YouTube Playlist Length
How long a playlist really is, and how long it takes you to get through it at the speed you actually watch.
Making the playlist instead of watching it?
A course only earns its way if people find it. Views and watch hours are the two things a new playlist has none of, and both pages say plainly what they do and what they do not.
The question behind the question
Almost nobody wants a number of seconds. They want to know whether a course fits in a weekend, whether a lecture series is realistic before an exam, whether that forty-part tutorial is a Saturday or a fortnight.
So the total is the start, not the answer. The table gives you the time at 1.25x, 1.5x, 1.75x and 2x, and then the same figure as days at thirty minutes and at an hour a day, which is how people actually plan this.
Why our total sometimes differs from the count YouTube shows
A playlist keeps videos that have since been made private, deleted by their uploader, or blocked in some countries. YouTube still counts them in the number of videos it displays, but nobody outside the owner can read their length.
When that happens we say how many are unreadable and leave them out of the total, rather than quietly returning a shorter figure that does not match what you can see. A tool that is wrong in a way you cannot detect is worse than one that explains itself.
What it can and cannot read
- Public playlists: yes, including very long ones. Beyond five hundred videos we stop and say so, because reading further costs far more than the answer is worth.
- Unlisted playlists: no. An unlisted playlist is readable only by someone with the link through YouTube itself, not through the data API.
- Private playlists, including Watch Later: no, and nothing that claims otherwise without asking you to sign in is telling the truth.
- Whole channels: use the channel's uploads playlist, which every channel has.
A note on watching at 2x
The table is arithmetic, not advice. Doubling the speed halves the clock and does not halve the effort: for dense material most people lose more than they save. The lower speeds are usually the honest ones for anything you actually need to remember.
If the playlist is yours
Questions
How do I find out how long a YouTube playlist is?
Paste the playlist link above. You get the total duration, the average and longest video, and how long the whole thing takes at higher playback speeds.
Does this work on private or unlisted playlists?
No. Only public playlists are readable through YouTube's data API. Anything promising to read your Watch Later without signing you in cannot do it.
Why is the number of videos lower than YouTube shows?
Because some videos in the playlist have been made private, deleted or blocked. YouTube keeps counting them, but their length is not readable by anyone. The page tells you how many, so the difference is never a mystery.
Is there a limit?
Five hundred videos. Past that the page says it stopped and how much it covered, instead of pretending the total is complete.
Can I get the length of a whole channel?
Yes, by using that channel's uploads playlist. Every channel has one, and it contains everything it has published publicly.
Do you keep the playlists people look up?
We cache the result for a day so the same playlist does not cost another lookup. That cache holds durations and titles, nothing about who asked.