Hyperspace has always been an inconsistent mess throughout the history of the franchise. Most of the authors gloss over it unless the plot demands it, adding time skips and avoiding specifics unless the plot needs them. The movies are a little better with the exception of the sequels, you at least get the impression time has passed with scenes between entering and exiting hyper and people aren't in the same places and poses as when they entered. But how fast is it? What are the rules and what do the different drive speeds mean? Well, I'm going to put down the few solid bits of information I have and try to build a picture.
So, the first thing most people want to know is, what do the class numbers mean? According to the Wookieepedia, they're a travel time multiplier. You have a base travel time between two places and, all things being equal, a 1.0 drive will get you there twice as fast as a 2.0, and three times faster than a 3.0. Han Solo in the Falcon has a 0.5, so he gets to cut the time in half and get there twice as fast as the 1.0 hyperdrive equipped ship. But the Galaxy isn't equal to all or fair, the Wookieepedia also states that this is a rough guide and may be inconsistent or inaccurate. My in universe head-cannon for this? They need tuning, can slow, be improved, maybe the shady second-hand dealer slapped a refurbished 2.0 on instead of a brand new 2.0, or the calibration machine was just off during testing.
But this brings to the question of just how fast are hyperdrives? And I've only found one solid answer to that. In Timothy Zahn's Thrawn: Treason, he states that an Imperial Star Destroyer (class 2.0 drive) crossed 8 light years in exactly 3.7 minutes. So a class one could do it in 1.85 minutes, or 0.23125m/Ly or, 13.875 seconds to a light year. Meaning, a class 1.0 drive can achieve 832.5 light years in an hour of travel. If my math isn't horribly wrong, it could be. Otherwise, I'm fairly confident in this answer. In practical terms, "...the hyperdrive allowed travelers to traverse a galaxy spanning over 120,000 light-years in only a few hours or days," (Wookieepeedia, 2025). So class 1.0 can cross the galaxy in 144.1 hours or roughly six days, right? Well no, because there are things in the way.
This is where things get really murky because hyperspace isn't actually space as we think of the black void, but a dimension of space-time that could only be entered at faster-than-light speeds. Though pseudo-science, ships enter a shadow of the real world that mimics our reality. Gravity casts a shadow there proportional to the force it exerts in our universe. This gravity slows you down and pulls you out of hyperspace, usually right in front of a planet, star, or black hole, and that'll end your trip real quick. So pilots have to chart courses around these gravity wells and hope no other stellar phenomena get them. This led to the development of Hyper Lanes, well charted, well known safe paths that linked up major destinations like our highways. Smaller lanes exist, but the galaxy is always in motion, stellar drift of planets and systems can close off some pathways and open others. In the Deep Core, where stars are tightly packed and volatile, some paths are only open for half an hour. To put it more simply, space is full of hazards, routs need to be scouted and updated to account for drift, hyperlanes are often the most predictable routes that also link profitable worlds that can fund their route to stay open or lay on a convenient path between two other systems. EckhartsLadder explains this better than I do here, so I do recommend his video on hyperlanes, how they change, and are scouted and updated.
Between regular travel and hyperspace travel, there is a period of what's called pseudo motion, we see this in the movies and shows when the ship blurs, the stars elongate, and the ships shoot off the screen. The ships are accelerating up to "light speed" to enter hyperspace. But before reaching it, they're still in our "real space." And it's really the only explanation for everyone's favorite Holdo Maneuver. She lucked out and hit the Supremacy while accelerating at near light speeds, but before crossing over into hyperspace. If she'd started a little further away, she might have passed right through, depending on the mass shadow of the Supremacy. We see this when Darth Vader's Star Destroyer arrives in Rogue One, ships jump out on the same vector as Vader comes in on. MAYBE. Huge maybe. Even the tiniest of fraction of degrees and they would have missed each other. Plus, to my knowledge, none of these things ever get a solid answer for why they happened like they did. The ship that Vader does run over hadn't even started its jump yet. Really, nothing from the sequels should be looked at when it comes to hyperspace. Or cannon.
Making a trip through hyperspace requires precise calculations that use a ship's speed and mass to get to its destination, in the (rather excellent) X-Wing series by Michael Stackpole, we get some more insight into how a ship would plot and travel through hyperspace. Corran Horn recalculates a jump to take advantage of the x-wing's speed, bringing their path a little closer into a star's gravity well because they have the speed to brush through the edges without slowing to a critical degree and falling out of hyperspace. This is important because it shows a skilled navigator with a faster hyperdrive (or one with greater ship mass) can cut off even more time in a trip than one that takes the same route all the slower ships do. In essence, faster ships have a "fast lane" to continue the highway analogy.
So what does a trip between systems look like? A ship takes off and can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours (depending on speed and local regulations) to burn away from any significant gravity wells, while also ending up on the side of their starting system their next jump is on. This isn't just clearing the planet's gravity, but the star's gravity, as that's what is causing the planet to orbit it. The navigator then plots a straight-line course from their current location to a destination, the ship accelerates to near light speed, and they enter hyperspace. Then, providing they don't come across any mass-shadows, they travel for a time and then drop out. Adjust course and repeat until arriving at the edge of the destination system. They can then fly into the system's gravity well while scanning out the current location of local planets, stations, and hazards.
That's a simple trip, but we write a lot of war in our Star Wars fandom, and that means interdictors and trying to ensnare our opponents while they try and wiggle away. Interdictors, generate mass shadows that trip the safeties on a hyperdrive or slow them down enough that the ship drops from hyperspace. Tractor beams are also useful to prevent a ship from escaping, as they stop a ship from accelerating away from their grip. Even normal maneuvering might tear a trapped ship to pieces. Though I should note that tractors work by pulling the trapped ship against the initiator's mass. Larger ships can easily lock down smaller ones, but a fighter trying to tractor a capital ship isn't slowing it down any more than one landed in its hanger. To counter interdictors, some ships carry a Hyperwave Inertial Momentum Sustainer, or HIMS. On entering a gravity well, the device would shut off the hyperdrive to prevent damage while establishing a "static hyperspace bubble" around the ship, allowing its forward momentum to carry it through an interdiction field. While the field only lasts a short while, it's enough to get through most artificial fields, or penetrate deeper into the gravity well of a system.
A lot more could be said about hyperspace and hyperdrives, but this covers most of the basics and information I've come across without getting into the minutia details.
So, the first thing most people want to know is, what do the class numbers mean? According to the Wookieepedia, they're a travel time multiplier. You have a base travel time between two places and, all things being equal, a 1.0 drive will get you there twice as fast as a 2.0, and three times faster than a 3.0. Han Solo in the Falcon has a 0.5, so he gets to cut the time in half and get there twice as fast as the 1.0 hyperdrive equipped ship. But the Galaxy isn't equal to all or fair, the Wookieepedia also states that this is a rough guide and may be inconsistent or inaccurate. My in universe head-cannon for this? They need tuning, can slow, be improved, maybe the shady second-hand dealer slapped a refurbished 2.0 on instead of a brand new 2.0, or the calibration machine was just off during testing.
But this brings to the question of just how fast are hyperdrives? And I've only found one solid answer to that. In Timothy Zahn's Thrawn: Treason, he states that an Imperial Star Destroyer (class 2.0 drive) crossed 8 light years in exactly 3.7 minutes. So a class one could do it in 1.85 minutes, or 0.23125m/Ly or, 13.875 seconds to a light year. Meaning, a class 1.0 drive can achieve 832.5 light years in an hour of travel. If my math isn't horribly wrong, it could be. Otherwise, I'm fairly confident in this answer. In practical terms, "...the hyperdrive allowed travelers to traverse a galaxy spanning over 120,000 light-years in only a few hours or days," (Wookieepeedia, 2025). So class 1.0 can cross the galaxy in 144.1 hours or roughly six days, right? Well no, because there are things in the way.
This is where things get really murky because hyperspace isn't actually space as we think of the black void, but a dimension of space-time that could only be entered at faster-than-light speeds. Though pseudo-science, ships enter a shadow of the real world that mimics our reality. Gravity casts a shadow there proportional to the force it exerts in our universe. This gravity slows you down and pulls you out of hyperspace, usually right in front of a planet, star, or black hole, and that'll end your trip real quick. So pilots have to chart courses around these gravity wells and hope no other stellar phenomena get them. This led to the development of Hyper Lanes, well charted, well known safe paths that linked up major destinations like our highways. Smaller lanes exist, but the galaxy is always in motion, stellar drift of planets and systems can close off some pathways and open others. In the Deep Core, where stars are tightly packed and volatile, some paths are only open for half an hour. To put it more simply, space is full of hazards, routs need to be scouted and updated to account for drift, hyperlanes are often the most predictable routes that also link profitable worlds that can fund their route to stay open or lay on a convenient path between two other systems. EckhartsLadder explains this better than I do here, so I do recommend his video on hyperlanes, how they change, and are scouted and updated.
Between regular travel and hyperspace travel, there is a period of what's called pseudo motion, we see this in the movies and shows when the ship blurs, the stars elongate, and the ships shoot off the screen. The ships are accelerating up to "light speed" to enter hyperspace. But before reaching it, they're still in our "real space." And it's really the only explanation for everyone's favorite Holdo Maneuver. She lucked out and hit the Supremacy while accelerating at near light speeds, but before crossing over into hyperspace. If she'd started a little further away, she might have passed right through, depending on the mass shadow of the Supremacy. We see this when Darth Vader's Star Destroyer arrives in Rogue One, ships jump out on the same vector as Vader comes in on. MAYBE. Huge maybe. Even the tiniest of fraction of degrees and they would have missed each other. Plus, to my knowledge, none of these things ever get a solid answer for why they happened like they did. The ship that Vader does run over hadn't even started its jump yet. Really, nothing from the sequels should be looked at when it comes to hyperspace. Or cannon.
Making a trip through hyperspace requires precise calculations that use a ship's speed and mass to get to its destination, in the (rather excellent) X-Wing series by Michael Stackpole, we get some more insight into how a ship would plot and travel through hyperspace. Corran Horn recalculates a jump to take advantage of the x-wing's speed, bringing their path a little closer into a star's gravity well because they have the speed to brush through the edges without slowing to a critical degree and falling out of hyperspace. This is important because it shows a skilled navigator with a faster hyperdrive (or one with greater ship mass) can cut off even more time in a trip than one that takes the same route all the slower ships do. In essence, faster ships have a "fast lane" to continue the highway analogy.
So what does a trip between systems look like? A ship takes off and can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours (depending on speed and local regulations) to burn away from any significant gravity wells, while also ending up on the side of their starting system their next jump is on. This isn't just clearing the planet's gravity, but the star's gravity, as that's what is causing the planet to orbit it. The navigator then plots a straight-line course from their current location to a destination, the ship accelerates to near light speed, and they enter hyperspace. Then, providing they don't come across any mass-shadows, they travel for a time and then drop out. Adjust course and repeat until arriving at the edge of the destination system. They can then fly into the system's gravity well while scanning out the current location of local planets, stations, and hazards.
That's a simple trip, but we write a lot of war in our Star Wars fandom, and that means interdictors and trying to ensnare our opponents while they try and wiggle away. Interdictors, generate mass shadows that trip the safeties on a hyperdrive or slow them down enough that the ship drops from hyperspace. Tractor beams are also useful to prevent a ship from escaping, as they stop a ship from accelerating away from their grip. Even normal maneuvering might tear a trapped ship to pieces. Though I should note that tractors work by pulling the trapped ship against the initiator's mass. Larger ships can easily lock down smaller ones, but a fighter trying to tractor a capital ship isn't slowing it down any more than one landed in its hanger. To counter interdictors, some ships carry a Hyperwave Inertial Momentum Sustainer, or HIMS. On entering a gravity well, the device would shut off the hyperdrive to prevent damage while establishing a "static hyperspace bubble" around the ship, allowing its forward momentum to carry it through an interdiction field. While the field only lasts a short while, it's enough to get through most artificial fields, or penetrate deeper into the gravity well of a system.
A lot more could be said about hyperspace and hyperdrives, but this covers most of the basics and information I've come across without getting into the minutia details.
