How do I measure execution time of a command on the Windows command line?

PowerShell has a cmdlet for this called Measure-Command. You'll have to ensure that PowerShell is available on the machine that runs it.

PS> Measure-Command { echo hi }

Days              : 0
Hours             : 0
Minutes           : 0
Seconds           : 0
Milliseconds      : 0
Ticks             : 1318
TotalDays         : 1.52546296296296E-09
TotalHours        : 3.66111111111111E-08
TotalMinutes      : 2.19666666666667E-06
TotalSeconds      : 0.0001318
TotalMilliseconds : 0.1318

Measure-Command captures the command's output. You can redirect the output back to your console using Out-Default:

PS> Measure-Command { echo hi | Out-Default }
hi

Days              : 0
...

As Makotoe commented, Measure-Command returns a TimeSpan object, so the measured time is printed as a bunch of fields. You can format the object into a timestamp string using ToString():

PS> (Measure-Command { echo hi | Out-Default }).ToString()
hi
00:00:00.0001318

If the command inside Measure-Command changes your console text color, use [Console]::ResetColor() to reset it back to normal.

Hehe, the most simple solution might be this:

echo %time%
YourApp.exe
echo %time%

This works on every Windows out of the box.

In case of an application using console output, it might be convenient to store the starting time in a temporary variable:

set startTime=%time%
YourApp.exe
echo Start Time: %startTime%
echo Finish Time: %time%

If you are using Windows 2003 (note that windows server 2008 and later are not supported) you can use The Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit, which contains timeit.exe that displays detailed execution stats. Here is an example, timing the command "timeit -?":

C:\>timeit timeit -?
Invalid switch -?
Usage: TIMEIT [-f filename] [-a] [-c] [-i] [-d] [-s] [-t] [-k keyname | -r keyname] [-m mask] [commandline...]
where:        -f specifies the name of the database file where TIMEIT
                 keeps a history of previous timings.  Default is .\timeit.dat
              -k specifies the keyname to use for this timing run
              -r specifies the keyname to remove from the database.  If
                 keyname is followed by a comma and a number then it will
                 remove the slowest (positive number) or fastest (negative)
                 times for that keyname.
              -a specifies that timeit should display average of all timings
                 for the specified key.
              -i specifies to ignore non-zero return codes from program
              -d specifies to show detail for average
              -s specifies to suppress system wide counters
              -t specifies to tabular output
              -c specifies to force a resort of the data base
              -m specifies the processor affinity mask

Version Number:   Windows NT 5.2 (Build 3790)
Exit Time:        7:38 am, Wednesday, April 15 2009
Elapsed Time:     0:00:00.000
Process Time:     0:00:00.015
System Calls:     731
Context Switches: 299
Page Faults:      515
Bytes Read:       0
Bytes Written:    0
Bytes Other:      298

You can get TimeIt in the Windows 2003 Resource Kit. It's not available for direct download from the Microsoft Download Center, but one can still get it from the archive.org - Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit Tools.

If you have a command window open and call the commands manually, you can display a timestamp on each prompt, e.g.

prompt $d $t $_$P$G

It gives you something like:

23.03.2009 15:45:50,77

C:\>

If you have a small batch script that executes your commands, have an empty line before each command, e.g.

(empty line)

myCommand.exe

(next empty line)

myCommand2.exe

You can calculate the execution time for each command by the time information in the prompt. The best would probably be to pipe the output to a textfile for further analysis:

MyBatchFile.bat > output.txt

Not quite as elegant as some of the functionality on Unix, but create a cmd file which looks like:

@echo off
time < nul
yourexecutable.exe > c:\temp\output.txt
time < nul
rem on newer windows system you can try time /T

That will display the start and stop times like so:

The current time is: 10:31:57.92
Enter the new time:
The current time is: 10:32:05.94
Enter the new time:

I use freeware called "GS Timer".

Just make a batch file like this:

timer
yourapp.exe
timer /s

If you need a set of times, just pipe the output of timer /s into a .txt file.

You can get it here: Gammadyne's Free DOS Utilities

The resolution is 0.1 seconds.

I'm using Windows XP and for some reason timeit.exe does not work for me. I found another alternative - PTIME. This works very well.

http://www.pc-tools.net/win32/ptime/

Example -

C:\> ptime

ptime 1.0 for Win32, Freeware - http://www.pc-tools.net/
Copyright(C) 2002, Jem Berkes <jberkes@pc-tools.net>

Syntax: ptime command [arguments ...]

ptime will run the specified command and measure the execution time
(run time) in seconds, accurate to 5 millisecond or better. It is an
automatic process timer, or program timer.


C:\> ptime cd

ptime 1.0 for Win32, Freeware - http://www.pc-tools.net/
Copyright(C) 2002, Jem Berkes <jberkes@pc-tools.net>

===  cd ===
C:\

Execution time: 0.015 s

Depending on the version of Windows you're using, just running bash will put you into Bash mode. This will allow you to use a bunch of commands that are not available on PowerShell directly (like the time command). Timing your command is now as easy as executing:

# The clause <your-command> (without the angle brackets) denotes the command you want to run.
$ time <your-command>

Note: You can easily quit from Bash mode and return back into your mainstream shell by running exit while in Bash mode.

This worked for me perfectly (Windows 10) after trying out other methods (like Measure-Command) which sometimes produce undesired stats. Hope this works for you as well.

An alternative to measure-time is simply "Get-Date". You don't have that hassle with forwarding output and so on.

$start = Get-Date
[System.Threading.Thread]::Sleep(1500)
$(Get-Date) - $start

Output:

Days              : 0
Hours             : 0
Minutes           : 0
Seconds           : 1
Milliseconds      : 506
Ticks             : 15060003
TotalDays         : 1.74305590277778E-05
TotalHours        : 0.000418333416666667
TotalMinutes      : 0.025100005
TotalSeconds      : 1.5060003
TotalMilliseconds : 1506.0003

1. In the directory where your program is, type notepad mytimer.bat, click 'yes' to create a new file.

2. Paste the code below, replacing YourApp.exe with your program, then save.

   @echo off
   date /t
   time /t
   YourApp.exe
   date /t
   time /t
   

3. Type mytimer.bat in the command line then press Enter.

my code gives you the running time in milliseconds, up to 24 hrs, it is locale insensitive, and accounts for negative values if code runs through midnight. it uses delayed expansion, and should be saved in a cmd/bat file.

before your code:

SETLOCAL EnableDelayedExpansion

for /f "tokens=2 delims==" %%I in ('wmic os get localdatetime /format:list') do set t=%%I
set /a t1 = %t:~8,1%*36000 + %t:~9,1%*3600 + %t:~10,1%*600 + %t:~11,1%*60 + %t:~12,1%*10 + %t:~13,1% && set t1=!t1!%t:~15,3%

after your code:

for /f "tokens=2 delims==" %%I in ('wmic os get localdatetime /format:list') do set t=%%I
set /a t2 = %t:~8,1%*36000 + %t:~9,1%*3600 + %t:~10,1%*600 + %t:~11,1%*60 + %t:~12,1%*10 + %t:~13,1% && set t2=!t2!%t:~15,3%
set /a t2-=t1 && if !t2! lss 0 set /a t2+=24*3600000

if you want running time in HH:mm:ss.000 format, add:

set /a "h=t2/3600000,t2%%=3600000,m=t2/60000,t2%%=60000" && set t2=00000!t2!&& set t2=!t2:~-5!
if %h% leq 9 (set h=0%h%) && if %m% leq 9 (set m=0%m%)
set t2=%h%:%m%:%t2:~0,2%.%t2:~2,3%

ENDLOCAL

variable t2 holds your running time, you can echo %t2% to display it.

Another approach with powershell:

@echo off
for /f %%t in ('powershell "(get-date).tofiletime()"') do set mst=%%t

rem some commands

powershell ((get-date).tofiletime() - %mst%)

this will print the execution time in milliseconds.

The following script uses only "cmd.exe" and outputs the number of milliseconds from the time a pipeline is created to the time that the process preceding the script exits. i.e., Type your command, and pipe the to the script. Example: "timeout 3 | runtime.cmd" should yield something like "2990." If you need both the runtime output and the stdin output, redirect stdin before the pipe - ex: "dir /s 1>temp.txt | runtime.cmd" would dump the output of the "dir" command to "temp.txt" and would print the runtime to the console.

:: --- runtime.cmd ----
@echo off
setlocal enabledelayedexpansion

:: find target for recursive calls
if not "%1"=="" (
    shift /1
    goto :%1
    exit /b
)

:: set pipeline initialization time
set t1=%time%

:: wait for stdin
more > nul

:: set time at which stdin was ready
set t2=!time!

::parse t1
set t1=!t1::= !
set t1=!t1:.= !
set t1=!t1: 0= !

:: parse t2
set t2=!t2::= !
set t2=!t2:.= !
set t2=!t2: 0= !

:: calc difference
pushd %~dp0
for /f %%i in ('%0 calc !t1!') do for /f %%j in ('%0 calc !t2!') do (
    set /a t=%%j-%%i
    echo !t!
)
popd
exit /b
goto :eof

:calc
set /a t=(%1*(3600*1000))+(%2*(60*1000))+(%3*1000)+(%4)
echo !t!
goto :eof

endlocal

Having Perl installed the hires solution available, run:

C:\BATCH>time.pl "echo Fine result"
0.01063
Fine result

STDERR comes before measured seconds

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use Time::HiRes qw();
my $T0 = [ Time::HiRes::gettimeofday ];

my $stdout = `@ARGV`;

my $time_elapsed = Time::HiRes::tv_interval( $T0 );

print $time_elapsed, "\n";
print $stdout;

A solution using pure PHP for cmd and one env. variable:

@echo off
setlocal enableextensions

REM set start time env var
FOR /F "tokens=* USEBACKQ" %%F IN (`php -r "echo microtime(true);"`) DO ( SET start_time=%%F )

## PUT_HERE_THE_COMMAND_TO_RUN ##

REM echo elapsed time
php -r "echo 'elapsed: ' . (round(microtime(true) - trim(getenv('start_time')), 2)) . ' seconds' . mb_convert_encoding('
', 'UTF-8', 'HTML-ENTITIES');"

• no need for cygwin or non-trusted utilities. Usefull when PHP is locally available

• precision and output format can be easily tweaked

• the same idea can be ported for PowerShell

If you have CMake installed, you can just run following command.

cmake -E time <the_command_to_measure_run_time>