Pull Request Review Time Calculator

Calculate average time from PR open to approval across your review process.

Inputs

Sum of All Review Timeshours

Sum of time-to-first-review across all PRs in the period (open → first review comment).

Number of PRsPRs

Total pull requests reviewed in the period.

Sum of Author Response Timeshours

Sum of time authors took to respond to review comments across all PRs.

Avg PR Cycle Time

11mh

Primary Bottleneck

Reviewer response time

Avg Time to First Review

8mh

Avg Author Response Time

3mh

Step by step

Avg time-to-first-review
480 / 60
= 8.0h
Avg author response time
180 / 60
= 3.0h
Total avg cycle time
8.0 + 3.0
= 11.0h

How it works

Average PR review time is the sum of every PR's review latency divided by PR count. Formula: avg_time = sum(review_times) / PR_count. Splitting this into time-to-first-review versus author response time to comments pinpoints where delay actually accumulates — a slow-to-review team looks very different from a team with fast reviews but slow author follow-through.

Formula

avg_review_time = sum_of_review_times / PR_count

sum_of_review_times: Total hours from PR open to first review across all PRs
PR_count: Number of pull requests reviewed

Frequently Asked Questions

What counts as 'review time' exactly?

Most commonly, time-to-first-review is measured from PR creation (or 'ready for review') to the first reviewer comment or approval — it's the most visible latency to the author and the easiest to pull from GitHub/GitLab APIs.

What's a good target for time-to-first-review?

High-performing teams target under 24 business hours, with many aiming for same-day (a few hours) first response, even if full approval takes longer across review rounds.

How do I extract this data from GitHub?

The GitHub REST/GraphQL API exposes PR `created_at` and review `submitted_at` timestamps; tools like GitHub Insights, or simple scripts against the API, can aggregate these into averages.

Why is average sometimes misleading here?

PR review time is typically right-skewed — a few stale PRs waiting weeks pull the average up dramatically. Track median and p90 alongside the average for a fuller picture.

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