Bitcoin Forum

On average, how long has it actually taken for people to receive BTC sent? Based on the wiki, it says it could take anywhere from 10 minutes to hours, to days.

Do most people usually add a fee to speed up the transaction?

I'll usually receive it immediately.  How long it takes before they are available for use though depends on how many confirmations you need.  My experience has been that to get the 5-6 confirmations most exchanges require takes somewhere between 1 and 2 hours.  Sometimes faster, but usually not longer than 2 hours.

The Bitcoin difficulty targets a rate of six new transaction blocks per hour, so if your transfer includes an appropriate fee, it will be announced immediately to other clients, included in the next transaction block that is solved, and you will see the confirmation count increase to six (where the Bitcoin client status changes to confirmed) within about an hour. Sending to exchanges usually is between one and two hours, depending on how many confirmations they expect before making your funds available.

It depends on your definition of "receive". If you consider a pending transaction sufficient, then you can receive your BTC in seconds. If you consider "receive" to mean 6 confirmations, then it can take over an hour.

I transferred 0.1 BTC with no transaction fee from my Windows box to my Ubuntu box.  Took about a half second...plus a few hours for the confirms to go through.

As long as it takes for your transaction to be accepted by miners & 6 blocks to be mined.

Anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours usually, if you use a fee.