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Data story · longest ranking

The longest audiobooks we measured: 101.8 hours at the top

At one hour of listening a day, the longest audiobook in our dataset takes 102 days to finish. The top 15, ranked by estimated listening hours.

By The Books Insider data desk · published · updated

101.8 hrsthe longest we measured
102days to finish at 1 hr/day
26days at 2× speed, 2 hrs/day

The longest audiobook we measured is The Complete Harry Potter Collection (Books 1-7), at an estimated 101.8 hours. Ranked by estimated listening hours across all 8,557 audiobooks in our dataset, the top of the table is commitment territory: every book below runs 34.8 hours or more.

The top 15, ranked

The 15 longest audiobooks in our dataset (hrs)
  1. The Complete Harry Potter Collection (Books 1-7)by J. K. Rowling · fantasy101.8 hrs
  2. Keeper of the Lost Cities Collection Books 1-5by Shannon Messenger · mystery91.8 hrs
  3. Shatter Me Complete Collectionby Tahereh Mafi · romance58.2 hrs
  4. Mistborn Trilogy TPB Boxed Set : Mistborn, the Well of Ascension, the Hero of Ages & Wax and Wayne, the Mistborn Saga Boxed Setby Brandon Sanderson · fantasy50.6 hrs
  5. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Ringsby J.R.R. Tolkien · fantasy47.3 hrs
  6. The Oxford Sherlock Holmes (Adventures of Sherlock Holmes / Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes / His Last Hour / Hound of the Baskervilles / Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes / Return of Sherlock Holmes / Sign of Four / Study in Scarlet / Valley of Fear)by Arthur Conan Doyle · mystery46 hrs
  7. The inheritance trilogyby N. K. Jemisin · fantasy43.2 hrs
  8. A Suitable Boyby Vikram Seth · romance41.6 hrs
  9. Toll the houndsby Steven Erikson · fantasy37.8 hrs
  10. The Great Book of Amberby Roger Zelazny · fantasy37.2 hrs
  11. Oathbringerby Brandon Sanderson · fantasy36.8 hrs
  12. Gai-Jinby James Clavell · romance36.4 hrs
  13. A Breath of Snow and Ashesby Diana Gabaldon · romance35.5 hrs
  14. The Lord of the Ringsby J.R.R. Tolkien · fantasy35.3 hrs
  15. World Without Endby Ken Follett · historical fiction34.8 hrs

For scale: the dataset's median audiobook runs 8.9 hours, so even the shortest book on this list is 3.9× the typical listen. The genre mix of the top 15: 8 fantasy, 4 romance, 2 mystery, 1 historical fiction.

3 of the top 10 are collected editions (complete series or collected works sold as a single audiobook), which is how the very top of the table breaks the 30-hour barrier.

The finish-time math

The finish-time math on #1: 101.8 hours means 102 days at an hour a day. Push to 2× speed and two hours a day, and it compresses to 26 days. Every book page on this site has a calculator for exactly this.

The longest by real narration time

The ranking above is estimated from page counts. For 1,784 of these audiobooks we also hold the retailer's REAL listed narration time, and by that measure the longest single audiobook is Against the Day at 53.6 hours of actual narration.

Longest audiobooks by real store-listed narration time (hrs (real))
  1. Against the Dayby Thomas Pynchon · historical fiction53.6 hrs
  2. Le Comte de Monte Cristoby Alexandre Dumas · romance51.6 hrs
  3. Executive ordersby Tom Clancy · thriller51.4 hrs
  4. Gai-Jinby James Clavell · romance50.3 hrs
  5. Go Tell the Bees That I Am Goneby Diana Gabaldon · romance49.5 hrs
  6. Gone With the Windby Margaret Mitchell · romance49.2 hrs
  7. Written in My Own Hearts Bloodby Various, Diana Gabaldon · romance45.1 hrs
  8. Drums of Autumnby Diana Gabaldon · romance44.8 hrs
  9. Toll the houndsby Steven Erikson · fantasy44.1 hrs
  10. Memories of iceby Steven Erikson · fantasy44 hrs

The longest series to binge

Single audiobooks are one thing; a series is the real time sink. Across the reading orders we track, A Carpathian Novel tops the list at about 246.9 combined hours over the 18 volumes we measured.

Longest series by combined listening time (hrs total)
  1. A Carpathian Novel18 volumes we measured246.9 hrs
  2. Dresden Files16 volumes we measured228.3 hrs
  3. Sword of Truth Series8 volumes we measured223.7 hrs
  4. Malazan Book of the Fallen5 volumes we measured192.8 hrs
  5. Outlander4 volumes we measured178.4 hrs
  6. The Expanse8 volumes we measured158.7 hrs
  7. A Jack Ryan Novel5 volumes we measured153.8 hrs
  8. Hercule Poirot Mysteries24 volumes we measured153.3 hrs
  9. Red Rising5 volumes we measured114.5 hrs
  10. Alex Cross15 volumes we measured108.9 hrs

Epics are where the trial earns it

An epic of 101.8 hours starts exactly the same way as the 8.9-hour typical listen.

New members at audiobooks.com get three free audiobooks with the trial.

Start listening free

Methodology.The headline ranking is by estimated listening hours, longest first; the real-duration table uses store-listed times where we hold an author-verified edition. Series totals sum the volumes in our catalog. Dataset: 8,557 audiobooks measured by The Books Insider as of 2026-07-26. Listening hours are estimated from page counts (pages × 275 words ÷ 9,300 words/hour, ±10%); full method on the About page. Explore the full dataset on ouraudiobook statistics page.About & methodology →

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