How Long Does It Take to Become Best Friends? The Genuine Numbers Behind a Difficult Truth

How long does it take to become best friends? Research says hundreds of hours, but there’s a real timeline behind the numbers.

Real friendships don’t happen on a schedule, but researchers have actually put a number on how long does it take to become best friends, and it’s more than most people expect. If you’ve ever wondered why some connections still feel casual after months while others deepen fast, the honest answer has less to do with chemistry and more to do with time. This guide breaks down the real research, what actually counts as “close,” and how to rack up the hours that turn a new acquaintance into a genuine best friend.

Key Takeaways

Research from the University of Kansas found it takes roughly 200 hours together to become close friends.
Getting to a simple “friend” stage takes around 90 hours; a casual friend, about 50.
Shared, unstructured time (not just proximity) is what actually builds closeness.
Knowing the honest answer to “how long does it take to become best friends?” can make slow-building friendships feel less discouraging.

How Long Does It Take to Become Best Friends? Why Researchers Started Counting

Communication professor Jeffrey Hall set out to answer a question most of us only ask ourselves after the fact: how long does it take to become best friends, really? His team surveyed adults about new relationships and tracked how the time they spent together related to how close they felt. The goal wasn’t to produce a magic number for its own sake, it was to explain why some new friendships stall at “we get coffee sometimes” while others turn into the people you’d call at 2am.

Understanding the real timeline also removes some of the guilt that can creep in when a promising friendship seems to be moving slowly. It usually isn’t a sign of anything wrong. Asking “how long does it take to become best friends?” turns a vague worry into something concrete you can actually track.

200+ hoursThe shared time Hall’s research found it takes before someone becomes a close or best friend.

Source: Jeffrey Hall, University of Kansas (2018), Journal of Social and Personal Relationships

What Actually Counts Toward the Hours

How long does it take to become best friends: four women spending relaxed time together in a kitchen

Not all shared time is equal, which is part of why the answer to “how long does it take to become best friends?” isn’t as simple as counting weeks on a calendar. Hall’s research found that unstructured, unpressured time together (grabbing food, wandering around a new city, sitting through a slow afternoon with nothing planned) builds closeness faster than time spent purely working alongside someone. This matters because it explains why a colleague you see for eight hours a day, five days a week, can still feel more like an acquaintance than a friend after months, while a new connection from a hobby group can start to feel close within weeks.

Repeated, low-pressure hangouts: regular coffee or walks add up faster than occasional big events.
Honest conversation, not just company: talking about something real accelerates trust.
Consistency over intensity: five short hangouts build more closeness than one very long one.
Doing something together, not just watching something: shared activity creates more to talk about afterward.

Why the Real Timeline Is Good News

“How long does it take to become best friends?” can feel like a discouraging question if a new friendship “should” feel closer by now. Two months in, still trading logistics texts rather than real ones, doesn’t mean it’s failing, it might just mean you’re at hour 40, not hour 90. Adult friendships often stall not because the connection is wrong, but because life doesn’t naturally hand adults 200 hours together the way school or university once did. There’s no shared cafeteria, no dorm hallway, no built-in reason to see the same people day after day, so the hours have to be built on purpose instead of happening by accident.

That’s also why some friendships that started later in life can feel closer, faster, than ones from decades ago that never had the chance to accumulate real time together. Distance and busy schedules quietly cap the hour count, no matter how much two people genuinely like each other. Knowing the answer to “how long does it take to become best friends?” matters more as an adult than it ever did at school, precisely because the hours no longer happen by accident.

For couples, colleagues turned friends, or two people who met through a shared hobby, the underlying math stays the same, only the setting changes. A book club or a running group can quietly deliver 50 hours of shared time within a few months if you show up consistently, while the same 50 hours spread thinly across occasional catch-ups can take a year or more.

How Long Does It Take to Become Best Friends? Speeding Up the Clock, In Practice

You can’t shortcut trust, but you can be intentional about racking up the hours that count. Make plans that repeat rather than one-offs, so the relationship has a rhythm instead of restarting each time. Say yes to the low-stakes hangouts, not just the big ones, since those add up faster than people expect. And where the honest problem is that you simply don’t have enough people around to spend that time with, that’s worth naming directly. Meeting more women through a genuine, women-only space like Gofrendly, or reading our guide to the best friendship apps in the UK, can help close that gap before the 50-hour mark even starts.

If you’ve recently reconnected with someone after a gap, the clock doesn’t fully reset, but it does slow down. Our piece on how to reconnect with old friends covers how to rebuild that closeness more efficiently than starting from zero. Whichever stage you’re at, the honest answer to “how long does it take to become best friends?” is: longer than a few good hangouts, but shorter than most people fear once the hours actually start adding up.

Download Gofrendly

Because friendship’s always worth the storage space.

Start here

Frequently asked questions

How long does it take to become best friends, according to the research?

Roughly 200 hours of shared time, based on research from the University of Kansas, published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships in 2018.

Does the type of time together matter, or just the amount?

Both. The research found that low-pressure, unstructured time together built closeness faster than time spent simply working alongside someone.

Can a friendship become close faster than 200 hours?

Yes. 200 hours is the research’s average answer to “how long does it take to become best friends?” – not a fixed rule. Some people report feeling close after far less time, especially when conversations go deep quickly.

Does the time it takes to become best friends change with age?

The hours themselves don’t change, but adults usually need to build them on purpose since daily life no longer hands them the same built-in opportunities school once did.

Written by

Gofrendly Team

Written by the Gofrendly team — insights drawn from conversations with thousands of women across every life stage, and from building a platform used by over 1 million members.