Put a live countdown on your own site
One line of HTML gives you a countdown that ticks down to the second in each visitor's own time zone. No script to install, no account, no cookies, no tracking, and nothing to pay. Build it below and copy the code.
Build your embed
The day the countdown runs out. Times are read in each visitor's own time zone.
Preview
This is the real widget, loaded from the same URL the snippet uses.
Copy the code
<iframe src="https://daysto.today/embed/countdown?t=2027-01-01T00%3A00&title=New+Year" width="100%" height="190" style="border:0;max-width:100%" loading="lazy" title="Countdown to New Year by DaysTo"></iframe>How the URL works
The widget takes two query parameters, so you can write the embed by hand if you would rather not use the builder:
| Parameter | Value | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| t | A date, or a date and time, as YYYY-MM-DD or YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM | Required. Read against each visitor's local clock. With no time, midnight is assumed. |
| title | Any short label | Optional. Shown above the digits, as in "Counting down to Launch day". |
Good uses for it
A launch date on a landing page, a registration deadline on a course page, an event date in a sidebar, a sale that ends at a specific hour, a school term counter, or a countdown to a wedding on a single-page site. Anywhere the date matters and the page is otherwise static.
Prefer a ready-made countdown?
If you are counting down to a holiday rather than to your own date, every page in the countdown directory already exists, complete with the dating rule, its source and a ten-year date table. Link to one instead of embedding, and your readers get the whole answer.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need to install anything?
No. The widget is a plain iframe, so it is one line of HTML. There is no script to load, no package to install and no account to create. Anywhere that accepts an iframe will take it: WordPress, Webflow, Ghost, Notion, a static site, a plain HTML page.
Does the widget track my visitors?
No. It sets no cookies and loads no analytics. Your visitors' browsers request the iframe from daysto.today, so our host sees the ordinary request data any web server sees, and nothing else. The countdown itself is computed in the visitor's own browser from the date in the URL.
Which time zone does the countdown use?
The visitor's own. The target is passed as a date and time in the URL and is read against each visitor's local clock, so someone in Sydney and someone in Chicago both see a countdown that agrees with their own watch.
Can I remove the DaysTo credit?
The credit link is what pays for the widget being free, so please leave it. It is a small line at the bottom of the counter, and it is a normal link, which means it also tells search engines where the widget came from. If you need an unbranded version for a client project, get in touch.
What happens when the countdown reaches zero?
The widget switches from "Counting down to" to "Reached" and stops. It does not go negative and it does not disappear.
Will the iframe be indexed as a page of its own?
No. The embed route is served with X-Robots-Tag: noindex, follow. Crawlers may fetch it, which is deliberate so the credit link counts, but they will not list the bare widget as a search result.
Need something more than an iframe?
An unbranded widget, a private deployment, a countdown that pulls from your own data, or a feed for a product you are building. Tell us what you are after and you will get an honest answer about whether it is worth doing.
Related tools
Keep the date math going with the rest of the toolkit.