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Business Days Calculator
✓ Updated for 2026 — latest methods & data
Count working days between two dates, excluding weekends and public holidays you list. Also add N business days to any date — instant results, 100% free.
How it works
Saturday and Sunday are always treated as non-working days. Any dates you paste in the holidays box are also excluded. In "count" mode both the start and end dates are included in the total. Results are computed instantly in your browser — nothing is uploaded anywhere.
FAQs
How do I count business days between two dates?
Enter a start and end date. The calculator counts Monday to Friday days between them, excluding weekends and any holidays you list.
Does it exclude public holidays?
Yes — paste one holiday date per line (YYYY-MM-DD) and those days are excluded from the count.
Can I add N business days to a date?
Yes. Use the add-business-days mode: enter a start date and a number of business days to get the resulting date.
Is this business days calculator free?
Yes, 100% free with no signup. All calculations run in your browser.
Do business days include Saturday in the Middle East?
Not by default — this calculator uses the Monday–Friday week, but several Gulf countries observe Friday–Saturday or Thursday–Friday weekends. When counting for those regions, treat your local weekend days as the excluded days so deadlines land on actual working days.
What does 'within 5 business days' legally mean?
It generally means five working days excluding the day the notice is given, plus weekends and public holidays. If a contract says 'five clear business days,' both the start and end days are excluded too — so always confirm the exact wording before relying on a deadline.
How do I handle half-day holidays in the count?
Most calculators treat a date as fully excluded or fully counted, with no half-day option. The practical approach: count it as a full business day in the tool and note the half day separately, since payroll and contract deadlines rarely split hairs at this granularity.
How business-day counting actually works
Counting business days isn't a single formula — it's iteration. The calculator walks forward day by day from your start date, counting a day only if it's Monday–Friday and not on your holiday list. Iteration is what makes custom holidays work cleanly: each date is simply checked against your list, no calendar table required.
Two modes: count between dates — step from the day after the start date to the end date, incrementing for each business day; and add N business days — advance the calendar one day at a time, decrementing N only on business days, until N reaches zero. Weekends are skipped silently in both modes.
Worked example: start Monday 2026-10-19, add 5 business days: Tue 20 → 1, Wed 21 → 2, Thu 22 → 3, Fri 23 → 4, Sat–Sun skipped, Mon 26 → 5. Result: Monday 2026-10-26. If 2026-10-23 were listed as a holiday, the count would shift and land on Tuesday 2026-10-27 instead.
Practical tips: enter holidays in YYYY-MM-DD format, one per line, and always add your country's public holidays manually — built-in lists never cover every region. Check whether your contract counts the start day: "5 business days" usually excludes it, while "5 clear business days" excludes both endpoints. Limitation: the default Monday–Friday week doesn't fit Middle East schedules (Friday–Saturday weekends) — treat your local weekend days as the excluded ones when counting.
The legal fine print around "business days": in contracts, "clear days" exclude both the start and end dates — "5 clear business days' notice" served Monday means the earliest effective date is the following Tuesday, not Friday. Financial markets use T+1/T+2 settlement (trade date plus 1–2 business days), which is why a Friday stock sale settles Monday/Tuesday and a pre-holiday Thursday sale can take nearly a week. Notice periods in employment contracts, invoice payment terms ("net 30" is usually calendar days — check!), and shipping SLAs each define business days slightly differently, and courts have voided deadlines over exactly this ambiguity. When a deadline truly matters — visa applications, court filings, tender submissions — confirm three things in writing: the start-day convention, the weekend definition, and the exact holiday list. A calculator gives you the right count only when those three inputs match the contract's definitions.