Most common headaches last anywhere from 30 minutes to a few hours, but the “normal” duration depends entirely on the type of headache. A tension headache might fade in under an hour, while an untreated migraine can persist for up to three days. Knowing what’s typical for each type helps you figure out whether what you’re experiencing is routine or worth getting checked out.
Tension Headaches: Minutes to Hours
Tension headaches are the most common type, and they’re usually the shortest. A typical episode lasts 30 minutes to several hours, though some stretch across most of a day. The pain feels like a band of pressure around your head, usually on both sides, and it stays at a mild to moderate level. Most people can push through daily activities with a tension headache, even if it’s uncomfortable.
These headaches often resolve on their own or respond quickly to over-the-counter pain relievers. If they don’t, and you find yourself reaching for medication on 15 or more days per month for longer than three months, that pattern qualifies as chronic tension-type headache. At that point, the issue is no longer individual headache duration but the frequency of the cycle.
Migraines Can Last Up to 3 Days
An untreated migraine attack lasts 4 to 72 hours. That’s a wide range, and where you fall within it varies from person to person and even from one attack to the next. Migraines are typically one-sided, pulsing, and moderate to severe. They often come with nausea, light sensitivity, or both.
What many people don’t realize is that the pain phase isn’t the whole story. After the headache itself fades, a recovery phase called the postdrome can linger for a few hours up to two days. During this window you may feel exhausted, foggy, or have a stiff neck, lingering nausea, and sensitivity to light and sound. So while the headache technically ended, you might not feel fully back to normal for another 24 to 48 hours on top of the attack itself.
Chronic migraine follows the same pattern as chronic tension headache in one key respect: it’s defined as headache occurring on 15 or more days per month for more than three months, with at least 8 of those days having migraine features.
Cluster Headaches: Short but Severe
Cluster headaches are far less common but dramatically more intense. A single attack lasts 15 minutes to 3 hours and produces severe, piercing pain around one eye. These attacks tend to strike multiple times a day during active “cluster periods” that last weeks or months, then disappear entirely during remission periods that can stretch for months or years.
The short duration can be misleading. Because the pain is so extreme and the attacks repeat so frequently during a cluster period, the cumulative impact is significant even though each individual episode is relatively brief.
Sinus Headaches Follow the Infection
A headache caused by a true sinus infection typically lasts as long as the infection itself, which is usually about a week to 10 days. The pain sits behind your forehead, cheeks, or the bridge of your nose and often worsens when you bend forward. It comes alongside congestion, thick nasal discharge, and sometimes a low fever.
One important caveat: many headaches people assume are “sinus headaches” are actually migraines. Migraines frequently cause congestion and facial pressure, which makes the two easy to confuse. If your “sinus headaches” keep coming back without signs of infection, migraine is a more likely explanation.
Post-Concussion Headaches Can Persist for Months
Headaches after a concussion often resolve within a few weeks, but they can last much longer than most people expect. A large study from the University of Cambridge found that almost half of concussion patients still had symptoms, including headaches, six months after injury. For some people, post-concussion headaches become a daily or near-daily problem that takes months of gradual improvement to resolve.
When Medication Makes It Worse
If you’re treating headaches with over-the-counter pain relievers more than two or three days a week, the medication itself can start causing headaches. This is called medication overuse headache, and it creates a frustrating cycle: the headache returns as each dose wears off, prompting you to take more, which keeps the cycle going.
Breaking the cycle means stopping the overused medication, and that comes with a rough withdrawal period. Headaches typically get worse before they get better. Withdrawal symptoms like nausea, restlessness, and insomnia most often last 2 to 10 days, though they can continue for several weeks. Once you get through that window, the underlying headache pattern usually improves significantly.
Headaches That Start and Never Stop
A rare but real condition called new daily persistent headache begins suddenly, often on a day you can pinpoint, and becomes continuous within 24 hours. It then persists for more than three months without letting up. People with this condition often remember the exact date their headache started. If you’ve had a headache every single day for weeks or months and it began abruptly, this is a pattern worth discussing with a neurologist.
When Duration Signals an Emergency
The most dangerous headache isn’t necessarily the longest one. A thunderclap headache, one that reaches maximum intensity within seconds to minutes, carries a greater than 40% chance of serious underlying pathology such as bleeding in the brain. It requires immediate emergency evaluation, ideally with a CT scan within 12 hours of onset.
Other combinations that warrant urgent attention regardless of how long the headache has lasted:
- Headache with fever and a stiff neck, which raises concern for meningitis or another central nervous system infection
- Headache with vision changes, eye pain, or halos around lights, which may indicate acute glaucoma
- Headache with confusion, weakness, or impaired consciousness, which can signal elevated pressure inside the skull or stroke
Duration alone doesn’t determine whether a headache is dangerous. A headache that lasts two days but responds to rest and medication is almost certainly less concerning than one that peaks in 30 seconds. The speed of onset, the pattern of symptoms around it, and whether it feels fundamentally different from your usual headaches matter more than the clock.