Business days calculator

How to use it

1. Choose the calculation. Pick “Between two dates” to count working days in a period, or “Add or subtract” to find a date a number of business days away.
2. Select the country. The public holidays of that country are skipped together with the weekend. Choose “No holidays” if only weekends should be skipped.
3. Enter the dates. Type or pick the start date, and either the end date or the number of business days. The result appears immediately.
4. Adjust if needed. Under “Weekend and extra days off” you can change the weekend (for example Friday and Saturday), include or exclude the start and end days, and add company closures.

How business days are counted

A business day, also called a working day, is a day that is neither part of the weekly rest nor a public holiday. In most countries the weekly rest is Saturday and Sunday, so a normal week has five business days. The calculator applies three rules, in this order.

1. Weekend days are skipped. You can change which days of the week count as weekend, because some countries rest on Friday and Saturday and some businesses work six days.
2. Public holidays of the chosen country are skipped when they fall on a day that would otherwise be a working day. A holiday that falls on a Saturday or Sunday takes nothing away, because that day was already a rest day. Two holidays on the same date count once.
3. Your own days off (a company shutdown, a local saint's day, a day of leave) are skipped in the same way as public holidays.

When you count between two dates, both the first and the last day are counted by default if they are working days. This is how the spreadsheet function NETWORKDAYS works. You can switch either end off. When you add days, the starting day is not counted, which matches WORKDAY: one business day after a Friday is the following Monday.

Easter and the feasts that move with it (Good Friday, Easter Monday, Ascension, Whit Monday) are calculated for every year from a published algorithm, not read from a table. That is why the results stay correct for years far from today. See the Easter dates page for the method.

Which public holidays are included

The calculator knows the nationwide holidays of seven countries. Regional and local holidays differ too much from place to place to guess, so they are not included; add them under “Your own days off”.

In 2026 a plain Monday-to-Friday calendar has 261 weekdays. After public holidays that falls to 254 in Italy and Germany, 253 in the United Kingdom, 252 in France and 250 in the United States and in Romania.

Worked examples

Using business days for deadlines and delivery

Business days appear in contracts, delivery estimates, payment terms, notice periods and legal time limits. “Delivery in 5 business days” usually means five days that are not weekend or holiday, counted from the day after the order. A payment term of 30 business days is about six weeks, not 30 calendar days.

• Check how your document defines the day. Some contracts count Saturday as a business day, some count from the day of the order, some exclude the day of an event. Switch the options in “Weekend and extra days off” to match.
• Cut-off times matter. An order placed after the daily cut-off is often treated as placed on the next business day. Enter the first counted day, not the clock time.
• Time zones can move the date. The calculator works with calendar dates, so the answer is the same wherever you are. If two parties are in different countries, agree whose calendar and holidays apply.

What the calculator does not know

• Regional and local holidays (US state holidays, German state holidays, Spanish autonomous communities, Scotland and Northern Ireland).
• Bridge days that a government decides on year by year, and half days such as Christmas Eve in some sectors.
• Unannounced closures: national days of mourning, strikes, severe weather.
• Rules for the years before the ones listed in the warning shown when you pick an earlier date.

The result is a calculation aid. For a legal deadline, a payroll date or a contract, confirm the date with the official source for your jurisdiction.

Frequently asked questions