Countdowns for real dates: on your website, on a page you can share, and in email. Edit any time without changing your code.
We are not the cheapest. For each job below we show where we are better, where we are level, and when another tool is the better choice. Checked on 8 October 2026.
Our prices: $28 per month or $195 per year, in US dollars, as on our pricing page. The free plan has every countdown type, with a small CountingDownTo badge. There is no limit on views or email opens on free or paid plans; this is our current policy.
How to read the tables. Verified means we tested it ourselves (see how we tested). Advertised means the company's own page says so, including ours; we link the page. We read every other company's page on 8 October 2026 from New Zealand and quote prices in the currency the page showed. Not offered means the product does not have it. Unknown means we could not check. For more about our own product, see our product facts.
Something wrong or out of date? Email [email protected] with a link to the page that shows it, and we will check it and correct this page.
This page compares website embeds. Comparisons for email campaigns, agencies, events, shipping cutoffs, weekly services and schools are coming.
Website embeds
For anyone adding a countdown to their own website. We put one countdown, then ten, on a plain test page and measured what each one added. Our figures are for countdowns made in our countdown editor. Elfsight and Common Ninja need an account to make a countdown, so for them we used public demos: Elfsight's repeats yearly and has a heading and a button, and Common Ninja's starts a timer for each visitor. Neither is a plain fixed-date countdown, so results against them are for those demos.
What decides this job
| What we compared | CountingDownTo | TickCounter | Elfsight Tested: its public demo, which repeats yearly and has a heading and a button | Common Ninja Tested: its public template, which starts a timer for each visitor | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Data added to your page, one countdown | CountingDownTo: Verified 62 KB, of which 37 KB is the font of the template we used. Our test, 8 Oct 2026 | TickCounter: Verified 75 KB. Our test, 8 Oct 2026 | Elfsight (yearly repeating demo with a heading and button): Verified 405 KB. Our test, 8 Oct 2026 | Common Ninja (per-visitor template): Verified 677 KB. Our test, 8 Oct 2026 | Result: We are better Ours was the lightest, measured against the Elfsight and Common Ninja demos |
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Privacy for your visitors
Tested in a fresh browser with no cookies, over the first 12 seconds of each page view. We did not test a browser that is signed in to CountingDownTo. Our countdown also opens one connection to countingdownto.com so that your edits show without a reload. Every vendor, including us, receives the visitor's IP address and usually the address of the page. |
CountingDownTo: Verified Contacted countingdownto.com only. Set no cookies, wrote no storage and made no analytics calls. Our test, 8 Oct 2026 | TickCounter: Verified Set no cookies and wrote no storage. Loaded Cloudflare Web Analytics inside the widget. Our test, 8 Oct 2026 | Elfsight (yearly repeating demo with a heading and button): Verified The browser kept two cookies: elfsight_viewed_recently (for 1 day) and _cfuvid (for the session). Our test, 8 Oct 2026 | Common Ninja (per-visitor template): Verified Wrote visitor IDs to your own site's storage, made four event-report calls containing your page address (in our one-embed test), and loaded fonts from Google. Our test, 8 Oct 2026 | Result: We are better Each rival did at least one of these things (Elfsight and Common Ninja: their demos); ours did none |
| Correct time when the visitor's device clock is wrong | CountingDownTo: Verified Correct to the second with the device clock 20 minutes fast, and with it 1 day slow. Our test, 8 Oct 2026 | TickCounter: Verified Correct to the second in both cases. Our test, 8 Oct 2026 | Elfsight (yearly repeating demo with a heading and button): Verified Followed the device clock: 20 minutes short, and 1 day long. Our test, 8 Oct 2026 | Common Ninja (per-visitor template): Unknown Not tested: its fixed-date countdown needs an account. Its page says the widget calculates the time left in the visitor's browser. commoninja.com countdown page, checked 8 Oct 2026 from NZ | Result: Level Level with TickCounter, better than the Elfsight demo |
Other rows
| What we compared | CountingDownTo | TickCounter | Elfsight Tested: its public demo, which repeats yearly and has a heading and a button | Common Ninja Tested: its public template, which starts a timer for each visitor | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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Processing time on a phone, one countdown
The test page alone took 92 ms. Blocking time is the part of long tasks that can delay a tap or scroll. |
CountingDownTo: Verified 449 ms, of which 1 ms was blocking. Our test, 8 Oct 2026 | TickCounter: Verified 2,316 ms, 175 ms blocking. Our test, 8 Oct 2026 | Elfsight (yearly repeating demo with a heading and button): Verified 1,223 ms, 604 ms blocking. Our test, 8 Oct 2026 | Common Ninja (per-visitor template): Verified 1,240 ms, 341 ms blocking. Our test, 8 Oct 2026 | Result: We are better Ours used the least, measured against the Elfsight and Common Ninja demos |
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Layout shift on your page, one countdown on a desktop
This is layout shift on the host page. Shifts inside a countdown's own frame were not measured. |
CountingDownTo: Verified 0 Our test, 8 Oct 2026 | TickCounter: Verified 0.001 Our test, 8 Oct 2026 | Elfsight (yearly repeating demo with a heading and button): Verified 0.023 Our test, 8 Oct 2026 | Common Ninja (per-visitor template): Verified 0.083 Our test, 8 Oct 2026 | Result: Level Level with TickCounter, better than the Elfsight and Common Ninja demos |
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Ten countdowns on one page, on a phone
The same countdown was repeated ten times, so this is not the cost of ten different countdowns. |
CountingDownTo: Verified 70 KB, 1,965 ms processing, no layout shift on your page. Our test, 8 Oct 2026 | TickCounter: Verified 85 KB, 10,918 ms processing, no layout shift on your page. Our test, 8 Oct 2026 | Elfsight (yearly repeating demo with a heading and button): Verified 405 KB, 4,286 ms processing, no layout shift on your page. Our test, 8 Oct 2026 | Common Ninja (per-visitor template): Verified 683 KB, 3,956 ms processing, layout shift on your page 0.116 (3.567 in the worst run). Our test, 8 Oct 2026 | Result: We are better Ours was the lightest, measured against the Elfsight and Common Ninja demos |
| Requests, ten countdowns on one page | CountingDownTo: Verified 50, some of them answered from the browser's cache, plus 10 live-update connections. Our test, 8 Oct 2026 | TickCounter: Verified 51 Our test, 8 Oct 2026 | Elfsight (yearly repeating demo with a heading and button): Verified 13 Our test, 8 Oct 2026 | Common Ninja (per-visitor template): Verified 73 Our test, 8 Oct 2026 | Result: They are better The Elfsight demo made fewer requests |
Countdowns made in our older classic editor were measured too: 18 KB on a desktop and 22 KB on a phone, and no layout shift on the page. In a fresh browser with no cookies, over the first 12 seconds, they set no cookies. They do not depend on the device clock, but because they are cached they can run up to about a minute or two behind.
timeanddate also offers a free countdown embed. Its page says its clocks "display current time, even if the user's computer clock is wrong". We did not test it. timeanddate.com free countdown, checked 8 Oct 2026 from NZ
Already in your platform
If your site builder already has a countdown that does what you need, you do not need another tool.
- Elementor has its own Countdown widget, with a due date or an evergreen timer, and a redirect, hide or message at the end. Elementor help, checked 8 Oct 2026 from NZ
- The Wix App Market lists a Countdown Timer app by POWR, with a free plan. Wix App Market, checked 8 Oct 2026 from NZ
- On Shopify, POWR Countdown Timer has a free plan with unlimited monthly views. Shopify App Store, checked 8 Oct 2026 from NZ ShipTimer, at $19 a month, shows an "order within" countdown for same-day or next-day delivery. Shopify App Store, checked 8 Oct 2026 from NZ
When another tool is the better choice
- Choose TickCounter if you want to remove branding with a one-time payment of $49. It also kept the right time with a wrong device clock in our test. tickcounter.com/pricing, checked 8 Oct 2026 from NZ
- Choose Elfsight if you already use its other widgets, such as reviews, and want them in one account. elfsight.com pricing, checked 8 Oct 2026 from NZ
- Choose Common Ninja if you want one countdown free with no time limit, or want it on one of the 200+ platforms it lists, such as Canva. commoninja.com countdown page, checked 8 Oct 2026 from NZ
- Choose timeanddate if you want a free countdown and can follow its terms: up to six clocks on a page, with a link to timeanddate.com if you use more than two. timeanddate.com free countdown, checked 8 Oct 2026 from NZ
How we tested
- The test page was a plain column of text with one countdown, or the same countdown repeated ten times, served from our own machine. The ten-countdown results are not the cost of ten different countdowns. Each run used a new Chromium browser with an empty cache and no cookies. Desktop runs used a 1366 by 900 window; phone runs emulated a Pixel 7 with the processor slowed four times. We ran each case 10 times on 8 October 2026 (New Zealand time) and show the median.
- Our countdown and TickCounter's had the same date and name, made without an account. For Elfsight we used a public demo with a heading and a button, and for Common Ninja a public template that starts a timer for each visitor. Their extras add some weight.
- Processing time is the time spent on the page's and the countdowns' main threads in the first 12 seconds, including ticking every second.
- For privacy we recorded every request, cookie and storage entry in the first 12 seconds. Anything that happens later, such as at zero, is not covered, and we could not see what each company records on its servers.
- For the clock test we set the browser's clock 20 minutes fast, then 1 day slow, and read the countdown once 10 seconds after loading.
- These are lab results from one machine. The order of the results is more useful than the exact times.