Reading the terms and conditions of a major company takes 54 minutes on average in 2026, according to Secure Data Recovery’s analysis of 100 companies at a 200-words-per-minute pace, updated in February 2026. Some documents run far longer than that average. AT&T, Venmo, and Cash App take up to four hours and forty-five minutes to get through, and Grindr’s stand-alone agreement takes nearly two hours on its own.
Below is how famous companies’ terms and conditions compare to each other, and to the reading time of well-known books and founding documents that most people finish faster.
How long does it take to read the average company’s terms and conditions?
About 54 minutes, if a reader goes through the whole document at a standard 200-words-per-minute pace. That figure comes from Secure Data Recovery’s analysis of 100 major companies’ terms and conditions and privacy policies, first published in 2023 and updated in February 2026, which measured an average document length of 10,835 words. The study also scored each document for readability using the Flesch Reading Ease formula, and found 95 of the 100 companies studied wrote fine print rated difficult or very difficult to read. Booking.com was the only company among the top three easiest to read, scoring 62.48, a “fairly easy” rating on the same scale.
Figure 1: Reading time for named companies and two benchmark averages. Sources: Reboot Online, 2021 (Grindr, Zara, TikTok, dating average); Secure Data Recovery, updated 2026 (100-company average).
The 54-minute average is not evenly distributed. A small number of companies write agreements that run four times longer than the typical document, and those outliers are usually the ones that end up in headlines.
Figure 2: Share of 100 companies whose fine print scored difficult or very difficult on the Flesch Reading Ease scale. Source: Secure Data Recovery, 2023 data.
Whichever pace a reader assumes, an hour of legal text before ever reaching the product is not a small ask, and it explains why so few people ever open the document at all.
Which famous companies have the longest terms and conditions to read?
AT&T, Venmo, and Cash App top Secure Data Recovery’s 100-company list, running 30,000 to 56,000 words combined, a 2.5-to-4.75-hour read at a 200-words-per-minute pace. None of the three is broken out individually in the published data, so the range describes the group rather than any single company’s exact word count.
Among companies with a named, individual figure, Grindr’s terms and conditions run the longest at 14,462 words, a 1-hour-51-minute read, according to Reboot Online’s 2021 study of 56 companies across 7 industries. Zara follows at 8,223 words (1 hour 3 minutes), and TikTok at 7,605 words (59 minutes). Microsoft’s terms of service, measured separately by Visual Capitalist in 2020, ran 15,260 words, a 63.5-minute read, longer than every other individually named company in this article. Apple’s own terms and conditions run shorter than all of these, at 8,345 words as of 2026, a difference we cover in full in how long Apple’s terms and conditions run.
| Company | Word count | Reading time | Source (year) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Microsoft | 15,260 | 63.5 min | Visual Capitalist (2020) |
| Grindr | 14,462 | 1h 51m | Reboot Online (2021) |
| Zara | 8,223 | 1h 3m | Reboot Online (2021) |
| TikTok | 7,605 | 59 min | Reboot Online (2021) |
| Average of 100 companies | 10,835 | 54 min | Secure Data Recovery (2026) |
Length by itself does not explain why a company writes a long agreement. Grindr and Zara both carry extensive user-conduct, content-licensing, and marketplace-liability language that shorter categories, like a simple software login, rarely need. Publishing a terms and conditions that matches what a business actually does, rather than copying the longest template available, is what keeps a document out of this ranking in the first place.
How does reading terms and conditions compare to reading a book?
Slower than most people expect, once the comparison is a specific, well-known text rather than an abstract average. Visual Capitalist’s 2020 word-count comparison, read at a 240-words-per-minute pace, found Microsoft’s 15,260-word terms of service takes 63.5 minutes, longer than Sun Tzu’s Art of War at 50 minutes. Shakespeare’s Macbeth, at 18,110 words according to a 2012 Metro analysis, takes roughly 1 hour 11 minutes at the same pace, putting it just ahead of Microsoft’s document.
Figure 3: Reading time for three literary and legal texts alongside three company terms of service, all calculated at 240 words per minute. Sources: Visual Capitalist (2020 data) for company figures and Art of War; Metro (2012) for Macbeth’s word count.
The same Visual Capitalist comparison found reading Twitter, Tinder, or Uber’s terms, each estimated at 20 to 25 minutes, takes longer than reading the U.S. Constitution start to finish. Instagram’s terms of service was the shortest company document in the comparison at 9 minutes 42 seconds, YouTube’s the longest of the shorter group at 13 minutes 42 seconds.
Warning
Word counts for individual companies reflect a 2020 snapshot. Companies revise legal terms regularly, sometimes more than once a year, so a fresh count today could land meaningfully higher or lower than the figures above. Treat the company-level numbers as illustrative of the range rather than a live measurement.
Has anyone actually tried to read every terms and conditions they agreed to?
Yes, at least once, as a public demonstration rather than routine practice. In 2016, Norway’s Consumer Council read the combined terms and conditions covering an average Norwegian’s 33 installed apps aloud, nonstop, for what the organization’s own campaign called roughly 32 hours, about 250,000 words in total, which the group and subsequent press coverage described as longer than the New Testament.
Figure 4: Key milestones in research measuring how long fine print actually takes to read. Sources: McDonald & Cranor (2008), Forbrukerradet (2016), Visual Capitalist (2020), Reboot Online (2021), Secure Data Recovery (updated 2026).
The stunt made a point that the data above only implies: 32 hours is not a number any individual actually spends reading terms and conditions in a year, but it is close to what the combined length of a typical phone’s installed apps would demand if someone tried.
What determines whether a company’s fine print is fast or slow to read?
Scope and liability exposure, more than industry size alone. Reboot Online’s 2021 data found dating platforms carried the longest average terms and conditions of the 7 industries tested, driven largely by user-conduct rules, safety disclaimers, and content-licensing language that a simpler service rarely needs. Secure Data Recovery’s broader 100-company sample found the same pattern at scale: companies handling payments, user-generated content, or multi-product ecosystems, like AT&T, Venmo, Cash App, and Grindr, consistently rank near the top of both studies.
Figure 5: Where a company’s word count lands its terms and conditions on a rough reading-time scale. Buckets built from the word counts and reading times cited above.
Whether a document lands in the sitcom bucket or the Macbeth bucket says more about how many distinct activities a company’s terms have to cover than about how careful the legal team was. None of this reading time matters much in practice, since most people never open the document at all; we cover how many actually do in our terms and conditions statistics roundup.
The Bottom Line
The number that matters most here is not any single company’s word count, it is the 54-minute average across 100 companies, next to the four-hours-plus that AT&T, Venmo, and Cash App demand as a group. Most published terms and conditions take longer to read than a TV episode, and a meaningful share take longer than a Shakespeare play, yet almost nobody budgets an hour before clicking agree. If you are publishing your own terms and conditions, length is not the goal to optimize for either direction. A terms and conditions generator that scopes the document to what your business actually does, rather than copying the longest template available or stripping out clauses you actually need, keeps the reading time proportional to the risk you are disclosing.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long does it take to read the average terms and conditions? About 54 minutes, based on Secure Data Recovery’s analysis of 100 major companies at a 200-words-per-minute reading pace, updated in February 2026. The average document ran 10,835 words, and 95 of the 100 companies studied wrote terms rated difficult or very difficult to read.
Which company has the longest terms and conditions to read? Among individually named companies, Grindr’s terms and conditions take the longest at 1 hour 51 minutes for 14,462 words, per Reboot Online’s 2021 study of 56 companies. Secure Data Recovery’s broader 100-company study found AT&T, Venmo, and Cash App run even longer as a group, up to 4 hours 45 minutes for 56,000 words.
How does reading terms and conditions compare to reading a book? Microsoft’s terms of service take 63.5 minutes to read at 15,260 words, longer than Sun Tzu’s Art of War at 50 minutes and close to Shakespeare’s Macbeth at 1 hour 11 minutes for 18,110 words, according to Visual Capitalist’s 2020 word-count comparison and a 2012 Metro analysis of Macbeth’s length.
Has anyone actually tried to read every terms and conditions they agreed to? Yes. In 2016, Norway’s Consumer Council read the combined terms and conditions covering an average person’s 33 installed apps aloud, nonstop, for roughly 32 hours, about 250,000 words, longer than the New Testament.
Sources and References
- Secure Data Recovery. (2023, updated February 2026). “Major Companies With the Most Confusing Fine Print.” Word count and readability analysis of 100 companies, 200 words-per-minute assumption.
- Reboot Online. (2021). “The Industries with the Longest Terms and Conditions.” Word count and reading-time analysis of 56 companies across 7 industries.
- Visual Capitalist. (2021). “Visualizing the Length of the Fine Print, for 14 Popular Apps.” Word count and reading-time analysis, 2020 data, 240 words-per-minute assumption.
- Metro. (2012). “Terms and Conditions on Websites Can Be Longer Than a Shakespeare Play.” Word-count comparison of iTunes terms and conditions against Macbeth.
- Forbrukerradet (Norwegian Consumer Council). (2016). “The Consumer Council and Friends Read App Terms for 32 Hours.” Public reading of the combined terms and conditions of 33 installed apps.
- McDonald, A. M., & Cranor, L. F. (2008). “The Cost of Reading Privacy Policies.” A Journal of Law and Policy for the Information Society, 4(3), Carnegie Mellon University.
Note: All figures verified as of August 2026. Company-level word counts from Visual Capitalist and Reboot Online reflect 2020 and 2021 snapshots and change whenever a company revises its terms; the Secure Data Recovery average reflects its February 2026 update. Reading-time figures are refreshed at least twice a year as newer data becomes available.
