When you need to know exactly how long something took, a stopwatch beats guessing. Press start, press stop, and read the time to the hundredth of a second. The online stopwatch adds lap times on top, so you can mark each effort without breaking the clock and compare them afterward.
It runs in your browser, free, with no sign-up, and works offline once loaded, so it is ready at the track or the kitchen counter alike.
Start and read the time
Press start and the stopwatch counts up in minutes, seconds and hundredths. The reading comes from a high-resolution clock, so it is genuinely precise. Over a short interval the main wobble is human: how fast your thumb hits start and stop. For most timing that is fine, and for repeated efforts the lap feature smooths it out.
Record laps as you go
Tap lap to mark a split without stopping the clock. Each lap captures two things:
- The split, how long that one lap took on its own.
- The total, the running time since you first pressed start.
This is the difference between knowing your second mile was slower and knowing exactly how much slower. The fastest split is flagged as your best and the slowest is marked too, so you can see at a glance where you faded or surged without doing arithmetic in your head.
Stop and review
Stop freezes the time, and your laps stay on screen for you to read. Reset clears the clock and the lap list when you are ready for a fresh run.
What it is good for
- Running and cycling intervals. Lap each rep and see which ones held pace.
- Track and pool sessions. Record split after split and spot the slow one.
- Tasks, drills and experiments. Anything where the duration is the data you care about.
- Cooking and process steps. Time how long a stage actually takes so you can plan it next time.
Splits versus totals, and why both matter
People often glance at only the running total, but the split is usually the more useful number. The total tells you the race took twelve minutes; the splits tell you the story of how, which lap you went out too fast, where you recovered, when you had nothing left. Keeping both means you can read the shape of an effort, not just its length.
Common mistakes to avoid
- Trusting the start button for sub-second precision. Reaction time adds a tenth or two. For anything where that matters, an automated trigger beats a thumb.
- Forgetting to lap. If you stop and start instead of lapping, you lose the running total. Use lap to keep the clock alive between efforts.
- Using it for fixed work-and-rest cycles. If you want the tool to call the intervals for you, the interval timer does that hands-free.
When the intervals are fixed and you would rather follow beeps than tap laps, switch to the interval timer; when you want to count down instead of up, the online timer is the one.