gift.
Create

Free tool

Birthday countdown

Days, hours, minutes and seconds until the next one. Yours or anyone's, ticking in your own timezone.

The clock runs in your browser, on your device's time. Nothing is sent anywhere.

Add a date of birth and the clock starts. It counts to midnight on the day, not to the hour they were born — that's when everyone starts sending messages.

How it works

It counts to midnight at the start of the birthday, in your device's timezone.

Midnight is the target rather than the hour someone was born, because midnight is when the messages start. If you want to be the first one in their notifications, that's the deadline the clock should be counting to.

It runs on your device's clock and your timezone, which matters if you and they are in different ones — the countdown tells you when it becomes their birthday where you are. For a sibling eight hours ahead, theirs starts while your clock still says the day before.

On the day itself it says so rather than rolling over to next year, which is the single most common bug in countdown scripts — the subtraction goes negative at midnight and comes back as 365 days.

Worked examples

Both ends stated, and computed by the same function the clock above uses.

Choose

Born 20 August 1997, checked at noon on 11 August 2026

You get

“8d 12h 0m — turning 29 on 20 August 2026.”

Choose

Born 11 February 1997, checked on 11 August 2026 — already passed this year

You get

“183d 12h 0m — turning 30 on 11 February 2027.”

Choose

Born 29 February 2000, checked on 1 January 2026 — a common year

You get

“57d 12h 0m — turning 26 on 28 February 2026.”

That last one is a decision, not a fact: in a year without a 29 February this counts the birthday as the 28th. Some systems use 1 March instead.

When it helps

Mostly as a deadline rather than a novelty.

  • You keep meaning to make something and keep not starting.
  • The gift needs photos from other people, and they need asking early.
  • You're in a different timezone and want to land at their midnight, not yours.
  • Several birthdays sit close together and you want to see the order.
  • You want the number for the message itself — one balloon per year.
  • You've been told off before for being late, and would rather not repeat it.

What to do with the time

The countdown is only useful if it changes what you do. Roughly, by how long is left:

  1. More than three weeks: ask two other people for one photograph each. Crowdsourced photos are the single biggest upgrade available and the only part that needs lead time.

  2. A week or two: write the message now, while you're not under pressure, and leave it. What you write at leisure is better than what you write at 11:40pm, every time.

  3. A few days: pick the design and fill it in. An album is ten pages; a letter is four hundred characters. Both are one evening, not a project.

  4. Under a day: make it and schedule yourself a reminder to send the link at midnight. The link doesn't expire, so making it early costs nothing.

Questions

Does it keep running if I close the tab?
No — there's nothing running on a server, so nothing to keep. Reopen the page and put the date back in. Nothing is stored, which is also why there's nothing of yours to leak.
Can I share the countdown with someone?
Not as a link, no. The date stays in your browser and never reaches us, so there's no page to send. If you want something to actually send them, the gift builder makes a link that is theirs to keep.
Whose timezone does it use?
Yours — your device's clock and its timezone. If they're in a different one, their birthday starts at a different moment than your countdown hits zero, so aim a little early.
What happens on a 29 February birthday?
In a leap year it counts to the 29th. In a common year it counts to 28 February. That's a convention rather than a rule — some systems use 1 March.
Do I have to enter a name?
No, it's optional and only used in the heading on your own screen. It isn't sent anywhere and isn't inserted into any message.