Business Days Calculator (Working Days Between Dates)

Business days are the days when most offices and services are open. In the United States, that typically means Monday through Friday, excluding weekends. Some organizations also exclude holidays and company-specific closure days. Because business schedules vary, the best calculators give you control over weekends and holiday calendars.

This Business Days Calculator lets you choose whether to exclude weekends and US federal holidays, and it also provides a quick way to add custom dates. That makes it flexible for planning deliveries, estimating project timelines, or tracking service-level agreements that use business days rather than calendar days.

Holiday calendars vary by employer and country. Results are informational.

The calculator runs locally in your browser. It uses the dates you enter, applies the exclusion rules you select, and counts the remaining business days. The Between Dates tab follows one consistent rule: it excludes the start date and includes the end date. This is a common convention in project planning because it treats the end date as the deadline day.

For example, if you start on March 1 and end on March 2, the calculator counts one day. If you need an inclusive count for both dates, you can add one day to the end date or adjust your inputs.

The Add Business Days tab uses the same exclusion rules but adds or subtracts a number of business days from the start date. It also reports the calendar days elapsed and how many days were skipped due to weekends or holidays.

Both modes are useful, but for different planning tasks:

• Between Dates is ideal for measuring lead time, turnaround time, or the number of working days in a schedule.
• Add Business Days is best when you need a specific end date after a set number of working days, such as delivery windows or contract deadlines.

If your end date is earlier than your start date, the calculator will swap the dates and show a short warning. This prevents accidental negative ranges while still giving you a valid result.

When the holiday toggle is enabled, the calculator excludes observed US federal holidays. Observed rules are applied when a holiday falls on a weekend:

• If the holiday falls on Saturday, it is observed on Friday.
• If the holiday falls on Sunday, it is observed on Monday.

The calculator includes these federal holidays:

• New Year's Day
• Martin Luther King Jr. Day
• Washington's Birthday (Presidents Day)
• Memorial Day
• Juneteenth
• Independence Day
• Labor Day
• Columbus Day (Indigenous Peoples' Day)
• Veterans Day
• Thanksgiving Day
• Christmas Day

Holidays differ by country, company, and union. If your workplace follows a different calendar, add custom dates for a closer estimate.

Below are four examples showing typical use cases.

Example 1: Range that spans a weekend

• Start: 2026-03-05 (Thu)
• End: 2026-03-10 (Tue)
• Exclude weekends: On
• Result: 3 business days (Fri, Mon, Tue), with 2 weekend days excluded.

Example 2: Range including Thanksgiving week

• Start: 2026-11-23 (Mon)
• End: 2026-11-30 (Mon)
• Exclude weekends: On
• Exclude holidays: On
• Result: Business days exclude the Thanksgiving holiday plus the weekend. This yields fewer working days than the calendar range.

Example 3: Add 10 business days

• Start: 2026-02-02 (Mon)
• Add: 10 business days
• Exclude weekends: On
• Result: The end date lands two calendar weeks later, with weekends skipped automatically.

Example 4: Subtract business days

• Start: 2026-05-15 (Fri)
• Subtract: 5 business days
• Exclude weekends: On
• Result: The calculator skips the weekend and lands on the previous Friday.

• Confirm your holiday calendar. Federal holidays are a good baseline, but they are not universal.
• Use custom exclude dates for company shutdowns or regional holidays.
• Check the inclusion rule. Between Dates excludes the start date and includes the end date.
• Use Add Business Days when you need a deadline from a starting point.

Use this tool when schedules depend on working days rather than calendar days. It is ideal for delivery windows, compliance deadlines, and operational planning where weekends or holidays should be excluded.