Work End Time Calculator

Eight 25-minute rounds with a 15-minute long break after round 4 end at 1:05 PM

Start at 9:00 AM, work 25 minutes, rest 5, and repeat that eight times, with a longer 15-minute rest only after round 4. The last round begins at 12:40 PM and finishes at 1:05 PM. Eight rounds of 25 minutes add up to 3 hours 20 minutes of work. The breaks are six 5-minute rests plus one 15-minute long break, 45 minutes in all. From start to finish that takes 4 h 5 min.

The clock face in the calculator draws the plan on a 12-hour dial, from the start time to the end time. The start is a small triangle on the outer edge, work rounds are thick arcs (numbered on wider screens), breaks are thin lines and long breaks are hatched. Both hands point to the end time and swing to the new time when you change a setting. If the plan runs past 12 hours, the rest continues on an inner ring. When this device's clock falls inside the plan, a dot marks the current position and the Now box shows which round you are in and how much time is left.

Why work out the end time first

People often plan work as a round length and a count, such as four 50-minute rounds, and forget that the breaks stretch the day. The time you need to keep free in your calendar is the total elapsed time, breaks included, not the total work. Knowing the end time first helps in cases like these.

• You have something fixed afterwards: with lunch at 12:30, you need to know how many rounds fit before it. Starting at 9:00 AM with 50 minutes of work and 10 of rest, round 3 ends at 11:50 AM and round 4 at 12:50 PM, so only three rounds fit before lunch.
• You have a target for net work: four hours of actual work on a 50/10 rhythm adds 40 minutes of breaks, so you are at your desk for 4 hours 40 minutes. Enter 4 hours in the total work time box and you get the number of rounds and the end time together.
• You are deciding how many pomodoros to do: with a long break every 4 rounds, each time the count passes a multiple of 4 another long break appears, so one extra round can push the end back by more than 30 minutes. The schedule marks each long break with a thick line.
• You are moving a repeating task into your calendar: for shooting sets, data entry or instrument practice, where the same block is repeated, writing down each round's start and end saves you from losing track. Copy table pastes the schedule straight into a note or spreadsheet.

How it is calculated

1. Turn the start time into minutes. 9:00 AM is 9 × 60 = 540 minutes.
2. Decide the number of rounds. If you entered a round count, that is it. If you entered a total work time, divide it by the round length and round up.
3. Add the work time round by round to find when each one ends. Round 1 ends at 540 + 25 = 565 minutes, which is 9:25 AM.
4. Add the break between rounds to find when the next one starts. With a long break cycle of 4, the gap after rounds 4, 8 and 12 uses the long break length instead of the normal one.
5. No break is added after the last round. Only if you switch on the option to add a break after the last round does one more break follow, using the same rule.

End time = start time + total work + break × number of breaks + long break × number of long breaks

There is one fewer break slot than there are rounds. Eight rounds have seven gaps. With a long break every 4 rounds, the gap after round 4 is a long break and the other six are normal breaks. Round 8 is also a multiple of 4, but it is the last round, so no long break follows it. Everything is calculated in whole minutes, so there is no rounding difference.

Filling 4 hours with common rhythms

The same 240 minutes of work ends at different times depending on the round length and the breaks. This compares starting at 9:00 AM and filling 4 hours of total work. When 240 does not divide evenly by the round length, the last round only works the minutes that remain.

The shorter the round, the more breaks there are and the longer the whole thing takes. The 25-minute rhythm needs 45 minutes of breaks to fill 4 hours, and with a long break every 4 rounds that grows to 1 hour 5 minutes, finishing 35 minutes after the 90-minute rhythm. Longer rounds mean fewer breaks but longer stretches of focus at a time. Look at the end time and the round length together and pick the rhythm that suits you.

The Pomodoro Technique and the long break cycle

The Pomodoro Technique is a time management method created by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s while he was a university student, and it is best known for its 25-minute focus unit. Cirillo himself explains that the 25-minute length and the breaks are not the heart of the technique. Many pomodoro apps default to 25 minutes of work, a 5-minute break and a longer break after a few rounds. The default settings of Pomofocus, for example, are 25 minutes of work, a 5-minute short break, a 15-minute long break and a long break interval of 4.

This is how many normal and long breaks fit in, depending on the number of rounds, when you start at 9:00 AM with those settings.

With only 4 rounds, no long break appears at all, because the break after round 4 would come after the last round and none is added there. If you plan to take a long rest after a set and then start something else, switch on the option to add a break after the last round and check when that long break ends. With 8 rounds and that option on, a 15-minute long break follows round 8 and the end time becomes 1:20 PM, while the work itself still ends at 1:05 PM.

Setting the rounds from the total work time

The rounds box and the total work time box are linked. Change the rounds and the total work time follows as round length × rounds. Change the total work time and the number of rounds is set for you. The box you edited last is the one that counts, and the other is marked auto. When the total work time is the one in charge, changing the round length keeps the total and only recounts the rounds.

If the total work time does not divide evenly by the round length, the last round is shorter. Filling 6 hours with 50-minute rounds gives 360 ÷ 50 = 7.2, so you need 8 rounds, and round 8 works only 10 min. Starting at 9:00 AM with 10-minute breaks, you get seven breaks totalling 1 h 10 min, and the plan ends at 4:10 PM. Put these settings into the calculator

If you would rather keep every round the same length, enter the rounded-up number of rounds in the rounds box instead of a total work time. The total work time then comes out slightly longer than your target.

Plans that cross midnight

A plan that starts at night can end on the next day. Starting at 10:00 PM with four rounds of 50 minutes and 10-minute breaks, round 3 begins at midnight and the last round ends at 1:50 AM the next day.

The end time and the schedule carry a next-day label, and the clock face keeps drawing without a break from the start time. The calculator only handles plans that fit within 24 hours from start to finish, so split anything longer by day. For a plan that crosses midnight, the Now box treats early-morning times as part of the plan that started the evening before.

Common mistakes

• Counting as many breaks as rounds: four 50-minute rounds with 10-minute breaks have three breaks, 30 minutes. Count four and the end time comes out 10 minutes late.
• Adding the long break on top of a normal break: the 15 minutes in the long break box is the full length of that gap. It is not 5 + 15 = 20 minutes.
• Treating total work time as the total elapsed time: a 4-hour work target takes 4 hours 40 minutes on a 50/10 rhythm. Plan what comes next around the total elapsed time.
• Picking AM instead of PM: in a browser where the start time box uses AM and PM, it is easy to choose 2 AM when you meant 2 PM. 2 PM is 14:00 on a 24-hour clock.
• Leaving the break box empty: if you want to work straight through, enter 0 for the break. An empty box is not calculated and the box shows an error.

Limits of this calculation

• Every round is assumed to have the same work length and the same break length. The only exceptions are the last round when you set a total work time, and the long breaks. To make just one break longer, such as for lunch, calculate the parts before and after separately, or use the period end time calculator, which lets you change the break box by box.
• Setup, tidy-up and travel time are not included, and neither is time lost to delays. The result is the planned time if everything goes as scheduled.
• It calculates up to 100 rounds and up to 24 hours from start to finish, in whole minutes.
• There are no alerts or sounds. To be notified when a round ends, use a pomodoro timer alongside it.
• The Now box follows this device's clock and cannot tell whether you started the plan yesterday or today.
• Your input is calculated only inside this browser and never sent to a server. The settings go into the address only when you press Copy link.

Checked on October 23, 2026. The origin of the Pomodoro Technique and the description of the 25-minute unit come from Francesco Cirillo's official site, and the app defaults from the Pomofocus page text and the default settings in its app code.

Sources

• 01Francesco Cirillo: The Pomodoro Technique bookCreated the technique as a student in the late 1980s, a method of focusing in 25-minute units
• 02Francesco Cirillo: The Philosophy Behind the TechniqueExplains that the 25-minute session and the break themselves are not the core of the technique
• 03PomofocusDescribes 25 minutes of focus then a 5-minute break; app code defaults: work 25 min, short break 5 min, long break 15 min, long break interval 4

Frequently asked questions

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