RANKINGS

Every MIT OCW YouTube Playlist, Ranked by Total Hours

A complete catalog of MIT OpenCourseWare YouTube playlists sorted by total duration — from 2-hour overviews to 40-hour full courses. Find the MIT course that fits your schedule.

Rankings

MIT puts its courses online for free. Many of them are on YouTube. Most resources about MIT OCW list courses by prestige or difficulty — nobody has ranked them by how long they actually take.

This guide fixes that.

What counts as an MIT OCW playlist

We only include playlists from official MIT channels (MIT OpenCourseWare, MIT, MITx) with 5 or more lectures. We exclude recitation-only playlists, problem set walkthroughs, and promotional compilations.

Under 5 hours: the samplers

5–15 hours: the focused courses

15–25 hours: the full semesters at speed

25–40 hours: the deep commitments

Over 40 hours: the marathons

How to find any MIT course duration

Every MIT OCW playlist URL follows a pattern you can drop directly into Playlist Lens. Here’s how to find and calculate any MIT OCW course:

  1. Go to the MIT OCW YouTube channel
  2. Browse to the playlist for your course
  3. Copy the playlist URL
  4. Paste it into Playlist Lens and click Calculate

The surprising finding: MIT isn’t that long

Ready to calculate your own playlist duration?

Calculate a playlist → Compare playlists