Business Days Calculator (weekdays only, holidays optional)
Free business-days calculator — counts weekdays between two dates and subtracts holidays you list. Use for SLAs, deadlines, contract terms.
Pick start and end dates, choose whether the start day counts itself, and (optionally) paste a holiday list. The calculator returns the number of weekdays in the range, minus any listed holidays that fall on a weekday.
How it counts
for each day d ∈ [start, end]:
if d is Saturday or Sunday → skip
else if d is in holidays → skip
else → count++
If “include start” is No, the loop starts on the day after the start date. Holidays on a weekend are already skipped by the weekend check, so listing them is safe — no double-subtraction.
US federal holidays for reference
For US calculations, the federal observed dates change each year (most holidays shift to the nearest weekday when they fall on a weekend). A 2026-ish list:
- New Year’s Day — Thu, Jan 1
- MLK Day — Mon, Jan 19
- Presidents’ Day — Mon, Feb 16
- Memorial Day — Mon, May 25
- Juneteenth — Fri, Jun 19
- Independence Day — Fri, Jul 3 (observed; Jul 4 is Sat)
- Labor Day — Mon, Sep 7
- Columbus Day — Mon, Oct 12
- Veterans Day — Wed, Nov 11
- Thanksgiving — Thu, Nov 26
- Christmas Day — Fri, Dec 25
Paste the relevant ones into the holiday field as a comma-separated list.
What this won’t do
- Half-days — the calculator is whole-day. A 4-hour Christmas Eve would either be a workday or not in your accounting; it can’t be 0.5.
- Different weekend conventions — some industries use Friday/Saturday weekends (Middle East). The calculator assumes Sat/Sun.
- Look up holidays for you — it accepts whatever list you provide, no built-in country tables. That’s the universal-by-design choice; trying to bake every country’s calendar into a static calculator spirals fast.
Worked examples
-
Mon → Fri of the same week (4 weekdays after the start)
4 business days between the two dates.
-
Same range, inclusive of start (5 weekdays total)
5 business days between the two dates.
-
Memorial Day week (subtract Mon 2026-05-25)
4 business days between the two dates.
Frequently asked questions
How do I list multiple holidays?
Type them as a comma- (or space-) separated list of ISO dates: `2026-05-25, 2026-07-04, 2026-12-25`. The calculator splits on commas or whitespace, so line breaks work too. Holidays on a weekend are ignored automatically — they would already not have been counted, so listing them is harmless.
What counts as a business day?
Monday through Friday, with any listed holidays excluded. The calculator doesn't know about regional holidays or local observance days — it counts what the calendar says is a weekday and applies your explicit exclusion list. For SLA math, contract clauses or shipping promises, that's usually exactly what's needed.
How is this different from \"days between two dates\"?
The plain *date difference* calculator returns every calendar day between two dates — including weekends. This one keeps only the **weekdays**, optionally minus a holiday list. Use date-difference for elapsed time, business-days for working time.
Why \"include start\" matters?
Two valid conventions: (a) the start day is *day zero* and you count days **after** it ("5 working days to deliver" means 5 days starting after the order is placed); (b) the start day **is** the first day you're counting. Different industries use different conventions — toggle to match yours.
Does it handle dates in past years or future years?
Yes — date math is unbounded, and weekend detection works for any year (the Gregorian calendar's 7-day week pattern has been stable since 1582). For projects with long horizons, you'll want to know the year's specific holiday dates; the calculator can't know them but accepts whatever list you give it.