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Pull Request Review Time Calculator

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

About Pull Request Review Time Calculator

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

Worked example

With the default values below, Pull Request Review Time Calculator returns Avg PR Cycle Time of 11m. Change any input above and every figure here is recalculated in your browser.

Inputs used

Sum of All Review Timesaccepts 0–10,000,000 hours
480 hours
Number of PRsaccepts 1–10,000,000 PRs
60 PRs
Sum of Author Response Timesaccepts 0–10,000,000 hours
180 hours

Results

Avg PR Cycle Time
11m h
Primary Bottleneck
Reviewer response time
Avg Time to First Review
8m h
Avg Author Response Time
3m h

Step by step

  1. 1Avg time-to-first-review= 8.0h
  2. 2Avg author response time= 3.0h
  3. 3Total avg cycle time= 11.0h

Assumptions and limits

  • The result is derived only from the 3 inputs listed above. Anything not among them is not part of the calculation.
  • In particular, this calculator does not take inflation, tax or fees or charges into account.
  • Figures are rounded for display to 1 decimal place, so totals built from several rounded parts can differ slightly from the unrounded arithmetic.

How these calculators are built and tested is described on the Methodology page. If a figure looks wrong, please report it.

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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