Working Days Calculator

How to use the working days calculator

Enter the date the clock starts and the date it stops, and the tool counts the Monday-to-Friday days in between. Both boxes are native date fields, so type them or pick them from your device's calendar. The loaded example runs January 1 to December 25, 2026, which is there to show the tool working — replace either date and the numbers update as you type.

The order does not matter: enter the later date first and the calculator sorts the pair before counting, rather than returning zero. The count includes the start date but stops before the end date, which is how notice periods, invoice terms, and turnaround windows are normally written. If your question counts both endpoints — the first day and the last day of a leave request, say — add one working day when the end date is itself a weekday.

This is the count people need when a deadline is written in business days rather than calendar days. A 30-day notice period, a "net 30" invoice, a 10-business-day bank hold, an SLA that promises a fix within five working days, a PTO request measured against an accrual balance, or a project plan that only has capacity Monday through Friday — all of them ignore weekends, and all of them go wrong if you count calendar days by mistake.

Read the supporting lines as a sanity check on the headline. Calendar days is the raw span, weekend days is every Saturday and Sunday inside it, and working days plus weekend days always equal the calendar total — if they do not, one of your dates is not the one you meant. Full weeks tells you how many complete seven-day blocks the span contains, which is the bulk of the arithmetic.

One honest limitation: public holidays are not deducted. Holidays differ by country, by state, and by employer, and no calculator can know which ones your office closes for, so this tool counts weekdays only and leaves the subtraction to you. The table below lists the 11 US federal holidays as a starting point — check which of them land on a weekday inside your span, and take those off the total yourself.

The formula

Every seven consecutive days contain exactly five weekdays, whichever day you start on — so the count is one multiplication plus a short walk through whatever is left over:

span = days from the start date up to (not including) the end date
full weeks = span ÷ 7, rounded down

working days = full weeks × 5
             + each leftover day that is not a Saturday or Sunday
weekend days = span − working days

Worked example with the defaults — Thursday, January 1, 2026 to Friday, December 25, 2026. 2026 is a common year of 365 days, and the span works out to 358 calendar days (January 1 to December 31 is 364; December 25 is six days earlier). Dividing, 358 ÷ 7 = 51 full weeks with 1 day left over, since 51 × 7 = 357.

The 51 full weeks contribute 51 × 5 = 255 working days and 51 × 2 = 102 weekend days. The walk then starts at day 357, which is Thursday, December 24 — a weekday, so it counts. That gives 255 + 1 = 256 working days and 102 weekend days, and 256 + 102 = 358 checks back against the calendar total.

Now the part the calculator leaves to you. Nine of the 11 US federal holidays fall on a weekday inside that window: Independence Day 2026 lands on a Saturday, and Christmas Day is the end date, which the count excludes. An office that closes for all 11 would therefore work 256 − 9 = 247 days across the span. Your own figure will differ — swap in the days your employer actually closes.

Frequently asked questions