How Long Does Sex Last?
See where your typical time falls among men timed with a stopwatch in five countries, by age, and what sex therapists consider typical. Nothing you enter leaves your device.
Key facts
- In two stopwatch studies of men in five countries, the median time from penetration to ejaculation was 5.4 minutes (2005) and 6.0 minutes (2009).
From penetration to ejaculation, as the studies timed it: foreplay isn’t counted. Your answers stay on this device.
ExampleIn the usual range · 5 min
41%of men took less time
5 min is in the usual range: about 41 in 100 men timed with a stopwatch took less, and the rest longer. Sex therapists called 3 to 7 minutes “adequate”.
- All men, median
- 5.4 min (2005) · 6.0 (2009)
- Sex therapists’ “adequate”
- 3–7 min
- Sex therapists’ “desirable”
- 7–13 min
General information from published research, not a diagnosis or medical advice. Talk to a doctor before changing medication or treatment. If it causes you or a partner distress, talk to a doctor. Terms
What the stopwatch measuredAnd why it is shorter than “sex”
Couples timed one thing: from the moment of penetration to ejaculation, every time they had sex over four weeks, with a stopwatch in 2005 and a timer that hid the reading in 2009. Kissing, touching, oral sex and everything after aren’t counted, and many couples count all of that as sex, so this is the shortest way of measuring it.
It varies a lot. In 2005, typical times ran from 0.55 to 44.1 minutes, and the curve is lopsided: most men bunch between 2 and 10 minutes, with a long tail of longer times. Half the men on the combined curve were under 6 minutes.
Expectations run ahead of the data. The survey of sex therapists began from the point that the public’s ideas about how long sex should last don’t match what stopwatches find, and its authors hoped their figures would ease worry.
Share of men, minute by minuteJanssen & Waldinger (2016), 965 men
The curve fitted to both studies, as published: the share of men whose typical time fell in each minute, and the running total of men under it.
| Minutes | Share of men | Shorter than the end of it |
|---|---|---|
| 0 to 1 | 1.07% | 1% |
| 1 to 2 | 7.9% | 9% |
| 2 to 3 | 10.6% | 19% |
| 3 to 4 | 11.3% | 31% |
| 4 to 5 | 10.5% | 41% |
| 5 to 6 | 9.2% | 50% |
| 6 to 7 | 7.8% | 58% |
| 7 to 8 | 6.6% | 65% |
| 8 to 9 | 5.5% | 70% |
| 9 to 10 | 4.6% | 75% |
| 10 to 11 | 3.8% | 79% |
| 11 to 12 | 3.2% | 82% |
| 12 to 13 | 2.7% | 84% |
| 13 to 14 | 2.2% | 87% |
| 14 to 15 | 1.9% | 88% |
| 15 to 16 | 1.6% | 90% |
| 16 to 17 | 1.4% | 91% |
| 17 to 18 | 1.2% | 93% |
| 18 to 19 | 1% | 94% |
| 19 to 20 | 0.9% | 95% |
| 20 or more | 5.5% | 100% |
The published column adds up to 100.44%, so the running total is read as a share of that.
How the studies were doneWho was timed, and the limits
- Waldinger et al. (2005): 500 couples from the Netherlands, the UK, Spain, Turkey and the US. The men were 18 or older, in a stable relationship with a woman for at least six months and having sex regularly; nobody was picked or left out for how long they lasted.
- Waldinger et al. (2009): 474 new men from the same countries, timed with a device that hid the reading so it wouldn’t change how they had sex. The results came out very close to the first study’s.
- Janssen & Waldinger (2016) fitted one curve to both studies, 965 men in all, and published the share in each minute, the table this page reads from. They note it may only hold for men like those studied: white men in Western countries.
- Only heterosexual couples and penetrative sex were studied, so the figures say nothing about other kinds of sex or couples.
How this works: Method, 4 sources, Checked against 4 worked examples,
How this works
Method
Your typical time is placed on the curve two stopwatch studies of 965 men in five countries were fitted to (Janssen & Waldinger, 2016): the share of men in each one-minute band, added up, with a straight line inside each band. The time is from penetration to ejaculation, timed by couples over four weeks. The age medians are from the 2005 study, and the ranges sex therapists called adequate and desirable from a 2008 survey of therapists.
Sources
- A multinational population survey of intravaginal ejaculation latency time (Journal of Sexual Medicine, 2005)
- A five-nation survey to assess the distribution of the intravaginal ejaculatory latency time among the general male population (Journal of Sexual Medicine, 2009)
- The mathematical formula of the intravaginal ejaculation latency time (IELT) distribution of lifelong premature ejaculation differs from the IELT distribution formula of men in the general male population (Investigative and Clinical Urology, 2016)
- Canadian and American sex therapists’ perceptions of normal and abnormal ejaculatory latencies: how long should intercourse last? (Journal of Sexual Medicine, 2008)
How it’s tested
4 worked examples for this page are checked by automated tests before every release: given the inputs, the tool must show the expected answer.
Limits
General information from published research, not a diagnosis or medical advice. Talk to a doctor before changing medication or treatment. If it causes you or a partner distress, talk to a doctor.
Privacy
On your device. Nothing you enter or open leaves this browser. About privacy labels
Changes
- First published.
A kinder way to read the number
A stopwatch time is easy to compare and easy to worry about, but it measures a small part of sex, and it varies widely from man to man. In the 2009 study, the men who said they were unhappy with their time had a median of 5.2 minutes, only a little under the 6 minutes of everyone, so how a man feels about it and what the clock says are only loosely linked.
If a time feels too short or too long for you or a partner, and it is causing distress, a doctor is a good first person to talk to. It is one of the most common things people ask about, and the conversation is ordinary for them.
Related, from the same set of tools: penis size percentile calculator.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long does sex last on average?
In two stopwatch studies of men in five countries, the median time from penetration to ejaculation was 5.4 minutes (500 couples, Waldinger et al., 2005) and 6 minutes (474 men, Waldinger et al., 2009). The times were spread widely, from under a minute to over 40, and most men fell somewhere between 3 and 13 minutes. Foreplay and everything else aren’t in these numbers.
How long should sex last?
There’s no single right number. When sex therapists in the US and Canada were asked (Corty & Guardiani, 2008), the middle half of their answers put an “adequate” time at 3 to 7 minutes and a “desirable” one at 7 to 13, and they called 1 to 2 minutes “too short” and 10 to 30 “too long”. The authors hoped sharing these figures would ease worry, because public ideas about it don’t match the stopwatch data.
Does it get shorter with age?
In the 2005 study, yes: the median fell from 6.5 minutes for men 18 to 30 to 4.3 minutes for men over 51. That is a group average, not a rule for any one man.
Which country lasts longest?
In the 2009 study, men in the United Kingdom had the longest median (10 minutes) and men in Turkey the shortest (4.4). In 2005, Turkey was also the shortest, at 3.7 minutes. The Netherlands, Spain and the United States fell between. With under 500 men in each study, split across five countries, these are rough comparisons, and only these five countries were studied.
Why is the stopwatch time shorter than people expect?
Because it counts only from penetration to ejaculation. Kissing, touching, oral sex and everything after aren’t in it, and many couples count all of that as sex. The studies timed it this way because it can be measured the same way in every country.
Do condoms or circumcision change it?
Not in these studies. The 2005 study found the median wasn’t affected by condom use, and outside Turkey circumcised and uncircumcised men didn’t differ significantly (6.7 and 6.0 minutes). The 2009 study found the same for both.
What if my time worries me?
You aren’t alone, and the number on its own isn’t the whole story: in the 2009 study, men who were unhappy with their time had a median of 5.2 minutes, close to the 6 of everyone. If it is causing you or a partner distress, talk to a doctor. It is a common, ordinary thing to bring up.