HowLongToBeat (often shortened to HLTB) answers a simple question: how long will this game take? It aggregates completion times submitted by players into a database and reports estimates for three distinct playstyles — Main Story, Main + Extras, and Completionist (100%) — alongside approval ratings, retirement rates, and per-platform differences. Browsing and search are free and require no account; as of 2026-09-02, the official stats page lists roughly 92.5K game releases and 8.7M logged playthroughs. The site has been online since 2011, was acquired by IGN Entertainment (the Ziff Davis division behind IGN) in June 2021, and its estimates are surfaced directly in Microsoft's Xbox app on PC.

The HowLongToBeat homepage's Popular Games section: each card lists Main Story, Main + Extra, and Completionist time estimates

The screenshot above shows the homepage's Popular Games section, where every card presents a game's three time tiers — Cyberpunk 2077, for example, is listed at 26 hours for the main story, 63 hours with extras, and 109 hours for completionist runs, while The Witcher 3 sits at 51½/103/175 hours. The homepage also explains its Accuracy Guide (a Poor-to-Excellent color scale) so readers can tell which estimates rest on large samples and which should be treated with caution.

At a Glance

  • URL: https://howlongtobeat.com/ (the short domain https://hl2b.com/ serves the same site)
  • Type: Video game completion-time database plus personal library/backlog tracking (crowdsourced UGC)
  • Cost: Free, ad-supported (AdChoices link in the footer)
  • Registration: Not required for browsing or searching; lists, reviews, and Steam import need a free account, with an option to sign in via IGN
  • Interface language: English only
  • Launched: Early 2011 (earliest archive snapshot dated 2011-02-24)
  • Operator: IGN Entertainment, Inc. (a Ziff Davis company)

Background

HowLongToBeat began as a personal project by its founder, who goes by the handle Everdred. The earliest archived capture (February 2011) shows a plain table of game titles, average hours, and poll counts; his profile page lists a join date of April 1, 2011. Over the following decade the site added accounts, lists, a forum, and a review system, with nearly every change documented in his official changelog thread.

In February 2021, IGN Entertainment filed a trademark application for HOWLONGTOBEAT; that June, Everdred confirmed in the changelog that "the site is now owned by IGN/Ziff Davis and they have employed me to continue working on it," and the footer copyright switched to Ziff Davis at the same time (compare the 2021-06-17 and 2021-06-18 snapshots). The footer today reads "HowLongToBeat® is a registered trademark of IGN Entertainment, Inc."

The most visible integration since the acquisition came in September 2022, when Microsoft began showing HowLongToBeat estimates in the Xbox app on PC for PC Game Pass titles (see also Eurogamer's report and the site's announcement thread). Fellow IGN Entertainment properties appear across game pages as well — IGN Wiki guides and MapGenie interactive maps are embedded on some entries, and IGN's list-building product IGN Playlist runs on HLTB time data, though Everdred notes on the forum that the two are developed independently and only share data.

The Data: More Than an Average

The site's core idea is that completion time depends on how you play, and each playstyle is explicitly defined: Main Story (required objectives only), Main + Extras (labeled Main + Sides on game pages), Completionist (every achievement, medal, and unlockable), plus a combined estimate across all playstyles. Opening a game page reveals the underlying distribution.

The Cyberpunk 2077 game page: header stats for playing, backlogs, replays, retirement, rating, and completions, above four time tiers

Above is the Cyberpunk 2077 page as of 2026-09-02: the header shows 705 users currently playing, 18.6K backlogs, 1.5K replays, a 2.6% retirement rate, an 84% rating, and 22.4K completions; the four blue tiles give a combined 66-hour estimate alongside 26 hours (Main Story), 63 hours (Main + Sides), and 109 hours (Completionist). Scrolling further reveals:

  • Per-playstyle statistics: poll count, average, median, Rushed, and Leisure times — the Main Story row alone draws on 2.1K submissions, averaging 27h 12m with a 25-hour median;
  • Speedrun times: an Any% category (9 submissions here, averaging 8h 51s), with 100% speedruns for some games;
  • Per-platform breakdowns: how times differ across PC and each console generation;
  • DLC times: expansions get their own rows — Phantom Liberty shows about 1.1K submissions, 13 hours for the main story and 31 hours for 100%;
  • Multiplayer playstyles: online-focused games are estimated as Solo, Co-Op, and Vs.

(All figures from the Cyberpunk 2077 game page, checked 2026-09-02.)

Beyond individual games, the Stats page aggregates the whole database: filterable by platform, release year, genre, perspective, and flow, with leaderboards for the most played, most backlogged, and most completed games.

The Stats page: an overall breakdown of 92.5K releases, an 18h 13m average time, and 8.7M playthroughs, with a releases-by-year chart

The screenshot above shows the top of the Stats page (2026-09-02): 92.5K releases, an 18h 13m average completion time, a 70% average rating, and 8.7M playthroughs, with a releases-by-year chart below. The homepage also carries a "last 48 hours" activity panel — on the day checked, it showed 183 games added, 364 new users, and 5,466 completions logged — a quick way to gauge how active the community is.

Accounts and Access

All lookup features work without registration, and logged-out visitors can still open the "Submit a Basic Time" form to contribute a completion time. A free account unlocks the personal side: Backlog & Replay, Completed, and Retired lists (with retirement notes), up to three custom lists, detailed per-playthrough records, multi-scale reviews, personal statistics and export, and Steam library import. Alongside native accounts, signing in with an IGN account is supported. The homepage also hosts a daily guessing game, HowLongToBeat: Daily Challenge.

For developers, the important caveat is that there is no official public API — programmatic access relies entirely on community-built wrappers (as cataloged in this third-party API profile). There is likewise no official standalone mobile app beyond the website and its PWA (IGN Playlist is a separate product from the same parent company).

Copyright and Content Policy

Time data comes from player submissions, which enter a review queue handled by the owner and community moderators who merge, split, and flag anomalies (the changelog repeatedly references the submission queue and reporting tools). The forum and comments are governed by a Code of Conduct, with violations punishable by account deletion. The owner removed the site's donation option in 2021, saying the site had become self-sustaining; it now runs on advertising.

Legally, site content and the HowLongToBeat trademark belong to IGN Entertainment, and the footer states that no part of the site may be reproduced without permission. Privacy practices follow the IGN Privacy Policy, which explicitly lists How Long to Beat among covered services and names IGN Entertainment, Inc. as data controller; terms of use point to the unified Ziff Davis terms. The cookie consent banner notes that usage data may be shared with advertising, social media, and analytics partners.

When It's Useful

  • Estimating the time cost of a game before buying it or starting it
  • Picking the estimate that matches your playstyle — story rush, completionist, or somewhere between
  • Taming a backlog: import a Steam library, prioritize, and log times and ratings per game
  • Checking DLC length, per-platform differences, or a game's retirement rate and community reception

Limitations

  • Self-reported, honor-system data: completion definitions vary by player, and niche games may have so few submissions that estimates skew wildly — precisely why the Accuracy Guide exists.
  • Audience bias: people who log completion times skew toward dedicated players, so estimates often run shorter than a casual player's experience.
  • English only: games are indexed under their English titles, and the interface has no other languages.
  • No official API or app: third-party integrations depend on unofficial wrappers; mobile is website/PWA only.
  • Ads and tracking: the free service is ad-funded, and the privacy policy permits sharing behavioral data with partners (refusable via the consent banner).

Comparable Sites

  • IGDB: Twitch's game metadata database with a public API, but completion times are not its focus.
  • Backloggd: a social game-collection and review site with similar list features, but no systematic crowdsourced time data.

References