25 Minute Timer
Counts down 25 minutes, with optional breaks. Ends at … if you start now.
Intervals
Alarm
Keeps playing while you switch tabs.
Keyboard shortcuts
- Space
- Start or pause
- R
- Reset the current session
- S
- Skip to the next interval
- F
- Full screen
- T
- Switch light and dark
No tasks yet. Add the one thing you are doing.
- Today
- 0 min
- This week
- 0 min
- All time
- 0 min
- Sessions today
- 0
- Streak
- 0 days
This is a twenty-five minute countdown, the standard pomodoro. Start it with one click and it rings at zero, with a five-minute break ready if you want the full cycle. It keeps exact time in a background tab because it counts toward a fixed finishing time.
Twenty-five minutes is the number the whole method is built on. Francesco Cirillo picked it in the late 1980s as a student, using a tomato-shaped kitchen timer, because it was short enough to start without dread and long enough to get somewhere. There is no science underneath the number and Cirillo has never claimed otherwise. What makes it work is that it is fixed in advance, and that stopping is close enough to feel survivable when you would rather be doing anything else.
What fits in 25 minutes
- One pomodoro of study, with a stated target for the block rather than a subject
- Clearing an email backlog on a timer, so it ends instead of eating the morning
- A writing sprint where the only rule is that you do not open another tab
- Instrument or language practice, which suits short daily blocks better than long rare ones
- A cleaning sprint where the timer ending is what stops you, not the room being finished
As a pomodoro
One classic pomodoro. This is the original: twenty-five minutes of focus, a five-minute break, and a longer break of fifteen to thirty after every fourth session.
Four 25-minute sessions with 5-minute breaks take 1 hour 55 minutes.
FAQ
Why is a pomodoro twenty-five minutes?
Cirillo chose it as a student because it was a length he could commit to when he was struggling to study at all. It is not derived from research on attention span. The fixed, announced-in-advance quality matters more than the specific number, which is why people happily run 20, 30 or 50.
What do I do if I finish before the timer rings?
Cirillo's answer is to spend the remainder reviewing or improving the same work rather than starting something new. Review notes, tidy the code, reread the paragraph. Stopping early breaks the habit that makes the block reliable, and the last few minutes are often where the useful edits happen.
How many 25-minute sessions should I do in a day?
Between six and twelve is what most people who stick with it settle on, which is roughly three to five hours of concentrated work. That is far more real focus than a typical day contains. Building up over a couple of weeks beats trying to hit twelve on the first Monday.
Do I have to take a break after every twenty-five minutes?
Yes, if you want the method rather than just a countdown. The break is what keeps the sessions repeatable across a whole day, and skipping it is the most common reason people abandon the technique in week two. Stand up, leave the screen, come back.