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About this tool
Compare your symptom pattern against the typical common cold and influenza profiles, with onset speed, fever and the 48-hour antiviral window.
A common cold and influenza share a lot of symptoms, but they differ in two ways that are easy to observe: how fast the illness starts and how much of the whole body it involves. This comparator scores the features you report against the published cold and flu symptom profiles — nose-and-throat symptoms lean cold, while abrupt onset, fever, muscle aches, chills and exhaustion lean flu — and tells you whether you are still inside the 48-hour window in which influenza antivirals work best. It is a pattern comparison, not a diagnosis.
Open Cold vs Flu Symptom Comparator on AltFTool — it loads instantly in your browser.
Add your input to the workspace.
Adjust the options until the result looks right.
Copy or download the output and put it to work.
Each symptom carries the likelihood it actually has in each illness, so a sore throat does not outweigh a 39 °C fever.
Reports hours since onset against the 48-hour antiviral window instead of leaving you to work it out.
Emergency signs for adults and children are listed separately and override the pattern score entirely.
Onset and systemic symptoms are the clearest clues. Flu typically starts abruptly over a few hours with fever, muscle aches, chills, headache and exhaustion; a cold builds over a day or two and stays mainly in the nose and throat with little or no fever. The overlap is real, though, and only a test confirms influenza.
Cold symptoms usually peak on days two to three and settle within 7-10 days. With influenza, fever and aches typically last three to four days while cough and tiredness commonly persist for two weeks or more.
Antivirals such as oseltamivir work best when started within 48 hours of symptom onset. After that they are less effective, though a doctor may still prescribe them for people at higher risk of complications or who are seriously unwell.
Seek urgent care for difficulty breathing, chest or abdominal pain or pressure, persistent confusion or dizziness, seizures, signs of dehydration, or symptoms that improve and then return worse. In children also watch for fast or laboured breathing, bluish lips, not being alert, or any fever in a baby under 12 weeks. Contact a doctor early if you are pregnant, over 65, immunosuppressed or have a chronic heart or lung condition.