Free tool
YouTube Playlist Length Calculator
Paste a playlist link and see how long the whole thing runs: at normal speed, at 1.25x to 2x, and for any range of videos you have left.
Every video and its length
| # | Video | Length |
|---|
How it works
The calculator reads the playlist the way a logged-out visitor sees it, takes the running time of every video, and adds them up. Nothing is downloaded and nothing is stored about you. Private and deleted videos keep their place in the numbering but have no running time, so they are listed and left out of the total rather than guessed.
Playlist length at every speed
Playback speed divides the time directly: 2x halves it, 1.5x takes two thirds. For a typical course or lecture series:
| At normal speed | 1x | 1.25x | 1.5x | 1.75x | 2x |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 hour | 1 h 00 min | 48 min | 40 min | 34 min | 30 min |
| 5 hours | 5 h 00 min | 4 h 00 min | 3 h 20 min | 2 h 51 min | 2 h 30 min |
| 10 hours | 10 h 00 min | 8 h 00 min | 6 h 40 min | 5 h 42 min | 5 h 00 min |
| 25 hours | 25 h 00 min | 20 h 00 min | 16 h 40 min | 14 h 17 min | 12 h 30 min |
| 50 hours | 50 h 00 min | 40 h 00 min | 33 h 20 min | 28 h 34 min | 25 h 00 min |
Watch it or read it?
We measured how fast people talk on YouTube across the 39,111 videos in our transcript library, each between two minutes and six hours long. The median is 181 words per minute; the middle half of videos sits between 152 and 204. Adults read about 238 words a minute, so reading a transcript takes roughly 76% of the time it takes to watch the video at normal speed.
That makes reading about as fast as watching at 1.3x. Where a transcript really saves time is everything after the first pass: you can skim to the part you need, search a whole course for one term, quote it exactly, or give the full text to an AI and ask questions across every video. To get every transcript in a playlist at once, use the playlist transcript downloader; for a whole channel, the channel downloader.
Do it yourself with yt-dlp
If you already use the command line, yt-dlp prints each video's length in seconds
from a flat listing, and awk adds them up. It is the same data the calculator reads.
yt-dlp --flat-playlist --print duration "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAYLIST_ID" \
| awk '{s+=$1} END {printf "%d h %d min\n", s/3600, (s%3600)/60}'Developers can get the same list with lengths as JSON from the
BulkTranscripts API (/api/v1/playlist/videos, one credit per listing).
Questions
How do I find the total length of a YouTube playlist?
Paste the playlist link into the calculator above. It lists every video in the playlist, adds up their running times, and shows the total at normal speed and at 1.25x, 1.5x, 1.75x and 2x. YouTube itself shows how many videos a playlist has, but not reliably how long they run in total.
How long is a playlist at 1.5x or 2x speed?
Divide the normal length by the speed. A 10-hour playlist takes 8 hours at 1.25x, 6 hours 40 minutes at 1.5x, about 5 hours 43 minutes at 1.75x and 5 hours at 2x. The calculator does this for you, for the whole playlist or any range of it.
Can I calculate the length of only part of a playlist?
Yes. After the result appears, set the From and To video numbers, for example 12 to 30 for the lectures you have left, and every total updates.
Why does the video count differ from what YouTube shows?
Private and deleted videos still take a slot in a playlist but have no running time, so they are counted separately and left out of the total. YouTube sometimes hides them from its own count. Upcoming premieres and live streams without a fixed length are treated the same way.
Does it work with private playlists, Watch Later or Liked videos?
No. Those are visible only to the signed-in owner, so no outside tool can read them. Unlisted playlists work. To measure Watch Later, save its videos to a new playlist, set it to Unlisted and paste that link.
Is there a limit on playlist size?
The calculator reads the first 1,000 videos of a playlist and tells you when a playlist is longer than that. It is free with no sign-up; a fair-use limit of 30 playlists per hour applies.
Is it faster to read the transcripts than to watch?
At normal speed, usually. Across 39,111 videos in our library people speak a median 181 words a minute, and adults read about 238, so reading takes roughly three quarters of the watch time. At 1.5x or faster, watching wins on raw time; the transcript wins when you want to skim, search, quote, or hand the whole playlist to an AI.