Audiobook speed calculator
Enter an audiobook's length to see how long it takes at 1.25x, 1.5x, 2x or any speed, how much time you save, and the day you finish.
9 h 41 minof audio at 1x
At 9,300 words an hour, the average narration speed.10 h of audio at 1.5x.
Rounded to the nearest minute.
How long common lengths take
| LENGTH | 1.25xsaves 20% | 1.5xsaves 33% | 2xsaves 50% |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 hours | 4 h | 3 h 20 min | 2 h 30 min |
| 8 hours | 6 h 24 min | 5 h 20 min | 4 h |
| 10 hours | 8 h | 6 h 40 min | 5 h |
| 12 hours | 9 h 36 min | 8 h | 6 h |
| 15 hours | 12 h | 10 h | 7 h 30 min |
| 20 hours | 16 h | 13 h 20 min | 10 h |
| 30 hours | 24 h | 20 h | 15 h |
An 80,000-word novel runs about 8 h 36 min at 1x.
Bundle reads your saved articles to you
Save an article from Safari or Chrome, tap Listen, and a natural voice reads it to you at up to 2x, even with the screen locked. At the end, a few questions help you remember it.
How the listening time is worked out
Divide the audiobook's length by the playback speed. A 10-hour audiobook at 1.5x takes 10 ÷ 1.5 = 6 hours 40 minutes. At 1.25x it takes 8 hours, and at 2x it takes 5 hours.
The share of time you save doesn't depend on the book. 1.25x saves 20%, 1.5x saves a third and 2x saves half. Going from 2x to 3x saves less than going from 1x to 1.5x, because each step up shaves off a smaller slice.
How long is an audiobook for a book?
ACX, Audible's marketplace for producing audiobooks, says most narrators read about 9,300 words an hour, which is about 155 words a minute. Divide a book's word count by 9,300 to get its length in hours.
An 80,000-word novel comes to about 8 hours 36 minutes, and a 100,000-word book about 10 hours 45 minutes. Narrators read at different speeds, so treat it as an estimate.
Do you understand as much at 2x?
For simple material, it seems so. In a 2022 study at UCLA, 231 students watched short lecture videos at normal speed, 1.5x, 2x or 2.5x and were tested right after and a week later. Students at 1.5x and 2x scored about the same as those at normal speed. Only 2.5x scored lower.
The study used lecture videos, not audiobooks, and the lectures were short and fairly easy. For a dense book, slow down where it gets hard, and speed up where it doesn't.
Is listening faster than reading?
Not at 1x. A narrator at about 155 words a minute is slower than the average adult reading silently, about 238 words a minute. At about 1.5x, listening catches up with reading.
To compare with your own reading speed, take the reading speed test, or see how long a book takes to read in the reading time calculator.