CountingDownTo product facts

Last checked 7 October 2026.

This page states what CountingDownTo does today, so that people writing about it or comparing it with other tools have a correct source. Plans and prices below come from the same data as our pricing page. If something here is wrong, please tell us.

To see how we compare with other countdown tools, read our comparison.

What you can make

• Website countdown. A countdown you add to any website by pasting a short HTML snippet. Make one in the countdown editor or the older classic editor. Saved changes appear the next time the countdown loads, without replacing the snippet; a page that is already open keeps the old version until it is reloaded. For countdown editor countdowns our cache is cleared about 5 seconds after you stop making changes, and a visitor's browser may keep its copy for up to 60 seconds.
• Shareable countdown page. Each countdown made in the countdown editor also has its own page you can send as a link. The page has share buttons. For fixed-date and repeating countdowns that have not ended it also has an Add to calendar option (Google Calendar and an .ics file); for a repeating countdown only the next occurrence is added.
• Email countdown. An animated GIF countdown for emails, made on the email countdown page. You paste an HTML snippet into your email platform.
• Duration timer. A timer for a set number of hours, minutes and seconds. It counts down or up, can be paused, has a full-screen view and an end sound, and gives you a link others can open to see the same running timer.
• Item counter. A single number instead of a countdown, such as stock remaining or money raised. You set it by hand or let it rise or fall on a schedule. In the countdown editor it is called Live counter. It is added to a website the same way as a website countdown.

You do not need an account to make any of these.

Plans and prices

Prices are in US dollars. These are the plans offered on the pricing page today.

Free. Every countdown type on this page is free to make and use. On a free plan, website countdowns, share pages, item counters and email countdowns carry a small CountingDownTo badge; the duration timer has none. Paying removes the badge. Honest Deadlines (described under Timer modes) needs a plan that includes it.

Refunds. As stated on the pricing page, we give a full refund within 60 days of purchase. Subscriptions can be cancelled at any time.

Limits

• There is no limit on how many times a website countdown or share page is viewed, or how many times an email countdown is opened, on free or paid plans. This is our current policy.
• There is no limit on how many countdowns you can make.
• An account can have up to 25 Honest Deadlines campaigns that are not archived.

Timer modes by surface

At zero (countdown editor): a countdown can show a message, play a celebration effect, hide its buttons, hide the countdown, or send the visitor to another web address. Redirecting and hiding are only available on countdowns that do not repeat. The redirect works on the shareable countdown page. On your own website it works with embed code copied after you turn the redirect on and on or after 8 October 2026; embed code pasted earlier needs to be copied again. If your site blocks inline scripts, it must allow the script in the embed code for the redirect to run.

Evergreen countdowns start when a visitor first sees them and run for the length you set, in days and hours, up to 3,650 days and 23 hours. They are free to make and show the badge unless the owner has Pro. Visitors are matched by a keyed hash of their IP address, so people who share a public IP address, such as one home or office network, share one timer. When a returning visitor arrives from an IP address that has no timer yet, a cookie lets them keep their own timer. If the new IP address already has a timer, that timer is shown instead. A visitor who clears the cookie and connects from a new network can get a new timer.

Honest Deadlines (Pro) gives each email subscriber their own deadline. It starts when your email service tells us the subscriber joined a list or tag (by webhook, with built-in support for Kit and MailerLite and a generic option for others) or when the subscriber first clicks the countdown link. The email image and the linked countdown page both show that subscriber's deadline.

Time and accuracy

• Countdowns to a date, including repeating ones, are saved with their date, time and time zone, and converted to an exact moment with the IANA time zone database.
• Daylight saving changes are applied. A local time that does not exist because the clocks go forward moves to just after the change. A local time that happens twice because the clocks go back uses the first one.
• In the countdown editor, daily, weekly, monthly and yearly repeats keep the same local time across daylight saving changes, and hourly repeats step in whole hours. A monthly repeat set for the 29th, 30th or 31st falls on the last day of shorter months and returns to its day in longer ones.
• In the classic editor (the older widget editor), each repeat moves the saved date forward by one interval. A monthly repeat set for the 29th, 30th or 31st falls on the last day of a shorter month and then returns to its day: 31 January, 28 February, 31 March. A widget whose date had already moved to an earlier day before this was fixed in October 2026 keeps the day it is on now.
• Countdowns made in the countdown editor correct for a wrong device clock. Once per page load they check the time against our server and, if the device clock is off by a second or more and by more than the uncertainty of that check, count from the corrected time. Until the check answers, or if it fails within 10 seconds, the device clock is used. End actions, such as showing the end message, wait for the check.

Email countdowns

• The countdown is an animated GIF that our server draws when an email app requests the image, starting from the time left at that moment. It holds up to 300 one-second frames (five minutes). If the countdown has longer to run, the animation repeats; if it reaches zero within those frames, it stops on zero.
• A new request for the image shows an updated countdown, but reopening an email can show a cached copy: email apps and image proxies may keep the image, and our server reuses a running countdown's image for a few seconds.
• Some email apps load images before the message is opened or keep a copy. Apple Mail with Mail Privacy Protection turned on downloads images in the background when the email arrives, so the countdown can show more time left than there really is when the email is read.
• Some versions of Outlook show only the first frame of a GIF. The first frame is a complete image of the time left when the image was loaded.
• The HTML snippet gives the image alt text with the event name and the deadline as a date, time and time zone, never as time remaining. By default it also adds a plain-text line with the same deadline and a link to the countdown's page; you can leave that line out.
• Honest Deadlines email images work differently. With an hour or less left they show 60 one-second frames and then stop on the last frame; with more than an hour left they show a single still frame. A subscriber whose deadline has passed sees a still expired frame, and an address we do not recognise sees a still frame stating the campaign length. The Honest Deadlines snippet uses the alt text "Your deadline" and has no text line.

Accessibility

What we have done:

• Website countdowns from both editors include a sentence for screen readers with the time left (or, for classic editor countdowns that count up, the time elapsed), plus the event name and date where the countdown shows them. Evergreen countdowns have no date in the sentence. The changing digits are hidden from screen readers so they are not read out every second.
• Website countdown snippets give the iframe a title naming the event, and the embedded document has the same title.
• When a device asks for reduced motion, countdown editor countdowns change digits without animation and do not play background animations, falling icons or the celebration at zero.
• Email snippets include alt text and an optional text line, described above.

Known limits:

• The screen-reader sentence on countdown editor countdowns is in English whatever label language you choose. Classic editor countdowns use their own language.
• The sentence states the time left when the page was generated. Website countdowns are cached, so a copy can be up to about an hour old when it loads, and the sentence does not update while the page is open.
• Snippets copied before the iframe title was added in October 2026 do not have it. Copying the snippet again adds it.
• The editors have not had a formal keyboard and screen-reader test.
• We do not claim conformance with any accessibility standard.

Privacy

• Fixed-date and repeating website countdowns made in the countdown editor set no cookies, include no analytics or advertising scripts, and load their fonts and scripts only from countingdownto.com.
• Our server records the address of the page that loaded a countdown, from the browser's Referer header, so we can see where countdowns are installed.
• Evergreen countdowns set a cookie and store a keyed hash of the visitor's IP address, as described above. Pages linked from Honest Deadlines emails set a cookie to recognise the subscriber.
• Classic editor countdowns set no cookies, but can load one helper script from cdnjs.cloudflare.com.
• Share pages and the editors are part of our website and set its cookies.

Read our privacy policy for how we handle personal information.

Languages

• The website is available in 13 languages: German, English, Spanish, French, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese. Some recently added text in the editors is still in English only.
• Countdown labels (days, hours, minutes and seconds) can be shown in 50 language settings.

Installing a countdown

See how to embed a countdown for step-by-step instructions for common website builders.