How Long Does It Take to Learn Morse Code (and Is It Hard)?

By Translate Morse Code, Updated 12 October 2026

Answer first

Learning to hear every Morse letter by ear takes most people a few weeks to a few months of short daily practice. Copying at 13 to 20 words per minute, enough for a real conversation, takes months to a year or more. Ludwig Koch's hand-picked students reached 12 WPM in 13.5 hours; CW Academy's free Beginner class takes eight weeks, with an hour of practice a day, to reach 6 WPM and a basic contact.

Time yourself: lesson 1 takes a few minutesStart lesson 1

On this page · 8 sections

How long it takes, stage by stage

"Learning Morse code" means different things at different stages. The table splits it up. Each time comes from the source named next to it; learner reports are marked as such.

Stage	What you can do	Time or practice, and its source	Drill here
1. K and M	Copy groups of K and M at full speed	LCWO and the Koch course both start here. A Koch course lesson is 10 groups of 5: about 44 seconds of sound at 20/12 WPM, plus your typing	Koch course
2. All 41 characters by ear	Copy random groups of letters, digits and common punctuation	CW Academy Beginner brings in its new letters, numbers, punctuation and prosigns in sessions 1 to 10 of 16, about the first five weeks at two sessions a week, with 60 minutes of daily practice. Learner reports (LCWO forum): all 40 lessons in 4 weeks, 2.5 months, 3 months, almost 2 years	Koch course, daily review
3. 6 WPM and a basic contact	Head copy, send, and run a simple QSO	CW Academy Beginner: 8 weeks, 16 sessions, 60 minutes of daily practice, goal 6 WPM+	Listening drills, QSO simulator, keyer practice
4. 10 WPM	Conversational QSOs, instant character recognition	CW Academy Fundamental: another 8-week class, goal 10 WPM+	Instant recognition
5. 13 WPM	Get past counting dots and dashes	ARRL (QEX, 1990): the shift from counting to rhythm is "probably the cause of the oft-mentioned 13-WPM barrier". Morse Code Ninja: conscious decoding stops at 10 to 13 WPM. 13 WPM was the old US General and Advanced licence speed (ARRL)	Instant recognition, sound-alike drill
6. 20 WPM	Hear words as sounds, head copy	CW Academy Intermediate: goal 20 WPM+. 20 WPM was the old US Extra licence speed. ARRL: experienced operators converse at 20 to 30 WPM	Listening drills (head copy), callsign sprint
7. 30 WPM and up	Contest and high-speed copy	CW Academy Advanced: goal 30 WPM+. Morse Code Ninja's high-speed plan: 30 to 40 minutes a day for about a year, to go from 30 to 45 WPM	Callsign sprint

CW Academy runs each class in three eight-week semesters a year: January–February, May–June and September–October. Taking Beginner, Fundamental and Intermediate back to back runs from January to October. That is the class calendar, not a promise that you will be at 20 WPM by then.

On the Koch course you can read your own stage at the top of the card: "Lesson 12 · 13 of 41 characters" means you are a third of the way through stage 2.

How many hours it takes: the figures and where they come from

Ask for an average and you will not find one. We found no published controlled study of how long today's learners take, which is why answers run from weeks to years. These are the figures that do exist:

13.5 hours to 12 WPM. David Finley (N1IRZ) reports that Koch, who published the method in 1936, "with hand-picked students, got a group to master 12 wpm code in a mere 13.5 hours." They were picked students.
About 56 hours for CW Academy Beginner. Our arithmetic, not CW Academy's: eight weeks of the 60 minutes of daily practice the class asks for, if you keep the commitment every day.
A year at 30 to 40 minutes a day to go from 30 to 45 WPM, in Morse Code Ninja's high-speed plan.
Learner reports from the LCWO forum (one thread, 2021 to 2025): all 40 lessons in 4 weeks at 30 to 60 minutes a day; lesson 40 in 2.5 months at 15 to 30 minutes a day; all lessons in exactly 3 months; a plateau at lesson 30 after about six months of two 10 to 15 minute sessions a day; and in month 10, after every LCWO lesson, two CW Academy classes and about an hour a day, "still not comfortable at 15WPM on air."

The sound itself is short. Pass every lesson of the Koch course at the first try and you would hear only about half an hour of Morse in total. The hours go into hearing each character again and again until you know it without thinking.

Is Morse code hard to learn?

No, not the letters. Morse Code Ninja: "Realize that learning Morse code is not hard. However, it takes diligent practice to become proficient." ARRL's tips (K7QO and AC6V) add: "Some folks master it in days, others in months." What makes it hard is four specific things:

Counting. At slow speeds, beginners count dots and dashes. ARRL's QEX article on Farnsworth timing names this as the likely cause of the 13-WPM barrier. Learning at full character speed from the first lesson avoids it.
Sound-alikes. Characters in the same family, like E I S H 5 (one to five dots), blur together. The sound-alike drill works on one family at a time.
The plateau. Most learners get stuck at some speed. Jack Ritter (W0UCE), quoted by Morse Code Ninja, says to "jump the bump": if you are stuck at 20 WPM, practise at 21 or 22.
Sending with good timing. Your hand has to learn the rhythm too. CW Academy sets sending practice slower than copying for this reason.

Finley sums it up: "individuals differ greatly."

What makes it faster (or slower)

Faster	Slower
Characters at 20 WPM from day one (LCWO: keep it above 15)	Learning at 5 WPM (Morse Code Ninja: "Don't learn Morse code at 5wpm!")
Twice a day for 10 to 15 minutes (Morse Code Ninja); 15 to 30 minutes every day (Finley)	Long sessions; Ritter caps them at thirty minutes
Learning each character as a sound (ARRL)	Charts, trees and memory phrases
Reviewing old characters on a schedule	Only ever adding new ones
Moving up 1 or 2 WPM when stuck	Staying at a comfortable speed

On this site the review part is automatic: the daily review brings each character back on a schedule that stretches from ten minutes to five weeks. For the full routine, see how to learn Morse code, step by step.

Can you learn Morse code in a day or a week?

In a day you can learn K and M and feel how the method works. In a week you may learn to send: Douglas Harder of the University of Waterloo writes that "it is possible to learn to send at about eight words per minute (WPM) in about a week of practice", using his word mnemonics and a phone app. He adds that receiving is harder.

Receiving all 41 characters by ear takes longer for nearly everyone; see stages 2 and 3 above. One LCWO learner had seen a video promising all the letters in about a week; after a month of practice, he was on lesson 15.

Try it

Lesson 1 starts with these two. Play them, then copy 10 groups of 5 in the Koch course:

K
-.-9 units · 0.54 s
M
--7 units · 0.42 s

10 groups of 5, just K and MStart lesson 1

Write down the date and your lesson number once a week. After a month, the table above has a row that is your own. For the method behind the lessons, read how to learn Morse code, step by step.

FAQ

Is Morse code worth learning?

Yes, if you want to use it, though no US amateur licence needs it now: ARRL notes the code requirement was eliminated entirely in 2007. People still learn it because they want to. ARRL says experienced operators converse at 20 to 30 WPM, and CW Academy still runs its free classes three times a year.

How fast can Morse code be?

The copying record is 75.2 WPM, set by Theodore Roosevelt McElroy in 1939, and skilled operators often copy above 40 WPM (Wikipedia). For most people, Morse Code Ninja puts the ceiling for continuous copy at 25 to 30 WPM with instant character recognition and head copy.

Do I need to learn sending at the same time?

No. Learn to copy first, and Morse Code Ninja adds that copying first keeps you listening for the sound of each character instead of counting. When you do start sending, go slower than you copy and check your timing as you go. Harder says sending is the easier half: "Learning to receiving is more difficult than sending."