How Long Does It Take to Pray?

Five prayers sound like a lot when you are new. On the clock they are not: the fard prayers of a whole day take about 30 minutes, which is 2.1% of your 24 hours. Fajr, the one people worry about most, is about 4 minutes from “Allahu akbar” to the salam. Add the sunnah prayers and the dhikr after each prayer and the day comes to about 64 minutes.

While you are still learning the words, give yourself more: about 47 minutes a day. That is normal, and it gets shorter as the words become yours. You never need to rush to keep it short.

Every rakat goes through the same positions. The ring above shows them in order, one colour each:

1. Standing. Al-Fatiha, then a short surah in the first two rakat of a fard prayer. This is the longest part of each rakat. In the first rakat it also holds the opening takbir and the opening dua.
2. Ruku. Bowing, saying Subhana rabbiyal azim three times.
3. Standing up. Sami‘Allahu liman hamidah, then Rabbana wa lakal hamd.
4. Sujud. Forehead on the ground, Subhana rabbiyal a‘la three times.
5. Sitting briefly between the two sujud: Rabbighfir li.
6. Sujud again, the same words.
7. Tashahhud. After every second rakat and at the end. The last sitting adds the salawat on the Prophet and a short dua, so it is the longest sitting.
8. Salam to the right and to the left.

Fajr has 2 rakat, Maghrib 3, and Dhuhr, Asr and Isha 4 each. In the third and fourth rakat only Al-Fatiha is recited, so those rakat are shorter. To learn each position with the Arabic and audio, use pray along, or the full step by step prayer guide.

Nobody prays at exactly the same speed, so this is an estimate, built from what is actually said. For every position we took the Arabic that is said there, from the same texts used on our pray along and learn by heart pages, and counted its length in syllable beats: a short vowel is one beat, a long vowel two. Al-Fatiha, with the basmala, has about 97 beats.

Then each pace reads those beats at its own speed and adds time for moving into each position while saying “Allahu akbar”:

Quran is read more slowly than the other words, as it is recited with care. Every position is held for at least 2 seconds, even where little is said, because stillness is part of the prayer. The steps follow what the four Sunni schools share: the opening dua Subhanaka, the tashahhud of Ibn Mas‘ud, the salawat Ibrahimiyya and Rabbana atina as the last dua. The dhikr after prayer adds about 3 minutes each time: Astaghfirullah three times and Allahumma antas-salam (Muslim 591), SubhanAllah, Alhamdulillah and Allahu akbar 33 times each with the tahlil to complete a hundred (Muslim 597), and Ayatul Kursi. The sunnah prayers are the ten rakat Ibn Umar remembered from the Prophet (Bukhari 1180); some pray four before Dhuhr, which makes twelve (Muslim 728).

What it leaves out: the time to make wudu and lay out your mat, the qunut of Fajr in the Shafi‘i school, Witr, and the slower, drawn-out recitation of an imam in a mosque. Real prayers vary by a minute or two either way. If yours is longer, that is good.

Short is fine. Rushed is not. A man once prayed in the mosque and came to greet the Prophet (peace be upon him), who told him: “Go back and pray, for you have not prayed.” This happened three times. Then the Prophet taught him: say the takbir, recite what is easy for you of the Quran, bow until you are at rest in bowing, rise until you stand straight, prostrate until you are at rest in prostration, sit until you are at rest, and do this in all of your prayer (Bukhari 757, Muslim 397).

That rest is called tuma’ninah: the body settles in each position before moving on, at least for the time of one “SubhanAllah”. In the Maliki, Shafi‘i and Hanbali schools it is a pillar (rukn) of the prayer, and a prayer without it is not valid. In the Hanafi school, Abu Hanifa and his student Muhammad held it is wajib, so a prayer without it is deficient and should be prayed again; Abu Yusuf held it is a pillar like the other schools. Either way, do not skip it.

So when you see a very short time on this page, read it as: this is how long the words take when you say them calmly. It is not a target to beat.

• Learn the words a line at a time in learn by heart, starting with Al-Fatiha and a short surah.
• Pray with the audio, step by step: Fajr, Dhuhr, Asr, Maghrib and Isha.
• Know when each prayer starts with the prayer times for your city.
• Count the dhikr after prayer with the tasbih counter, or read what to say after the prayer.
• Missed some prayers? The missed prayers calculator helps you plan to make them up.