An apparatus and process for measuring recovery rate and total recovery time of viscoelastic foam samples. This apparatus will record the change in height with time to fully define how a viscoelastic foam responds to compression. The process generally includes compressing a compression plate against a surface of the viscoelastic foam sample from a nominal height to a pre-determined compressed height, maintaining the pre-determined compressed height for a period of time; retracting the compression plate at a rate greater than a recovery rate so as to disengage the compression plate from the viscoelastic foam sample, and measuring displacement as a function of time to provide a viscoelastic response profile. Measuring the displacement may be contact based or non-contact based.