Use this counter to find the number of days between two dates, including the number of working days, weekends, and holidays. Click "Settings" to define holidays.
The day counter tells you exactly how many days fall between any two dates — and, just as importantly, how those days break down. Alongside the total, it reports the number of weekend days, the number of holidays, and the number of business days (working days) in the span. You can choose which holidays to count from a list of common US holidays, add your own custom holidays, and decide whether the end date itself should be included in the total. The results also include a month-by-month calendar so you can see the whole period at a glance.
Counting days sounds trivial until you actually try it. Months have different lengths, leap years add a day, weekends interrupt every week, and holidays land on different dates each year. Doing it by hand is slow and error-prone. This counter handles all of it instantly, which makes it useful for project deadlines, contract terms, notice periods, vacation planning, payroll, invoicing, legal timelines, and simply satisfying curiosity about how long something has been or will be.
Pick your start date and end date, then click Calculate. By default the counter measures the span between the two dates, meaning the start date is counted but the end date is not — the standard way of measuring a duration. If you want both endpoints included (useful when counting, say, the total days of a trip or a rental), tick "include end day (add 1 day)" and the total increases by one.
Click Settings to open the holiday panel. There you can switch between "Count holidays" and "Do not count holidays." When holidays are counted, you get three figures — weekend days, holidays, and business days. When they are not, the counter simply reports weekend days and weekdays. Tick or untick any of the fourteen built-in holidays, and use the custom rows to add holidays specific to your company, school, or country by entering a name, month, and day.
The math is straightforward once the rules are clear:
For example, from January 1, 2026 to December 31, 2026 there are 364 days. That span contains exactly 52 Saturdays and 52 Sundays — 104 weekend days — and, with the default holiday selection, 11 holidays, leaving 249 business days. Change the dates or the holiday selection and every figure updates accordingly.
The counter includes fourteen commonly observed holidays. Some fall on a fixed date each year while others float to a particular weekday:
The counter uses each holiday's actual calendar date rather than its observed date, so a holiday that falls on a Saturday or Sunday is counted on the day it actually occurs rather than being shifted to the nearest weekday.
The distinction between calendar days and business days matters enormously in practice, and confusing the two is a common source of missed deadlines. A calendar day is simply any day. A business day (or working day) is a day when most offices, banks, and courts are open — typically Monday through Friday, excluding public holidays. Ten calendar days is always ten days; ten business days can stretch across two full weeks or more once weekends and holidays intervene.
Contracts, shipping estimates, legal notice periods, bank transfers, and return windows are frequently written in business days precisely because organizations do not operate on weekends. If a document says "payment due within 30 business days," the actual calendar deadline is roughly six weeks away, not one month. This counter shows both figures side by side so you never have to guess.
Several quirks of the calendar conspire to make manual day counting unreliable. Month lengths vary between 28 and 31 days with no simple pattern. Leap years insert February 29 every four years — except in century years not divisible by 400, which is why 1900 was not a leap year but 2000 was. Holidays move: Thanksgiving, Memorial Day, and Labor Day land on different dates every year because they are defined by weekday position rather than a fixed number. And the inclusive/exclusive question — whether to count both endpoints — trips up almost everyone at some point. A counter that handles all of this consistently removes an entire category of small, expensive mistakes.
One of the most important choices this tool gives you is the "include end day" option, and the right answer depends on what you are measuring. When you measure a duration — how long until a deadline, how many days old something is, how much time has elapsed — you normally exclude the end day, because you are measuring the gap between two points. From January 1 to January 8 is seven days of elapsed time. But when you count the days themselves — how many days you will be on holiday, how many nights to book, how many days a permit covers — you include both endpoints, because January 1 through January 8 is eight distinct days. Legal and contractual documents often specify which convention applies, so read carefully; when in doubt, calculate both and note the difference.
Below the summary figures, the counter draws a calendar for every month your range touches, with the start and end dates highlighted. This visual check is surprisingly valuable: it lets you confirm at a glance that you entered the dates you meant, see how weekends fall within the period, and spot holidays clustering near a deadline. For longer spans it also gives you a quick sense of the shape of the period — how many full weeks it contains and where the gaps are.
The built-in list covers common US public holidays, but almost every real calendar has more. The custom holiday rows in Settings let you add any date that should not count as a working day: a company-wide shutdown between Christmas and New Year, a floating "summer Friday," a school in-service day, a religious observance, or a national holiday from another country. Enter a name, pick the month, and pick the day, and that date is treated as a holiday in every year your range covers.
This makes the counter useful well beyond the United States. A UK user might add Boxing Day on December 26 and the early May bank holiday; a Canadian user might add Canada Day on July 1; an Australian user might add Australia Day on January 26. Because custom holidays are defined by a fixed month and day, they work best for holidays with fixed dates — for holidays that move each year, simply set the date for the year you are calculating, or untick the built-in options and enter the specific dates you need. Remember that the counter subtracts each holiday from the business-day total regardless of which weekday it falls on, so if a holiday you add lands on a Saturday or Sunday, it is still counted in the holiday total.
People are often surprised by how few working days a year actually contains. A standard 365-day year holds exactly 52 weeks plus one extra day, which works out to about 104 weekend days. Subtract those and roughly 261 weekdays remain. Take away ten or eleven public holidays and a typical year has around 250 business days — which is exactly what this counter reports for 2026 with the default holiday selection. Leap years add one more day, and the count shifts slightly depending on which weekday January 1 falls on, since a year that starts on a Saturday or Sunday distributes its weekends differently than one starting midweek.
That 250-day figure is worth internalizing because it reframes a lot of planning. A "six month" project is not 180 working days — it is closer to 125. An employee with 20 days of annual leave is taking roughly 8% of their working year. A contractor billing daily needs to plan around 250 billable days, not 365. Whenever a timeline is quoted in months but the work happens on weekdays, converting to business days with this counter gives a far more honest picture of how much time actually exists.
By default it counts the start date but not the end date, which is the standard way to measure a duration. Tick "include end day (add 1 day)" to count both endpoints, which adds one day to the total.
Any Monday through Friday that is not one of your selected holidays. This counter assumes a Monday-to-Friday workweek with Saturday and Sunday as the weekend.
Yes. Open Settings and use the custom holiday rows to enter a name, month, and day. Custom holidays apply to every year your date range covers, so they work for company closures, school breaks, and non-US public holidays.
The counter uses each holiday's actual date rather than an observed substitute date, so a holiday landing on a Saturday or Sunday is still counted on the day it occurs. Because both the weekend and holiday totals are reported separately, a holiday on a weekend affects the business-day figure.
Yes. All calculations use real calendar dates, so February 29 is included automatically whenever your range covers a leap year. A leap year occurs every four years, except for century years that are not divisible by 400 — which is why the year 1900 was not a leap year but the year 2000 was. The counter applies these rules correctly for any year you enter, so a span crossing February 29 will always include that extra day in the total.
Yes. Choose any start and end dates you like. Holidays are calculated separately for each year the range spans, and a calendar is drawn for every month included.
This Day Counter is provided for educational and general informational purposes. Holiday dates reflect common US observances and may not match your employer's, school's, or country's official calendar, and observed dates for holidays falling on weekends are not applied. For contractual, legal, or payroll deadlines, always confirm the exact counting convention and holiday schedule that applies to your situation.