Working Days Calculator Online

How to Calculate Working Days Between Two Dates

1. Enter Start Date and End Date: Pick the first and last calendar day of the period. Both endpoints are inclusive by default, matching how Excel's NETWORKDAYS counts — so Monday through Friday of the same week returns 5, not 4.
2. Pick Weekend Rule: Default excludes Saturday and Sunday. Switch to Sunday-only for many Middle East schedules, Friday and Saturday for Israel and several Gulf states, or pick a custom mask (any combination of the seven weekdays) to model six-day or non-standard work weeks.
3. Add Holidays (Optional): Toggle on US federal holidays (11 days in 2026), UK bank holidays for England & Wales (8 days in 2026), or paste a custom list one date per line — useful for company shutdown weeks, school breaks, or regional observances. Holidays falling on weekends are not double-counted.
4. Calculate and Read Results: Click "Calculate" to see total calendar days, working days, weekend days excluded, and holidays excluded. Results recompute instantly — no upload, no sign-up, no data leaves your browser.

Why Use a Working Days Calculator?

Counting weekdays by hand is fine for a one-week window, but contracts, payroll, and project plans routinely span months or quarters — and weekends, public holidays, and varying regional rules make manual counting error-prone. A dedicated calculator gives you a defensible number you can drop into a SOW, an SLA, or a leave-balance ledger.

• Contract delivery dates and SLAs — "Delivery within 30 business days from PO acceptance" depends entirely on which calendar you count against. A US PO accepted on Friday June 12, 2026 with 11 federal holidays comes due around late July; the same clause counted on a UK calendar lands a couple of days earlier because UK has 8 bank holidays, not 11.
• Payroll and PTO accruals — Bi-weekly payroll periods, prorated salaries, and PTO accruals are usually quoted per working day; getting the count wrong by one day per pay period compounds into hundreds of mis-paid hours per year across a team.
• Project planning and Gantt charts — Jira, Asana, and MS Project all count duration in working days, not calendar days. A 20-working-day task across Thanksgiving week (a US 4-day holiday observance for many companies) takes ~28 calendar days, not 28.
• Statutory notice periods — UK statutory minimum notice is 1 week per year of service, but many employment contracts specify notice in working days; UCAS, HMRC, and US Department of Labor deadlines are likewise often stated in business days.
• Visa and immigration deadlines — USCIS, UK Home Office, and Schengen consulates publish processing-time estimates and response windows in business days; getting the count off by even two days can mean an expired application.
• Financial settlement (T+1, T+2) — US equities settle T+1 since May 28, 2024; bond and forex deals still use T+2 in many markets. "Trade date plus two business days" needs the correct holiday calendar (NYSE vs. London vs. Tokyo) to land on the actual settlement date.

Inclusive vs. Exclusive Counting — Pick the Right Convention

Different industries and software tools use different boundary conventions. Make sure your calculator matches the contract or formula you're cross-checking.

Convention	Mon Jun 1 → Fri Jun 5, 2026 returns	Used by
Both endpoints inclusive	5 working days	Excel NETWORKDAYS, Google Sheets NETWORKDAYS, most contract law
Start exclusive, end inclusive	4 working days	"Within X business days from receipt" (some procurement clauses)
Both endpoints exclusive	3 working days	Rare — usually only in academic date-difference problems
Calendar days (no exclusion)	5 calendar days, 5 working days	Equivalent when the range contains no weekends

If your contract says "within X business days" without specifying inclusivity, US and UK courts have generally treated the day of the triggering event as day zero (start exclusive) — but always read the governing law clause to confirm.

Regional Weekend & Holiday Quick Reference

Region	Working week	2026 public holidays	Notes
United States (federal)	Mon–Fri	11	Per US Office of Personnel Management; Saturday holidays observed Friday, Sunday holidays observed Monday
UK — England & Wales	Mon–Fri	8	Boxing Day 2026 falls on Saturday; substitute day observed Monday Dec 28
UK — Scotland	Mon–Fri	9	Extra: 2 January and St Andrew's Day (Nov 30); Easter Monday is not a Scottish bank holiday
UK — Northern Ireland	Mon–Fri	10	Adds St Patrick's Day (Mar 17) and Battle of the Boyne (Jul 13)
Saudi Arabia, UAE (private sector since 2022)	Sun–Thu (KSA), Mon–Fri (UAE since Jan 2022)	Varies (Eid lunar)	UAE switched from Sun–Thu to Mon–Fri in January 2022; Saturday/Sunday are weekend
Israel	Sun–Thu	~9 (Jewish calendar)	Friday/Saturday is the weekend
Japan	Mon–Fri	16 (national)	Highest count among major economies; "Happy Monday" law shifts several holidays to nearest Monday

Frequently Asked Questions

Does the calculator count the start date and end date?

By default, both endpoints are inclusive — matching Excel's NETWORKDAYS, Google Sheets' NETWORKDAYS, and the behavior most procurement and HR contracts assume. So Monday June 1 through Friday June 5, 2026 returns 5 working days. If your contract or formula explicitly says "from the day after acceptance" or "starting the next business day," subtract one from the result, or set the start date to the next business day.

How are public holidays handled?

You can either toggle a built-in calendar (US federal, UK England & Wales, UK Scotland, UK Northern Ireland) or paste a custom list — one date per line in YYYY-MM-DD format. The calculator subtracts only holidays that fall on a working day; a holiday landing on Saturday or Sunday is already excluded by the weekend rule and is not double-counted. If a federal holiday like Independence Day 2026 (Sat July 4) is observed Friday July 3, the US OPM calendar reflects that — pick the "observed dates" option rather than the calendar date.

Why is my Excel NETWORKDAYS result different from this calculator?

Three usual suspects. First, you may have left the third argument (holidays) empty in Excel — bare NETWORKDAYS(start, end) excludes only Saturday and Sunday, no holidays. Second, you might want NETWORKDAYS.INTL instead — it accepts a weekend parameter (1 for Sat/Sun, 11 for Sunday-only, or a "0000011" style mask) and matches non-Western work weeks. Third, Excel's date serial counts from January 1, 1900 with a 1900 leap-year bug; if you pasted dates as text rather than dates, the formula silently returns #VALUE! or treats them as 0. Compare the same start, end, and holiday inputs across both tools — they should agree.

How do I handle half-days?

Half-days are inherently a payroll/HR question, not a calendar question — public holiday calendars don't encode half-days. Two practical approaches: (1) leave them in the count as full working days and adjust hours downstream in your timesheet (most common); or (2) add them to your custom holiday list with the understanding that the calculator will subtract them as full days, then add 0.5 day back manually. For US "early dismissal" days (e.g., Christmas Eve in many federal offices), OPM lists them as full working days — local agency discretion handles the early-out.

What about Saudi Arabia, UAE, and other non-Sat/Sun weekends?

Pick the "Custom weekend" option and select the appropriate weekdays. The UAE switched its private sector to a Mon–Fri week with a half-day Friday on 1 January 2022, so for dates from 2022 onwards, treat the UAE the same as the US for weekend purposes. Saudi Arabia and Egypt still use Friday–Saturday as the weekend; Israel uses Friday–Saturday. Excel's NETWORKDAYS.INTL weekend parameter 7 covers Friday–Saturday; 11 covers Sunday-only.

Can I subtract or add a number of working days to a date instead?

That's the inverse calculation — equivalent to Excel's WORKDAY and WORKDAY.INTL functions. The Working Days Calculator on this page counts the gap between two known dates; for "30 working days after June 1, 2026," use a date-add calculator with the same weekend and holiday rules. The two functions are exact inverses: WORKDAY(start, NETWORKDAYS(start, end) - 1) = end when no holidays sit on the endpoints.

Why does my answer change when I switch regions?

The weekend rule and the holiday list both change. The US federal calendar has 11 holidays in 2026; England & Wales has 8; Scotland has 9; Northern Ireland has 10; Japan has 16 national holidays. Across a six-month span, that's typically a 2-to-5-working-day swing. If you're calculating a multinational SLA or payroll, pick the region of the obligated party (the office that has to deliver), not the customer's region — that's the calendar courts and auditors usually apply.

Is the calculation done in my browser?

Yes. All math happens client-side in JavaScript — no dates are uploaded to a server, no log is kept, no account is needed. The page works offline once loaded. The holiday lists are bundled with the page (US OPM, GOV.UK, etc.) so no external API calls are made during calculation.

What's the largest date range I can compute?

The calculator handles any range JavaScript's Date object supports — roughly ±100 million days from 1 January 1970, which is far beyond any practical contract or payroll horizon. In practice, anything from 1900 to 2100 returns a result in under 10 milliseconds. Beyond about year 9999, browser date formatting starts to behave inconsistently.