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How long does it take to read all of English Wikipedia?

How long to read all of English Wikipedia
about 41 years
about 5.2 billion words across 7.2 million articles

English Wikipedia is around 5.2 billion words across some 7.2 million articles, which at an ordinary reading speed is about 41 years of continuous reading with no sleeping, eating or stopping. Reading eight hours a day every day it would take around 125 years. The encyclopedia grows faster than anyone can read it: it adds far more than 5.2 billion divided by 41 years of new text annually, so the task is not merely long but formally impossible. Pew Research put the figure at roughly 38 years in 2026 without stating its reading-speed assumption.

The numbers

Total
15172 days 17 hours
In hours
364,146 hours
Non-stop
15,172.7 days without sleeping
Covers
about 5.2 billion words across 7.2 million articles
At a realistic pace
eight hours a day
That works out as
about 45,519 days

What this assumes

About 5.2 billion words at 238 words per minute, reading continuously without breaks. The corpus grows while you read, so this is a lower bound on an impossible task.

Article and word counts as of early 2026 and rising continuously.

Other books

What How long
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone about 5 hours 23 minutes
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix about 18 hours
The Hobbit about 6 hours 39 minutes
The Bible about 55 hours
War and Peace about 40 hours
Infinite Jest about 40 hours
Moby-Dick about 15 hours
Ulysses about 19 hours
Dune about 13 hours
Pride and Prejudice about 8 hours 33 minutes
Nineteen Eighty-Four about 6 hours 14 minutes
The Great Gatsby about 3 hours 18 minutes
Animal Farm about 2 hours 6 minutes
It about 31 hours
The complete works of Shakespeare about 59 hours
The complete Sherlock Holmes about 72 hours as an audiobook

Common questions

How long does it take to read all of English Wikipedia?
about 41 years — about 5.2 billion words across 7.2 million articles.
What does that assume?
About 5.2 billion words at 238 words per minute, reading continuously without breaks. The corpus grows while you read, so this is a lower bound on an impossible task.
How long at a realistic pace?
eight hours a day — about 45,519 days.

Related pages

Sources

  1. Calculated on this page — At One Place

How these figures are compiled and checked