Business Days Calculator

What this calculator answers

Two questions about working days. How many business days are between two dates, for payroll, leave, project plans or a service-level count. And what date is a number of business days away, for a delivery window, a notice period or a contract deadline. You choose which days of the week are the weekend and paste in the holidays that apply to you. No holiday calendar is built in, so the answer never depends on a country or state guessed for you.

How to use it

• Calculate: Count between dates or Add or subtract a number of business days.
• Start date and End date (counting), or Start date and Business days (adding). Under the result, Use today as start and Use today as end put today’s date from your device into a field, and Swap dates turns around dates entered the wrong way.
• Direction (adding): Add for a later date, Subtract for an earlier one. A negative number of business days also goes back.
• Dates counted (counting): whether the start date, the end date, both or neither are counted. The default counts the end date only, the number of business days you move through to get from one date to the other. Spreadsheet NETWORKDAYS counts both.
• Weekend: Saturday and Sunday, Friday and Saturday, Sunday only (a six-day week), or Other days, where you tick any days off. At least one day of the week must be a working day.
• Holidays (optional): paste or type dates, one per line or separated by commas. 2026-11-26, 11/26/2026, Nov 26, 2026, 26 November 2026 and Thursday, November 26 all work, and text next to a date is kept as its name. Slashes are read month first. A date without a year is read in the start date’s year, unless a weekday written with it fits a neighboring year better, so a holiday table copied from an official page, such as OPM’s federal holiday schedule (listed under Sources), can be pasted as it is. Lines that can’t be read are listed above the result and left out.
• Holidays on a Saturday or Sunday (Saturday–Sunday weekends with holidays listed): leave them where they fall, or move them the way your employer does (see below).

Results update as you type. The Try buttons add 10 business days, count across a July 4 that falls on a Saturday, switch to a Friday and Saturday weekend, and count the weekdays in 2027. Save for comparison keeps up to three results side by side, for example the same dates with two holiday lists. The holiday, month and date tables, and the deadline table when adding, download as CSV files.

How many business days are between two dates?

Count the calendar days in the range, take away the weekend days, then take away the holidays that fall on working days:

• $B$ is the number of business days.
• $C$ is the number of calendar days counted.
• $W$ is the number of weekend days among them.
• $H$ is the number of holidays among them that fall on a working weekday. A holiday on a weekend day is already left out with the weekend, so it is not taken off again.

Which ends of the range count changes the answer by one. From a Monday to the Friday of the same week there are 4 business days if you count the days you move through (Tuesday to Friday), and 5 if you count both dates, as Excel’s NETWORKDAYS does. The result shows both, and a small table gives the count for all four choices.

Worked example: business days left in 2026 after October 30

A team wants to know how many working days remain in 2026 after Friday, October 30. Their company observes Veterans Day, Thanksgiving and the day after, Christmas Day and New Year’s Day. The start date is not counted, the end date (Thursday, December 31) is.

1. Calendar days counted: Saturday, October 31 to Thursday, December 31, 2026 = 62 calendar days.
2. Weekend days among them: 18 Saturdays and Sundays.
3. Holidays on working days: Veterans Day (Wednesday, November 11), Thanksgiving (Thursday, November 26), the day after (Friday, November 27) and Christmas Day (Friday, December 25) = 4. New Year’s Day 2027 is outside the dates, so it is ignored.
4. Business days: 62 − 18 − 4 = 40 business days.

By month, that is 0 in October (the 31st is a Saturday), 18 in November and 22 in December. Counting both dates gives 41, because Friday, October 30 is itself a business day. In a spreadsheet, with the start date in A1, the end date in B1 and the five holiday dates in C1:C5, =NETWORKDAYS.INTL(A1+1, B1, "0000011", C1:C5) also returns 40.

What date is 10 business days from a given date?

Day 1 is the first business day after the start date. Count forward from there, skipping weekend days and holidays, until you reach the number you need. The start date itself is day 0, so it can be a Saturday or a holiday without changing anything.

Ten business days after Friday, October 30, 2026, with Veterans Day off, is Monday, November 16, 2026. Day 1 is Monday, November 2, and the walk skips 6 weekend days and Veterans Day, so the date is 17 calendar days after the start. If a rule counts the start date as day 1, the tenth business day is Friday, November 13. For “10 business days from today”, press Use today as start. To count back, choose Subtract or type a negative number: 10 business days before November 16 is October 30 again.

Without holidays, the calendar days depend only on the weekday you start from:

Each holiday on the way adds one calendar day. The add mode also lists the dates for 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 10, 15, 20, 30, 45, 60 and 90 business days, next to your own number.

What does “3 to 5 business days” mean?

It is a window that opens on the third business day after the day counting starts and closes on the fifth. From Friday, December 18, 2026, the third business day is Wednesday, December 23. The fifth is Friday, December 25 if the business counting treats Christmas as a working day, and Monday, December 28 if it doesn’t. An order or request that arrives after a company’s daily cut-off time may be treated as received on the next business day, which moves the whole window, so check the terms that set it.

Is Saturday a business day?

Usually not. The common business week is Monday to Friday, and the Federal Reserve’s Regulation CC, which sets when banks must make deposited funds available, defines a business day as any calendar day other than a Saturday, a Sunday or one of the federal holidays it lists. Carriers, stores and courts set their own rules, though, so read the terms that set your deadline. Where Saturday is a working day, choose Sun only; where the weekend is Friday and Saturday, choose Fri + Sat.

Holidays that fall on a weekend

A holiday on a weekend day costs no working day unless it is moved to a weekday, and the calculator never takes it off twice. Many employers do move it. Choose the rule that matches yours:

• Saturday to Friday, Sunday to Monday: the rule for most US federal employees. July 4, 2026 is a Saturday, so federal offices observe Friday, July 3. From Friday, June 26 to Friday, July 10, 2026 that leaves 9 business days; left on Saturday, the holiday costs nothing and the count is 10.
• Sunday to Monday only: Regulation CC works this way for banks. When January 1, July 4, November 11 or December 25 falls on a Sunday, the next Monday is not a business day; a Saturday holiday is not moved.
• Next free weekday: the substitute day used for UK bank holidays. In 2027 Christmas Day is a Saturday and Boxing Day a Sunday, so the days off are Monday, December 27 and Tuesday, December 28.

Moves can cross a year. New Year’s Day 2028 is a Saturday, so the federal day off is Friday, December 31, 2027, a date that a list covering only 2027 misses. Type 1/1/2028 with the US rule and the calculator moves it. If your list already shows the observed days, as OPM’s federal schedule does, leave the holidays where they fall.

Weekends other than Saturday and Sunday

Pick Fri + Sat or Sun only, or Other days to tick any combination. The example dates with Friday and Saturday off give 43 business days: 62 calendar days, 17 weekend days and 2 holidays. The day after Thanksgiving and Christmas Day fall on Fridays, which are now weekend days, so only Veterans Day and Thanksgiving cost a working day. Moving weekend holidays is offered only for Saturday–Sunday weekends, because the rules above are written for them.

Business days in Excel and Google Sheets

• NETWORKDAYS(start, end, holidays) counts the business days with both dates included and a Saturday–Sunday weekend.
• NETWORKDAYS.INTL(start, end, weekend, holidays) takes a seven-character weekend string, Monday first, with 1 for a day off: "0000011" for Saturday and Sunday, "0000110" for Friday and Saturday, "0000001" for Sunday only. It returns a negative number when the start date is after the end date.
• WORKDAY(start, days, holidays) and WORKDAY.INTL(start, days, weekend, holidays) return the date a number of business days away. Zero returns the start date, and a negative number counts back.

To match this calculator’s default of not counting the start date, add one day to it: =NETWORKDAYS.INTL(A1+1, B1, "0000011", C1:C5). The steps under each result give the formula for your own inputs. Google Sheets has the same four functions.

How many business days are in a year?

Before holidays, a year has 260, 261 or 262 weekdays. A 365-day year is 52 weeks and one day; a leap year has two extra days, and whether they fall on weekdays decides the count. 2026 and 2027 have 261 weekdays each, 2028 has 260 (it starts on a Saturday, and its two extra days are that Saturday and Sunday), and 2024 had 262. Then subtract the holidays that fall on weekdays: OPM’s 2026 federal schedule has 11 holidays, all on weekdays once July 4 moves to Friday, July 3, which leaves 250 federal working days.

The Weekdays in 2027 button shows the months side by side: from 20 in February to 23 in March and December, 261 in total.

Reading the result

• The headline is the count of business days, or the date you land on. Under it, the dates restate what was counted.
• The tiles break the count into calendar days, weekend days and holidays, name the weekday of each date and whether it was counted, and give the other common count (both dates, or without the start date). When adding, they show day 1 and the date you would get if the start date counted as day 1.
• The calendar (when both dates fall within three consecutive calendar months) marks each counted business day with its place in the count, holidays with an H and weekend days with a lighter shade, and outlines the two dates.
• How this was calculated lists the calendar days, weekend days and holidays, the subtraction, and the spreadsheet formula.
• The same dates, counted four ways shows how the choice of dates changes the count. When adding, a table gives the dates for other numbers of business days, each skipping every listed holiday on the way to it, even one after your own result.
• Holidays, By month and Dates: every date read from your list with what happened to it (a working day skipped, on a weekend day, outside the dates, or listed twice), the count for each month (each year for long ranges), and every business day counted, up to 400. Each table downloads as CSV.

Assumptions and limitations

• No holiday calendar is built in: only the dates you list are days off, and a list for the wrong year or country gives the wrong answer.
• Whole days only. Business hours, cut-off times and time zones are ignored.
• Dates run from the year 1 to 9999 in the Gregorian calendar, and the two dates can be at most 100 years (36,525 days) apart.
• What counts as a business day is set by whoever sets the deadline. In US federal civil cases, for example, Rule 6 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure counts every calendar day of a period stated in days, including weekends and holidays; only a last day that lands on a weekend or legal holiday moves, to the next day that is neither. This page is a counting tool, not legal advice.

Common mistakes

• Counting both dates by habit. NETWORKDAYS includes the start date, so it gives one more than “business days until” whenever the start date is a business day: 41 instead of 40 in the example.
• Treating the start date as day 1. Counting from the next business day, as WORKDAY does, 10 business days after October 30 is November 16, not November 13. Check how the rule you follow counts.
• Leaving a weekend holiday where it falls when your employer moves it. July 4, 2026 typed with Leave them where they fall costs no working day. Choose the US rule, or type July 3 instead.
• Forgetting holidays that cross the year. A 2027 count that ends on December 31 needs New Year’s Day 2028, observed that Friday.
• Typing dates day first. 03/07/2026 is read as March 7. Write 2026-07-03 or 3 July 2026 for July 3.