About the Business Days Calculator
How many working days are there in a month, a quarter or a project? How many days will an employee be at work between two dates? How many business days does a supplier have to deliver? The business days calculator counts the Monday-to-Friday days between two dates, removes any public holidays you list, and shows the full breakdown of calendar days, weekend days and holidays.
Business days — also called working days or workdays — are the basis of payroll, project schedules, service-level agreements, delivery promises and many legal time limits. Counting them by hand across several months, with holidays scattered through, is slow and easy to get wrong; this calculator does it exactly.
How to Use the Business Days Calculator
Enter the start date and the end date.
Choose whether to include the end date. The default counts both dates, which suits questions like "how many working days are in October?".
Optionally, list holidays as YYYY-MM-DD dates, separated by commas or new lines.
How Business Days Are Counted
for each day from the start date to the end date:
Saturday or Sunday → weekend day
listed holiday → holiday (only if it is a weekday)
otherwise → business day
business days = calendar days − weekend days − weekday holidaysStep-by-Step Example
October 2026, from Thursday 1 October to Saturday 31 October, both included.
Calendar days: 31
Weekend days: 9 (Sat/Sun 3–4, 10–11, 17–18, 24–25, and Sat 31)
Business days: 31 − 9 = 22
Working hours: 22 × 8 = 176October 2026 has 22 business days. If Monday 12 October is a public holiday, the count becomes 21.
How Many Working Days in a Year?
A year has 52 whole weeks, which contain 260 weekdays, plus one extra day in a common year and two in a leap year. A common year therefore has 261 weekdays if it starts on a weekday and 260 if it starts on a weekend; a leap year has up to 262. After subtracting public holidays — typically 8 in the UK, 10 or 11 federal holidays in the United States, and more in many other countries — most full-time workers have around 250 working days a year, before annual leave.
Monthly Working Days
Months have between 20 and 23 business days, depending on their length and where the weekends fall. A 31-day month starting on a Monday has 23; February in a common year always has exactly 20, because it is exactly four weeks. These differences matter for anyone paid by the day, for monthly productivity targets and for billing: a contractor on a day rate earns noticeably more in a 23-day month than in a 20-day one.
Holidays
Public holidays differ by country, by region and sometimes by employer, so the calculator does not assume any — list the ones that apply to you. Only holidays that fall on a weekday reduce the count; one that falls on a weekend is already excluded. Where a holiday falling on a weekend is "observed" on the following Monday, as often happens with Christmas and New Year, list the Monday instead.
Weekends Around the World
This calculator treats Saturday and Sunday as the weekend, which is the standard in most of the world. Some countries use a different weekend: Friday and Saturday in several Middle Eastern countries, and Friday alone in a few. Organisations with shift work, retail opening hours or a four-day week also count working days differently, so treat the result as the standard Monday-to-Friday figure and adjust if needed.
Converting Working Days to Calendar Time
Estimates are often given in working days, but schedules need calendar dates. As a rule of thumb, 5 working days is one calendar week, 20 working days is about four weeks, and a 60-working-day project takes roughly 12 weeks — longer if it spans holidays such as the Christmas period, when many businesses close for several days. To turn a count of working days into an exact end date, use the deadline calculator, which steps forward from a start date while skipping weekends and the holidays you list.
Uses for Business Day Counts
Payroll: daily-rate pay, pro-rata salaries for part months and unpaid leave deductions. Projects: turning estimates in working days into calendar dates, and checking capacity for a sprint or quarter. Service levels: measuring whether a supplier met a "within 5 business days" promise. HR: counting annual leave taken, notice periods and probation reviews. Finance: settlement periods and payment processing times, which are often quoted in business days.
Understanding Your Result
The headline is the number of business days.
The breakdown line splits the calendar days into business days, weekend days and weekday holidays.
The working hours line multiplies the business days by an 8-hour day.
The dates line confirms the range and whether the end date was included.
The holidays line says how many holiday dates you entered.
When Should You Use This Calculator?
Use it to count working days in a month, quarter or year.
Use it for payroll, day-rate billing and pro-rata calculations.
Use it to plan project timelines in working days.
Use it to check delivery and service-level deadlines.
Common Mistakes
Forgetting public holidays. Add the holidays that apply to you.
Double-counting weekend holidays. List the observed weekday instead.
Excluding the end date by mistake. For whole months, include both dates.
Assuming every month has 22 working days. The count ranges from 20 to 23, depending on the month.