The best audiobooks over 20 hours, ranked by the data
Ranked by weighted listener rating, the best audiobook over 20 hours in our dataset is Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson: 4.69★ across 89 ratings and 32.2 estimated listening hours. We scored every published audiobook over 20 hours: 146 qualify (the ones with full pages here, of 277 we measured), carrying 8,696 listener ratings between them. The top 20 are below. No opinions: the formula in the method note decides the order.
The top 20
Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson
About 33 days at an hour a day, 193% longer than the average fantasy audiobook.
The Hero of Ages by Brandon Sanderson
About 23 days at an hour a day, 105% longer than the average fantasy audiobook.
The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson
About 30 days at an hour a day, 171% longer than the average fantasy audiobook.
Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson
About 37 days at an hour a day, 235% longer than the average fantasy audiobook.
Empire of Storms by Sarah J. Maas
About 21 days at an hour a day, 151% longer than the average romance audiobook.
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
About 36 days at an hour a day, 221% longer than the average fantasy audiobook.
A Storm of Swords by George R. R. Martin
About 30 days at an hour a day, 166% longer than the average fantasy audiobook.
The Complete Harry Potter Collection (Books 1-7) by J. K. Rowling
About 102 days at an hour a day, 825% longer than the average fantasy audiobook.
The Well of Ascension by Brandon Sanderson
About 24 days at an hour a day, 111% longer than the average fantasy audiobook.
The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
About 25 days at an hour a day, 119% longer than the average fantasy audiobook.
The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss
About 30 days at an hour a day, 171% longer than the average fantasy audiobook.
The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
About 22 days at an hour a day, 98% longer than the average fantasy audiobook.
The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
About 34 days at an hour a day, 286% longer than the average mystery audiobook.
A Clash of Kings by George R. R. Martin
About 23 days at an hour a day, 105% longer than the average fantasy audiobook.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling
About 21 days at an hour a day, 89% longer than the average fantasy audiobook.
Death's End (The Three-Body Problem Series Book 3) by 刘慈欣
About 22 days at an hour a day, 104% longer than the average science fiction audiobook.
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
About 28 days at an hour a day, 120% longer than the average thriller audiobook.
Rhythm of War by Brandon Sanderson
About 34 days at an hour a day, 205% longer than the average fantasy audiobook.
A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin
About 24 days at an hour a day, 115% longer than the average fantasy audiobook.
The Stand by Stephen King
About 35 days at an hour a day, 177% longer than the average thriller audiobook.
How this ranking works
Every published audiobook over 20 hours qualifies: 146 books. Each is scored by its Open Library listener rating weighted by its rating count: score = (v·R + 50·C) ÷ (v + 50), where R is the book's rating, v its number of ratings, and C = 4.03★ the mean across all 2,178 published books we measured. Fewer ratings pull a score toward that mean, so a high rating on a handful of votes can't outrank a slightly lower one backed by hundreds. Children's titles, memoirs and autobiographies are excluded from these rankings; they keep their regular book pages. No editorial picks, no sponsored placement. Dataset build 2026-08-17; rankings recompute with every data refresh. Full methodology
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