Pomodoro Timer: Free Online Tomato Clock (25/5)

Pick a preset, type the one task you're working on and press Start. The timer runs the whole cycle for you: focus, a short break, focus again, and a long break after the fourth pomodoro. Want to know when you'll be done? Set a number under "Plan my session" and you'll see the finish time before you begin.

How the Pomodoro Technique works (in 5 steps)

The Pomodoro Technique is a simple loop: choose one task, work on it for 25 minutes without switching, then take a short break. After four rounds, you take a longer break. In Francesco Cirillo's book The Pomodoro Technique, the short break is 3 to 5 minutes and the long break 15 to 30 minutes.

1. Choose one task. Type it in the task box, so it sits over the timer and in your tab title.
2. Start the 25-minute timer. Press Start, or hit the space bar.
3. Work until the bell. No email, no quick checks. If something pops into your head, log it and keep going.
4. Take a short break. The tool uses 5 minutes and starts it on its own, because the break is part of the method.
5. Take a long break after four pomodoros. 15 minutes here by default; you can make it up to 60 in Custom.

One rule people skip: in Cirillo's rules a pomodoro can't be split. If you stop halfway, it doesn't count, and you start a fresh one later. The timer follows that rule, so Reset during focus means the round is gone.

Why it helps: 25 minutes feels small enough to start, even on a task you've been avoiding. And because the break is already planned, you don't have to decide when to stop.

So four pomodoros take 1 hour and 55 minutes of your day, or 2 hours and 10 minutes with the long break after them. Eight take 4 hours and 5 minutes, with one long break in between. Planning to read a long report or a few chapters? The reading time calculator tells you how many pomodoros that is.

Why is it called a tomato clock?

It's called a tomato clock because "pomodoro" is Italian for tomato. Francesco Cirillo, then a university student, started timing his study in short blocks in the late 1980s with a kitchen timer shaped like a tomato. The method took the timer's name, and so did each 25-minute block: one pomodoro.

Cirillo first wrote the method down in a 130-page book that he gave away as a free download in 2006, according to his US publisher. A revised edition came out in bookstores in 2018.

That's why you'll see the same idea sold as a tomato clock, a tomato timer or a pomodoro timer. They all do the same job: tell you when to work and when to stop.

Online tomato clock, kitchen timer or browser extension?

Pick an online tomato clock when you want to start right now on any device, a browser extension when you work at the same laptop all day, and a physical tomato timer when your phone is your biggest distraction. All three run the same 25/5 rhythm; the difference is setup, sound and how close you stay to your screen.

Our suggestion: if you study with your phone face down, a kitchen timer on the desk is hard to beat. If you work at a computer anyway, this tab does the job with no install and no account.

25/5, 50/10 or 52/17: which Pomodoro interval works best?

Start with 25/5. It's the original method and short enough to start on a bad day. Switch to a longer block if the bell keeps cutting you off in the middle of real flow, and to a shorter one if you can't get going at all. No study shows that one interval beats the others for everyone.

25/5: the original

The default. Four of them fit in a morning with room to spare, and the long break comes before you're worn out.

50/10: for long, deep tasks

Good for writing, coding or design work that takes a while to warm up. It's a popular variation, not part of Cirillo's method. With 50-minute blocks, the long break comes after every 2 sessions, so the long break still comes after 100 minutes of focus, as in the classic cycle. Need something else? Custom takes any focus time from 1 to 120 minutes.

15/3: for getting started

Good for a task you keep putting off. Fifteen minutes is hard to argue with, and once you're moving you can switch to 25/5.

And 52/17? It's a popular rule of thumb, but we found no controlled study behind it, so it isn't a preset. Type it in Custom if it suits you.

Flowtime is the opposite approach: you work until you feel like stopping, then rest. The research below is mixed on it: a 2023 study found fixed breaks left students less tired than self-chosen ones, while a 2025 study found no overall difference. So it's worth trying both.

Does the Pomodoro Technique actually work? What research says

Fixed breaks seem to help some people stay fresh, but the evidence is small and mixed. A 2023 study found students on fixed breaks felt less tired and distracted than students who chose their own breaks, with the same work done. A 2025 study found no overall difference, and a 2022 review found short breaks lift energy, not performance.

In a 2023 study in the British Journal of Educational Psychology, Felicitas Biwer and colleagues followed 87 Dutch university students during real self-study sessions. One group chose their own breaks, one took a 6-minute break after every 24 minutes (the "Pomodoro" group, 25 students) and one took 3 minutes after every 12. The fixed-break groups reported less fatigue and distraction and more concentration and motivation. Mental effort and tasks completed were about the same, but the fixed groups got there in less time.

A 2022 meta-analysis in PLOS ONE by Albulescu and colleagues pooled 22 samples with 2,335 people. Breaks of up to 10 minutes gave a small lift in energy and a small drop in fatigue. Performance didn't improve overall, only on less demanding tasks. Longer breaks went with bigger performance gains, and the authors suggest that very draining work may need more than 10 minutes to recover from.

A newer study points the other way. In a 2025 study in Behavioral Sciences, Smits, Wenzel and de Bruin compared self-chosen breaks, 25/5 Pomodoro breaks and Flowtime in 94 university students. With 25/5 breaks, fatigue rose faster during the session, and motivation dropped faster with both 25/5 and Flowtime breaks than with self-chosen ones. Overall fatigue and motivation didn't differ between the groups, and neither did productivity or tasks completed.

The honest summary: the studies are few, short, mostly done with students and they don't all agree, and we found no large, long-term trial of the method itself. The Pomodoro Technique isn't magic. But planned breaks help many people start, and stop them from running on empty.

How this timer keeps time (even in a background tab)

This timer remembers when your phase ends instead of counting seconds, so the time stays right when you switch tabs. That matters because browsers slow down timers in background tabs to save battery. Since Chrome 88, chained timers on a page hidden for more than 5 minutes may run only once a minute.

That's why some web timers fall behind. Here, every tick recomputes the time left from the end time, the end sound is scheduled ahead in your browser's audio engine, and the countdown corrects itself the moment you come back. In a hidden tab, the tab title shows whole minutes.

What it can't do: a locked phone may pause your browser, so the sound can come late. Keep the tab open with "Keep the screen on" switched on.

The planner uses one formula: pomodoros × focus minutes, plus short breaks × short minutes, plus long breaks × long minutes. Four classic pomodoros: 100 + 15 = 115 minutes, or 1 hour and 55 minutes.

Common Pomodoro mistakes (and how to fix them)

The most common mistake is skipping breaks when it's going well. It feels productive, but after a few rounds without rest, fatigue catches up with you. Other traps: tasks that are the wrong size, giving in to every interruption and spending your break on your phone.

Skipping breaks. Leave "Start breaks on their own" switched on, so the break simply begins.

A task too big or too small. Cirillo's book says to break down any task that needs more than 5 to 7 pomodoros, and to bundle tasks that take less than one into a single pomodoro.

Interruptions. Tap "From me" or "From someone else" and keep working. For a colleague at your desk, Cirillo's book suggests three moves: inform them you're busy, negotiate a time, and call them back when your pomodoro ends.

Your phone in the break. Scrolling feels like rest, but your eyes and attention stay on a screen. Stand up instead.

• One task written down
• Phone out of reach, on silent
• Water on your desk
• Notifications closed on your computer
• A piece of paper for stray thoughts

What to do in a 5-minute break

Use a 5-minute break to move and rest your eyes: stand up, get water, look out of a window, take a few slow breaths or stretch. Save a walk, a snack or a short nap for the long break. And try not to scroll, check email or start the next task.

Short break ideas: refill your water, walk to the window, roll your shoulders, do one slow stretch, breathe in for 4 counts and out for 6, tidy one thing on your desk.

Long break ideas: a walk around the block, lunch away from your desk, or a short nap. If you'd like a guided routine, the stretching timer fits a 5-minute break, and the nap calculator helps you time a nap without waking up groggy.

Turn pomodoros into a daily focus habit

The method works best when it's a fixed part of your day, not a rescue tool for deadlines. Pick a small number, like 2 pomodoros, and do them at the same time every morning, right after something you already do. That's habit stacking, explained in our Atomic Habits cheat sheet.

In Greatr, one way to do it: add "2 pomodoros of deep work" as a habit in your morning routine. Run the blocks with the app's Focus timer or this page. Every habit earns XP, and your streak shows you keep showing up. Not sure which task gets your first pomodoro? Sort your list with the Eisenhower matrix first. For more small habits to pair with it, see these 100+ good habits examples.

Don't expect it to feel automatic in a week. In a 2010 study of 96 volunteers, Phillippa Lally and colleagues found a new habit took a median of 66 days to become automatic, with a range of 18 to 254 days. Start with tomorrow's two pomodoros.