In-cylinder pressure measurement and analysis has historically been a key tool for off-line combustion diagnosis in internal combustion engines, but online applications for real-time condition monitoring and combustion management have recently become popular. The present investigation presents and compares different low computing-cost in-cylinder pressure based methods for the analyses of the main features of combustion, that is, the start of combustion, the end of combustion and the crankshaft angle that responds to half of the overall burned mass. The instantaneous pressure in the combustion chamber has been used as an input datum for the described analytical procedures and it has been measured by means of a standard piezoelectric transducer. Traditional pressure-based techniques have been shown to be able to predict the burned mass fraction time history more accurately in spark ignition engines than in diesel engines. The most suitable pressure-based techniques for both spark ignition and compression ignition engines have been chosen on the basis of the available experimental data. Time-frequency analysis has also been applied to the analysis of diesel combustion, which is richer in events than spark ignited combustion. Time frequency algorithms for the calculation of the mean instantaneous frequency are computationally efficient, allow the main events of the diesel combustion to be identified and provide the greatest benefits in the presence of multiple injection events. These algorithms can be optimized and applied to onboard diagnostics tools designed for real control, but can also be used as an advanced validation tool for refined combustion models. The presented results on the pressure-based techniques, including a time frequency analysis, have been compared with the numerical outcomes from previously developed two- and three-zone thermodynamic combustion models. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd.