The Long View
Smoking costs you time. Quitting gives some of it back. This shows you how much, in years, using the same arithmetic every claim on this site is built from.
Most quit smoking apps count the days since your last cigarette. That is a fine number, and it is not the one people actually want. The question underneath is simpler and harder: what has this cost me, and how much of it can I get back?
There is a real answer. Population life tables say what an average life expectancy looks like at your age. Published research says what smoking takes off it, and what quitting returns depending on when you stop. Put those together and you get a number that moves when you do.
Try it now, before the app exists
The quit smoking calculator is live and free. Enter your age, sex and smoking history and it estimates the years smoking has cost you and the years quitting returns. It runs entirely in your browser and what you enter is never sent anywhere.
Two more, from the same engine: the life expectancy calculator shows how the forecast moves across the years after quitting, and the cost of smoking calculator puts money and time side by side.
The number is not a guess, and it is not a promise
Baseline life expectancy comes from the US Social Security Administration period life table, which is the average for someone of your age and sex in the general population. The cost of smoking comes from Jackson et al., Addiction 2025. What quitting returns comes from Jha et al., NEJM 2013. The methodology page shows the full arithmetic, a worked example, and the two places the model stops being a measurement and starts being an extrapolation.
The calculators here run the same tested code the apps will run, checked against the same 71 cases on every change, so the website and the app can never quietly disagree.
Reading, while you decide
The guides answer the questions people actually ask: how many years you get back, whether it is too late at 50, and what a single cigarette costs. There is also an honest comparison of the quit smoking apps that recommends other people's software where it is better, which given who wrote it is the only version worth publishing.
The app
In development, nothing to download yet. It will show the same forecast as a living number, next to a photo of your reason for quitting, updated by a daily check-in.
- iPhone
- iPad
- Apple Watch
- Mac
- Android
- Wear OS
- Windows
Your entries and your photo stay on your device. No account, no email address, no payment details in the app, and nothing sent to a server we control. See platform status, planned pricing, or the privacy page.
Every figure here is a motivational estimate built from population averages. It is not a prediction about you, it does not diagnose, treat or prevent any condition, and it is not medical advice. Talk to a doctor or a quitline about stopping smoking. In the US, that is 1-800-QUIT-NOW.