| LATEST ANALYSIS: How many folks watched Friends on Netflix in the first half of 2025? |
Every 6 months, Netflix puts out a somewhat-massaged spreadsheet showing how many hours of viewing and total views its most popular shows get, with data for 6,800-odd shows. This allows us to answer the question: which season of Friends is the most popular?
Netflix doesn’t have the global rights to Friends, as the US rights were famously snagged by HBO Max back in 2020. But it does have them for Australia and many other markets.
Unsurprisingly for a decades-old show, Friends is no longer a blockbuster, but it’s still a dependable performer for Netflix, with 418 million hours of viewing between January and June 2024.
The most popular season is #359 on Netflix’s global ranking of TV shows by viewers; the least popular still reaches #511. That means Friends is well and truly in the most popular 10% of TV shows on Netflix.
Here’s how the seasons stack up when ranked by total views:
| Season | Views |
|---|---|
| Season 6 | 5,100,000 |
| Season 5 | 5,100,000 |
| Season 7 | 4,900,000 |
| Season 4 | 4,800,000 |
| Season 8 | 4,800,000 |
| Season 1 | 4,700,000 |
| Season 3 | 4,600,000 |
| Season 2 | 4,500,000 |
| Season 9 | 4,400,000 |
| Season 10 | 4,100,000 |
And here’s how they rank for total hours viewed. Season 3 climbs the rankings quite a bit here. If we adjust this to allow for the different total running times of each season, then short-timed Season 8 jumps up to position 4.
| Season | Hours viewed | Runtime |
|---|---|---|
| Season 6 | 46,400,000 | 9:08 |
| Season 5 | 45,100,000 | 8:51 |
| Season 3 | 43,800,000 | 9:28 |
| Season 7 | 43,200,000 | 8:45 |
| Season 1 | 42,500,000 | 9:02 |
| Season 9 | 42,500,000 | 9:28 |
| Season 4 | 42,400,000 | 8:53 |
| Season 8 | 42,100,000 | 8:45 |
| Season 2 | 40,600,000 | 9:04 |
| Season 10 | 30,200,000 | 7:24 |
So what’s going on?
- On both rankings, Season 6 comes out on top. This is a solidly dependable season, but actually relatively low on character drama, coming after Chandler and Monica are fully established as a couple and before Rachel becomes pregnant. Maybe folks just like the familiarity.
- It’s not surprising that Season 10 comes in last, because it was a shortened 17-epsiode season, so any ranking by time viewed is going to do it no favours.
For more Friends analysis, check out the truth about whether Patsy Kensit turned down the role of Emily and what Channel 9 once did to Days Of Our Lives.
Ultra-pedantic note: Netflix’s spreadsheet didn’t include a season length for Season 9 for some reason, so I calculated that by adding up the listed times for the show. I don’t think this impacts the rankings.
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