Business Days Calculator — count weekdays between dates

How it works

A business day (or working day) is any day from Monday to Friday. Saturdays and Sundays are weekend days and are not counted. To count business days between two dates, the calculator uses the fact that every complete 7-day week contains exactly 5 business days:

1. Divide the total number of days by 7 to get the whole weeks, and multiply by 5.
2. Add the weekdays among the remaining leftover days (fewer than seven).

This is exact and instant — it never has to step through the range day by day. The weekday of any date is fixed by the Gregorian calendar, so the count is unambiguous.

The calculator counts inclusively: both the start and end dates are included. It reports the business days, the total calendar days and the weekend days, which always add up (business + weekend = total). Public holidays are not subtracted, since they differ by country and region.

Worked example

Take all of January 2026, from Thursday January 1 to Saturday January 31 — 31 total days. January 2026 has five Saturdays and four Sundays, so 9 weekend days. That leaves 22 business days (31 − 9). A single Monday-to-Friday work week, by contrast, is exactly 5 business days.

Frequently asked questions

What counts as a business day?

A business day is a weekday — Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday or Friday. Saturdays and Sundays are excluded. This calculator does not remove public holidays, because they vary by country.

How are business days between two dates calculated?

Multiply the number of whole weeks in the range by 5, then add the weekdays among the leftover days. Both the start and end dates are included. For all of January 2026 that gives 22 business days.

Are the start and end dates included?

Yes. The count is inclusive of both endpoints, so a single weekday entered as both the start and end counts as one business day, and a Monday-to-Friday span counts as five.

Does this subtract public holidays?

No. Public holidays differ by country, state and year, so the calculator counts only weekends as non-working days. Subtract any holidays that fall on weekdays yourself for an exact working-day figure.

How many business days are in a typical month?

Most months have 20 to 23 business days, depending on how the weekends fall. January 2026 has 22, and a calendar quarter such as Q1 2026 has 64.

How do I count working days for a project deadline?

Enter the project's start and end dates to get the number of business days in between. This is useful for estimating delivery times, service-level agreements and payroll periods that run on weekdays.