Just wondering since i've never done one.
It wildly varies depending on how often you play, but from different forum posts over the years, it is somewhere from 6 months to 5 years, with a regularly meeting group somewhere around 1-2 years.
I also remembered this thread from a year ago:
AP Duration Thread
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From personal experience, I've gone through a couple APs in a year and a half, with a 3rd-party one sort of giving up after 3 years.
It also depends on the preparedness of the GM, the whims of scheduling, and if there are any players who want to go off and do things on their own, taking the GM with them until they're satisfied (a chronic problem in that three-year one. Also, we were about to wipe and the GM was hesitant to finish us off).
I'll just add by two cents here.
With a steady schedule of meeting once per week and having relatively short sessions of around two and a half hours in length, my average completion time for modules or one sixth of an adventure path is between 3 and 4 months. This will obviously vary by your players, how much you modify your adventure and chances are by level as gameplay usually slows down at high levels unless you have a skilled group playing.
Altogether though, if you can maintain a steady pace, you are looking at 1.5 to 2 years (as meantioned above) before adding your own content to a full adventure path.
1 1/2 years with a group which meets each week for 3-4 hour sessions, with about 10 weeks of the year falling through due to vacations and other RL obligations.
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Last one I finished up was Reign of Winter.
Started on 07 Jan 2015. Finished 06 Jun 2016.
This is while:
1. Playing once per week.
2. For sessions of 4-5 hours.
3. While switching every other book to the alternate "Shattered Star" campaign.
It took 38 sessions over 17 months but really only half of those months were on Reign of Winter. If you took the 38 sessions back-to-back, that would be 9.5 months.
Two data points:
Rise of the Runelords - 104 sessions spread over 4 years. Each session was 4-5 hours (but we are NOT focused and do not use the time efficiently.) A group with a more consistent focus on play could probably get it done in 60-80% of the time.
Hell's Rebels: 12 sessions so far, 2/3 (roughly) done with Book 1 in about 6 months. Same average session time. Rebels has more role-playing elements and "strategic dimensions" so I expect it will take longer than RotRL.
I'm finding APs take about 220 to 240 hours for my groups and, depending on schedule and consistency, that's working out to around 10 to 12 months of steady play.
Rise of the Runelords: ran it from start (May 1st, 2015) to finish (May 1st, 2018) for exactly 3 years (give or take a few hours) in 58 sessions of varying length (minimum 3 hours - maximum six hours)
in detail:
Book 1: 05.01.2015 - 10.02.2015, 11 sessions
Book 2: 10.16.2015 - 04.08.2016, 12 sessions
Book 3: 05.01.2016 - 10.16.2016*, 9 sessions
Book 4: 10.16.2016* - 04.23.2017, 9 sessions
Book 5: 05.05.2017 - 09.23.2017, 8 sessions
Book 6: 21.10.2017 - 05.01.2018, 9 sessions
*yes, those are two three hour sessions on one day with a nice break between books
We played Carrion Crown in about 3 years, iirc, meeting generally every other week for 5-6 hours per session. We have a steady group of 6 players. If we miss a session we try to make it up. We extended the campaign out a year by adding on A Paladin In Hell on the back end.
Currently running an adapted (to 5e) version of Giantslayer that we've been playing for 2 years and are almost finished with book 5. Figure it will be done in another 6 months' time, or about 2.5 years altogether. Same group of 6 playing roughly every other week.
My group averages about 18 months.
The plan is to play every week for around 4-5 hours. We end up averaging about 40-45 sessions dedicated to the AP in a year.
Right now we're 3/4 way through book 5 of Reign of Winter. We should finish book 6 by the end of July.
Then it's on to Ruins of Azlant (? think that's its name)