For a large egg from the fridge into boiling water: 5:00 very soft, 6:00 soft, 6:45 jammy, 8:00 medium, 11:00 hard. Add or subtract 30 seconds per egg-size step. Every time in the chart below is tappable — it starts the timer.
6 minutes, large egg, straight from the fridge, into boiling water. Runny yolk, set whites.
Runny yolk, set whites
Ready when you are
6:00
The countdown needs JavaScript. The times below are correct without it.
Start it the moment the eggs go into the boiling water.
| Doneness | Medium | Large | Extra large | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Very soft | Fully liquid yolk, whites just set | |||
| Soft | Runny yolk, set whites | |||
| Jammy | Custardy centre, the ramen-egg standard | |||
| Medium | Set edge, soft fudgy centre | |||
| Hard | Fully set, no grey ring |
Reading the chart
Three rules cover almost everything:
Size moves time. Each size step is worth about 30 seconds — small is a minute under large, jumbo a minute over. At the soft end that’s the difference between a yolk that pours and one that doesn’t.
Cold starts count from the boil. If your eggs go into cold water, start timing when the water reaches a full rolling boil — and cook less from that moment, because the egg has been heating on the way up. Roughly two and a half minutes less than the boiling-start time. The timer’s cold-water setting does this arithmetic for you.
The ice bath is part of the time. Every chart time assumes the egg stops cooking when the timer sounds. Without ice water it doesn’t stop, and every egg lands one notch harder than you planned.
Cold-water start times
Timed from the moment the water reaches a rolling boil, large egg:
Very soft ~2:30 · Soft ~3:30 · Jammy ~4:15 · Medium ~5:30 · Hard ~8:30
These carry more variance than boiling-start times — how fast your pot comes to a boil changes how much the egg cooks on the way up. If you care about a precise yolk, use the boiling-water start.
Other methods, at a glance
Steamed: 6:30 soft, 8:00 jammy, 12:30 hard. Air fryer at 270°F: 9:00 soft, 11:00 jammy, 15:00 hard. Instant Pot: the 3-5-5 / 4-5-5 / 5-5-5 pattern. Each method has its own page and its own pre-set timer — see the Next block below.
Print it
Use your browser’s print function on this page — the interactive controls hide themselves and the chart prints clean. Stick it inside a cupboard door and you’ll never search “how long to boil an egg” again, which we acknowledge is a strange thing for this website to want.
Timing chart questions
Are these times from cold water or boiling water?
Boiling, unless a row says otherwise. Boiling-start is the reference on this site because it’s the repeatable one: cooking begins at a moment you can see. Cold-start equivalents are listed above, timed from when the boil begins.
Why do other charts show different times?
Usually one of three hidden assumptions: room-temperature eggs (about a minute faster than fridge-cold), a cold-water start timed from turning on the heat, or no ice bath (so their times bake in the carryover cooking). Our reference is stated on every chart: large egg, fridge-cold, into boiling water, ice bath after.
What if my eggs aren’t labelled with a size?
Weigh one if you can: about 50g is medium, 57g large, 64g extra large (US sizing, in-shell). No scale? Assume large — it’s the most common retail size in the US and UK and the middle of the chart, so an error lands you 30 seconds off rather than a minute.