadyGo – Read Time, Progress Bar & Archive Support

Light and fast — it won’t slow your site down. ReadyGo Reading Time shows readers how long a post takes to read, with an optional progress bar (or circle) and a live countdown that keeps them reading to the end. It adds almost nothing to your pages, and the extras only load when you actually use them.

Many visitors decide whether to read a post in the first second, and a long wall of text scares them off. Telling them “only 4 minutes to read” sets expectations, and a progress indicator keeps them moving — so more people finish your posts.

Why people choose ReadyGo Reading Time

• Light and fast. Built to stay out of the way and keep your pages loading quickly. It adds almost nothing to a normal page, and extras like the progress bar only load where you use them.
• Gets the time right. Long posts won’t show a silly “1 minute read.” It correctly counts content from page builders (Elementor, Divi), block editors, and other languages.
• Plays nicely with caching. It does its work when you save a post, so it keeps your site fast and works with caching plugins out of the box.
• A progress bar or a circle. Add a slim bar at the top or bottom of the screen, or a small circle in a corner — so readers can see how far they’ve come.
• A live countdown. A little “3 min left” that counts down as people scroll — a friendly nudge to keep reading to the end.
• No clutter. No ads, no nags, no tracking, and it never gets in the way of your menu.

Show it wherever you want

• Automatically above your content, or above/below the title.
• With a shortcode — [readygo_reading_time] anywhere, or [readygo_reading_time id="47"] for a specific post.
• As a block you can drop into the editor.

Easy options (no code needed)

• Show it on posts, your blog page, and archive pages — and pick which post types.
• Choose your reading speed (words per minute).
• Add the time to look at images and/or read comments.
• Add your own wording before and after the time (e.g. “Reading time:” … “min read”).
• Style it: text size, spacing, background and text color, and an optional clock icon.

Progress bar / circle options

• Bar (top or bottom) or a circle (any corner).
• Solid or gradient colors, and how thick the bar is.

Countdown options

• Put it in any corner, with your own wording (use {n} for the minutes left) and a “finished” message.

For developers

• readygo_countable_content — add text from page builders, ACF, or custom fields to the word count.
• readygo_display_text — customize the displayed reading-time string.
• Lightweight by design: roughly 0.4 KB of CSS and no JavaScript on a normal page, with no jQuery dependency. The progress bar/countdown assets (~6 KB, vanilla JS) load only where enabled.

Everything runs on your own site — no accounts, no outside services, no data collection.

More from ReadyGo Tools

Built by ReadyGo Tools. Browse more free WordPress plugins and online tools at readygotools.com/plugins. Documentation and support: readygotools.com/plugins/readygo-reading-time.