Working Days Calculator UK

A working days calculator counts the business days between two dates, leaving out weekends and bank holidays. Our free UK tool uses the official bank holiday dates for England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland from 2025 to 2028, including substitute days and the extra Scottish bank holiday in June 2026. Count the working days between any two dates, choose whether the start and end dates are included, or add a number of working days to a date to find a deadline. The tool lists every bank holiday it skipped, so you can see exactly how the answer was reached. It runs in your browser and works offline once the page has loaded.

How to use the Working days

1. 1 Choose a modePick "Days between dates" to count working days, or "Add working days" to find the date a number of working days from now.
2. 2 Select your part of the UKBank holidays differ between England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, so choose the one that applies to you or your contract.
3. 3 Enter the datesPick a start and end date, or a start date and a number of working days. Use a minus sign to count backwards.
4. 4 Decide whether to count the start and endTick or untick the boxes to include or exclude the start and end dates. This changes the answer by up to two days.
5. 5 Check the result and holidaysRead the headline figure, the calendar and weekend days, and the list of bank holidays that were excluded. Copy the result if you need it.

What counts as a working day

In this calculator a working day is any Monday to Friday that is not a bank holiday in the part of the UK you select. Saturdays and Sundays are always excluded. That matches the usual meaning of a business day in UK contracts, payment terms and official deadlines, where a business day is commonly defined as a day other than a Saturday, Sunday or bank holiday in England, or wherever the contract says.

Your own working pattern may be different. Shops, hospitality, care and many other sectors work weekends, and part-time staff may work only some weekdays. Employers can also close for extra days between Christmas and New Year. For those situations, use the result as a starting point and adjust it for your own rota or closure days.

Always check how a particular deadline is defined. Some legal and court time limits have their own rules about whether the first day counts and what happens when a deadline falls on a non-working day, so read the rule itself or take advice when the date really matters.

UK bank holidays by nation

There is no single set of UK bank holidays. England and Wales share eight a year, Scotland normally has nine and Northern Ireland ten. The calculator includes the full lists published on GOV.UK for 2025 to 2028, so the count is right for whichever nation you choose.

• England and Wales: New Year's Day, Good Friday, Easter Monday, the early May bank holiday, the spring bank holiday, the summer bank holiday at the end of August, Christmas Day and Boxing Day.
• Scotland: New Year's Day and 2 January, Good Friday, the early May and spring bank holidays, the summer bank holiday at the start of August, St Andrew's Day, Christmas Day and Boxing Day. Easter Monday is not a bank holiday in Scotland.
• Scotland 2026: an additional bank holiday on Monday 15 June 2026, listed by GOV.UK as the World Cup bank holiday.
• Northern Ireland: the England and Wales holidays plus St Patrick's Day on 17 March and the Battle of the Boyne (Orangemen's Day) in July.

Substitute days and moving holidays

When a bank holiday falls on a Saturday or Sunday, a substitute weekday is usually given instead, normally the following Monday. In 2026, for example, Boxing Day falls on a Saturday, so the bank holiday moves to Monday 28 December. In 2027 both Christmas Day and Boxing Day fall at the weekend, so the holidays are taken on Monday 27 and Tuesday 28 December. The calculator uses the substitute dates exactly as GOV.UK lists them and labels them as substitute days.

Easter moves every year, which shifts Good Friday and Easter Monday between late March and late April. That is why quarter-end and Easter deadlines can catch people out: in 2027, Good Friday is 26 March, just before the end of the first quarter. The May and August holidays are fixed to particular Mondays rather than dates, so they also move around the calendar from year to year.

Very occasionally the government adds a one-off bank holiday for a national event or moves an existing one. The built-in list reflects the GOV.UK data at the time it was last checked. If a new bank holiday is announced, the official GOV.UK page is the place to confirm it.

Including or excluding the start and end dates

Whether the first and last days count makes a real difference. From Monday to Friday of the same week is five working days if you count both ends, four if you leave one out and three if you leave out both. By default the calculator counts both dates, which is the natural answer to a question such as how many working days are there in October. Untick a box when your rule says to start counting from the day after an event, as many notice periods and payment terms do.

The add working days mode always starts counting from the day after the start date. Adding one working day to a Monday gives Tuesday, and adding five gives the following Monday. If your start date is itself a weekend or bank holiday, counting simply begins on the next working day. To count backwards, for example to find the last day you can send something to meet a deadline, enter a negative number.

Everyday uses for a working days calculator

Small businesses count working days more often than they realise. Here are some of the most common reasons to reach for the tool.

• Payment terms: working out when an invoice with terms in working days falls due, or chasing a payment that is late.
• Notice periods and holidays: counting how many working days an employee is off, or when a notice period ends, while remembering that statutory notice is usually set in weeks.
• Project planning: turning an estimate of 20 working days into a realistic delivery date that allows for bank holidays.
• Delivery promises: telling customers when an order will arrive when couriers only deliver on working days.
• Pro-rata pay and charges: working out how many working days a new starter or a short contract covers in a month.
• Service levels: checking whether a supplier met a response time promised in business days.

Accuracy and the years covered

The bank holiday dates are built into the page, copied from the GOV.UK bank holidays data feed and checked against the published lists for 2025, 2026, 2027 and 2028. Because nothing is fetched while you use it, the tool works instantly and privately, and the dates you enter are never sent anywhere.

If your dates go outside 2025 to 2028, the calculator still excludes weekends but cannot exclude bank holidays in those years, and a warning tells you so. In that case the real number of working days will be lower by roughly eight to ten for each full extra year, depending on the nation. For legal, payroll or contractual deadlines where a single day matters, confirm the result against the official GOV.UK list and the exact wording of the rule you are working to.

Examples you can copy

England & Wales    261 weekdays - 8 bank holidays  = 253 working days
Scotland           261 weekdays - 10 bank holidays = 251 working days
Northern Ireland   261 weekdays - 10 bank holidays = 251 working days

Start         Wednesday 23 December 2026
Add           3 working days
Skipped       Fri 25 Dec (Christmas Day), Sat-Sun, Mon 28 Dec (Boxing Day substitute)
Result        Wednesday 30 December 2026

Common mistakes to avoid

Frequently asked questions