# How to programmatically determine build queue times

**URL:** <https://discuss.circleci.com/t/how-to-programmatically-determine-build-queue-times/4734>\
**Category:** Build Environment\
**Tags:** api\
**Created:** [June 22, 2016, 3:05pm UTC](https://discuss.circleci.com/t/how-to-programmatically-determine-build-queue-times/4734 "2016-06-22T15:05:17Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![bboughton](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/circleci/user_avatar/discuss.circleci.com/bboughton/32/1383_2.png) [@bboughton](https://discuss.circleci.com/u/bboughton)\
**Post date:** [June 22, 2016, 3:05pm UTC](https://discuss.circleci.com/t/how-to-programmatically-determine-build-queue-times/4734/1 "2016-06-22T15:05:17Z")

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What would be the best way to determine how long our builds are queued for? We want to make sure we don’t have a large back up of jobs but we don’t want to pay for build agents we aren’t using.

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**Author:** ![drazisil](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/circleci/user_avatar/discuss.circleci.com/drazisil/32/24029_2.png) [@drazisil](https://discuss.circleci.com/u/drazisil)\
**Post date:** [June 22, 2016, 8:26pm UTC](https://discuss.circleci.com/t/how-to-programmatically-determine-build-queue-times/4734/2 "2016-06-22T20:26:45Z")

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I believe the following API endpoint will do the job

`curl https://circleci.com/api/v1/project/:username/:project?circle-token=:token&limit=20&offset=5&filter=queued`

Then just subtract the queued at time from the current time.

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**Author:** ![bboughton](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/circleci/user_avatar/discuss.circleci.com/bboughton/32/1383_2.png) [@bboughton](https://discuss.circleci.com/u/bboughton)\
**Post date:** [June 22, 2016, 9:02pm UTC](https://discuss.circleci.com/t/how-to-programmatically-determine-build-queue-times/4734/3 "2016-06-22T21:02:20Z")

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Thank you. Do you know how accurate the queued\_at time is? I’m trying to determine how long my builds are queued before they are started so I am taking the difference between the start\_at and queued\_at times for a subset of my builds and the times don’t seem to match up to reality. According to my numbers my builds are never queued for more then 3s however I have witnessed builds sitting in the queue for much longer then that.

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**Author:** ![drazisil](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/circleci/user_avatar/discuss.circleci.com/drazisil/32/24029_2.png) [@drazisil](https://discuss.circleci.com/u/drazisil)\
**Post date:** [June 22, 2016, 10:49pm UTC](https://discuss.circleci.com/t/how-to-programmatically-determine-build-queue-times/4734/4 "2016-06-22T22:49:37Z")

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I do not, sorry. I would assume it is when the Web hook is recieved from GitHub.

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**Author:** ![system](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/circleci/original/3X/5/1/511608acda8e85906e15909b57bd0a46c1dbe291.png) [@system](https://discuss.circleci.com/u/system)\
**Post date:** [June 18, 2018, 11:38am UTC](https://discuss.circleci.com/t/how-to-programmatically-determine-build-queue-times/4734/5 "2018-06-18T11:38:26Z")

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