CS50's Introduction to Databases with SQL: study plan and how long it takes
The CS50 playlist is 8 videos and 11.1 hours long. Here's how long it takes at different paces, a week-by-week schedule built from the real videos, and a planner that turns it into your own daily plan.
8 videos · 11.1 hours · CS50
CS50 SQL teaches databases from querying to scaling: SELECT and filtering, relating tables with joins, designing schemas, writing data, views, optimizing with indexes and transactions, and scaling with MySQL and PostgreSQL.
There are only seven lectures, but each is around 90 minutes and paired with problem sets on the CS50 site.
Who it's for: Beginners who want to learn SQL properly, including developers who use databases but never learned the theory.
How long does it take?
The full playlist is 11.1 hours across 8 videos. Here's roughly how many days that is at different daily watch times and speeds, counting video time only:
| Daily time | At 1x | At 1.5x | At 2x |
|---|---|---|---|
| 30 min a day | 23 days | 15 days | 12 days |
| 1 h a day | 12 days | 8 days | 6 days |
| 2 h a day | 6 days | 4 days | 3 days |
Make your own schedule
The playlist link is already filled in. Press Plan, set how much time you have each day and your speed, and you'll get a day-by-day schedule with a finish date and a calendar file. It reads the live playlist, so new videos are included.
Week-by-week schedule
A sample plan at 1 hour a day and normal speed, using whole videos so none is split across days. That's 2 weeks in total. For a different pace, start date or speed, use the planner above.
Week 1Videos 1–7 · 8h 59m
Day 1 · 2m
- 1CS50 SQL - Introduction2m
Day 2 · 1h 19m
- 2CS50 SQL - Lecture 0 - Querying1h 19m
Day 3 · 1h 42m
- 3CS50 SQL - Lecture 1 - Relating1h 42m
Day 4 · 1h 21m
- 4CS50 SQL - Lecture 2 - Designing1h 21m
Day 5 · 1h 43m
- 5CS50 SQL - Lecture 3 - Writing1h 43m
Day 6 · 1h 22m
- 6CS50 SQL - Lecture 4 - Viewing1h 22m
Day 7 · 1h 29m
- 7CS50 SQL - Lecture 5 - Optimizing1h 29m
Week 2Video 8 · 2h 9m
Day 8 · 2h 9m
- 8CS50 SQL - Lecture 6 - Scaling2h 9m
Tips for finishing
- Run every query in SQLite as you watch; the lectures are designed to be followed hands-on.
- Plan one lecture a week if you're doing the problem sets.