What this counts
Pick a start date and an end date. The calculator scans every day in between (inclusive on both ends), skips Saturdays and Sundays, and optionally skips any holidays you paste into the holiday box.
The four numbers it returns:
- Total days: every calendar day in the range
- Weekend days: Saturdays and Sundays
- Holidays excluded: holidays from your list that fell on a weekday inside the range
- Working days: the answer you came for, total minus weekends minus weekday holidays
Holidays that fall on a Saturday or Sunday don’t double-count. The calculator is smart enough to count them as weekend days only.
Common use cases
- Project planning: “How many working days until the deadline?” Plug in today and the deadline; subtract official company holidays.
- PTO accrual / consumption: counting business days off, ignoring weekends.
- SLA tracking: “Resolve within 5 business days” needs an exact count, not vague calendar arithmetic.
- Contract terms: many contracts say “within 30 business days”, this is the calculator that produces that number.
- Payroll: salaried-to-hourly conversions sometimes need exact working-day counts to be precise.
Holiday list format
The holiday box accepts one date per line in YYYY-MM-DD format. So for US federal holidays in 2026:
2026-01-01
2026-01-19
2026-02-16
2026-05-25
2026-06-19
2026-07-04
2026-09-07
2026-10-12
2026-11-11
2026-11-26
2026-12-25Comma-separated also works. The calculator validates each date and silently ignores anything it can’t parse, so blank lines and stray commas don’t break it.
US, UK, and EU public holidays
Different countries have different holidays. A few common defaults:
US federal (10 days): New Year’s Day, MLK Day, Presidents’ Day, Memorial Day, Juneteenth, Independence Day, Labor Day, Columbus Day, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas. Most include 11 with floating dates.
UK bank holidays (8 in England/Wales): New Year’s, Good Friday, Easter Monday, Early May, Spring Bank, Summer Bank, Christmas, Boxing Day.
Eurozone varies by country: Germany observes 9-13 depending on state; France has 11; Italy has 11. Most European countries observe more religious holidays than the US.
For multinational teams, you may need separate working-day counts per region, there’s no single “international business calendar.”
Edge cases the calculator handles
- Same-day range (start = end on a weekday): 1 working day
- Same-day range on a weekend: 0 working days
- Inverted range (end before start): error message; flip the dates
- Holidays outside the range: ignored, don’t affect the count
- Multi-year ranges: works fine, just a slow tick through each day
- Leap days: included as a regular weekday (or weekend if it falls on one)
Frequently asked questions
Do I include the start date? Yes, both endpoints are inclusive. So Jan 1 to Jan 1 is 1 day; Jan 1 to Jan 2 is 2 days.
What if I want to exclude only one of the endpoints? Subtract 1 from the result. The calculator doesn’t have an exclusive-endpoint option (uncommon enough to keep the UI simple).
Can I add half-days? No, the calculator works in whole days. For partial-day accounting, count whole days here and add fractions manually.
What about company-specific “floating” holidays? List them explicitly in the holiday box. The calculator doesn’t try to compute holidays automatically because conventions vary by country, region, and company.
My company has a 4-day work week. Can I exclude Fridays too? Not directly, the calculator hard-codes Saturday and Sunday as weekends. For 4-day weeks, paste every Friday in your range into the holiday box, or compute manually with a 4/7 multiplier.