How long should a eulogy be?
Updated 3 November 2026
Most eulogies run 3 to 5 minutes, which is about 400 to 750 words. If you're the only speaker, 5 to 10 minutes is fine, but check the time slot with the funeral director first and try not to go past 10.
The short answer
Funeral services and grief organisations land in roughly the same place. Simplicity Funerals says a eulogy is normally 3 to 5 minutes and should take no longer than 10. Funeral.com calls 3 to 5 minutes the sweet spot for many services, with 5 to 10 minutes suitable when one person gives the main tribute. The NAFD Funeral Directory suggests 5 to 10 minutes, and Griefline suggests 3 to 7, adding that shorter is often better.
So a good rule:
- One of several speakers: 2 to 5 minutes.
- The main or only eulogy: 5 to 10 minutes.
- Not sure: aim for 4 to 5 minutes. That's long enough for one real story and short enough to manage on a hard day.
Check the time slot before you write
Many funerals have a set time slot for the service. The NAFD Funeral Directory notes that most services run 30 to 45 minutes in total, and that time also has to fit music, readings and any other speakers. Simplicity suggests agreeing a length with whoever is organising the funeral so the eulogy fits the order of service.
If several people are speaking, share the time out. Funeral.com quotes guidance of no more than about 30 minutes for the whole eulogy part of a service. With six speakers, that's 5 minutes each.
How many words is that?
Most people speak at about 130 to 150 words per minute when they give a speech. At a funeral, plan with the slower number. You'll pause more, and you may need a moment to steady your voice.
| Eulogy length | Slower pace (130 wpm) | Typical pace (150 wpm) |
|---|---|---|
| 3 minutes | 390 words | 450 words |
| 5 minutes | 650 words | 750 words |
| 7 minutes | 910 words | 1,050 words |
| 10 minutes | 1,300 words | 1,500 words |
Funeral.com suggests that if you have 5 minutes, you write a draft that's closer to 4 minutes on paper. That leaves room for pauses without running over.
We timed a sample eulogy
To see where the minutes go, we wrote a sample eulogy for a grandmother and ran it through the Speech Timer. It has 504 spoken words in five sections, with five short pauses marked where a speaker would likely stop to breathe or let a line settle.
| Speaking pace | With pauses | Without pauses |
|---|---|---|
| Slower (130 wpm) | 4:10 | 3:57 |
| Typical (150 wpm) | 3:39 | 3:26 |
| Fast (170 wpm) | 3:16 | 3:03 |
At a typical pace, the sections broke down like this:
- Opening: 19 seconds
- Her life: 56 seconds
- The garden story: 1 minute 1 second
- What she taught us: 40 seconds
- Goodbye: 43 seconds
What the numbers show:
- About 500 words fills a 4-minute slot. At a slow, careful pace it ran just over 4 minutes. For a 5-minute slot, 550 to 600 words is plenty.
- Five short pauses added 13 seconds. If you need longer moments to steady yourself, they add up quickly, so leave at least half a minute spare.
- One story did most of the work. The garden story took the most time of any section, and it's the part people will remember. The life summary works best kept to a minute.
- The delivery check caught a line that's easy to trip on. It flagged "too tired to" in the closing section, right where emotions run highest. Rewording a line like that ahead of time is one less thing to worry about on the day. It also flagged "every summer, and every summer", which we kept because the repetition is on purpose.
Read the sample eulogy
Opening. Thank you all for being here. For those who don't know me, I'm Kate, and Margaret was my nan. She would be pleased to see so many of you, and slightly worried there weren't enough scones to go around.
Her life. Nan was born in Ballarat in 1938, the youngest of five. She left school at fifteen to work in her father's hardware shop, and she could still tell you the price of a box of nails in 1955. She met Pop at a church dance when she was nineteen. He stepped on her foot twice, and she married him anyway. They had sixty-one years together, three children, seven grandchildren and, as of last spring, two great-grandchildren.
She worked as a school secretary for almost thirty years. If you went to Lake Street Primary, she probably knew your name, your mum's name, and what you'd done to end up outside the principal's office. She never told anyone. She just handed you a biscuit and sent you back to class.
The garden. If you wanted to find Nan, you went to the garden. She grew tomatoes every summer, and every summer she said this would be the last year. It never was. When I was eight she gave me my own little patch by the back fence. I planted carrots, and every morning I pulled one up to see if it was ready. By the end of the week I had no carrots at all. Nan didn't laugh. She just handed me a fresh packet of seeds and said, "Patience is the only thing a garden can't grow for you."
I've thought about that a lot this week. She was patient with all of us. With Pop's jokes, with my teenage years, with the dog who dug up her roses every single spring. She didn't lecture. She waited, and she was usually right.
What she taught us. Nan believed in turning up. If someone was sick, she was at the door with soup. If someone had a baby, she was there with a knitted blanket before they got home from the hospital. She never made a fuss about it, and she never expected anything back. I don't think she'd ever have called it kindness. To her it was just what you did.
She also believed in a proper cup of tea, a clean kitchen bench and never leaving the house without lipstick. Some of those lessons stuck better than others.
Goodbye. In the last few months, when she was too tired to go outside, she'd ask me to describe the garden to her. Which tomatoes had come up, whether the lemon tree was flowering, what the dog had got into. So, Nan, here's the update. The tomatoes are in. The lemon tree is full. And the roses are safe, for now.
Thank you for the scones, the biscuits, the blankets and the patience. Thank you for showing us what it looks like to look after people. We'll keep the garden going. We love you, and we'll miss you every day.
How to keep it to time
- Pick one or two qualities. Simplicity suggests building the eulogy around a couple of things that made the person who they were, rather than covering their whole life.
- Choose stories over a timeline. A full list of jobs, addresses and dates eats minutes fast. One story that shows who they were does more.
- Practise out loud with a timer. The NAFD Funeral Directory recommends rehearsing aloud at least three times. Timing it out loud is the only way to know how long it really takes.
- Mark your pauses. The NAFD suggests a forward slash in your printed copy where you want to stop. Print it in a large font, at least 14 point, and double-spaced.
- Have a backup. Both the NAFD and Griefline suggest agreeing in advance that someone else can finish reading if you can't continue. Keep water within reach.
How the Speech Timer helps
Paste your eulogy into the Speech Timer and it shows how long it takes to say, reading numbers and dates the way you'll actually say them. Add [pause 3s] where you expect to stop, and set a target length to see how close you are. The delivery check points out long sentences and tongue twisters before you stand up. When you practise, the timer turns green, yellow and red as you near your limit, and you can record yourself to match the timing to your real pace.
Questions people ask
Is a 2-minute eulogy too short?
No. If several people are speaking, or you find it hard to speak in public, 2 minutes with one sincere story is enough.
Can a eulogy be 15 minutes?
Sometimes, if you're the only speaker and the service has time. Check with the funeral director first, because many services have a fixed time slot.
The timings and checks in this guide come from running the examples through our own tools. Sources are listed below.