Work & pay
Count weekdays between two dates and subtract holidays or planned days off.
Enter your numbers to see the answer.
Working days calculator guide
Working days are the weekdays in a date range with holidays and planned days off removed. This calculator counts every Monday to Friday from the start date to the end date inclusive, subtracts the number of holidays or leave days you enter, and shows the working-day total together with the raw weekday count and the full calendar span. It answers questions such as how many billable days a contract covers, how many working days remain until a deadline, how many days a leave request really uses, or how many days of pay a new starter will receive in their first month. The tool does not know your country’s public holidays or your company’s closure days, so enter them yourself; a US August has none, while many European countries close on 15 August. Weekend definitions also vary: the calculator treats Saturday and Sunday as non-working days, which suits most offices but not a Sunday-to-Thursday schedule or shift patterns. Both dates count, so a range that starts and ends on the same weekday is one working day.
Weekdays = count of Monday–Friday dates from start date to end date, both inclusive. Working days = weekdays − holidays or planned days off, never below zero. Calendar span = (end date − start date) + 1 days.
Worked example with the default inputs: 1 August 2026 to 31 August 2026 with 0 holidays. The span covers 31 calendar days. August 2026 begins on a Saturday and ends on a Monday, so it contains five full weekends (1–2, 8–9, 15–16, 22–23, 29–30 August), which is 10 weekend days. Weekdays = 31 − 10 = 21. Working days = 21 − 0 = 21 working days. Enter 1 holiday for a national day or a company closure and the result becomes 20; a two-week vacation of 10 weekdays would leave 11.
Start and end dates use the date picker in your browser and are read as calendar dates, so time zones and daylight-saving changes do not affect the count. The holidays field is a whole number of working days, not calendar days; a public holiday that falls on a Saturday should not be entered because that day is already excluded. Decimal entries are rounded to the nearest whole day.
Treat this as a gross planning figure. Deductions, tax codes, benefit contributions, overtime rules, and local employment law all change what actually reaches your account, and they vary by jurisdiction and employer. Check the number against your payslip or contract before relying on it for a budget or a negotiation. On this page the figure rests entirely on start date, end date and holidays / days off, so start there if the working days calculator returns something you did not expect.
Good to know: entering the end date as the day after the period, as some booking systems do, adds a day if it falls on a weekday. Counting a holiday that lands on a weekend double-deducts it. If a holiday is observed on the following Monday, as many countries do when a fixed-date holiday falls on a Sunday, enter it, because the Monday is a weekday. Multi-week leave is entered as weekdays only, so a fortnight off is 10, not 14.
Use the result as a gross planning estimate. Confirm payroll, overtime, tax, benefits, and employment-rule assumptions with your employer or the relevant authority.
How it works
Count weekdays between two dates and subtract holidays or planned days off. This tool explains the calculation so you can adjust the assumptions to match your situation.
Worked example
With Start date = 2026-08-01 · End date = 2026-08-31 · Holidays / days off = 0 days → 21 working days (weekdays after days off). Change an input above and this example updates with your numbers.
Common questions
There are 21 working days in August 2026 before holidays. The month has 31 days and five weekends, starting on a Saturday and ending on a Monday, leaving 21 weekdays. Subtract any national or company holidays that fall on a weekday in your location.
Count the weekdays from the first date to the last date, including both ends, then subtract any public holidays or leave days that fall on a weekday. A quick estimate is calendar days × 5 ÷ 7, but the exact count depends on which weekday the range starts on.
Not automatically. Public holidays differ by country, region, and year, so enter the number that falls on weekdays inside your range. In 2026 the United States has 11 federal holidays; the United Kingdom has 8 bank holidays in England and Wales; many countries observe 10 to 15.
No. The calculator treats Saturday and Sunday as non-working and counts only Monday to Friday. If your business works Saturdays, add the number of Saturdays in the range to the result yourself; the holidays field only subtracts days and does not accept negative values.
A year has 260 or 262 weekdays depending on which weekdays 1 January and 31 December fall on; 2026 has 261. Subtracting typical public holidays gives roughly 250 working days in the United States and 252 to 253 in the United Kingdom, before personal leave.