Working Days Calculator

When this calculator is useful

Across the euro area a great many commitments are stated in working days rather than fixed dates, and counting them across weekends and public holidays by hand is fiddly. Use this calculator when a term is framed that way — a supplier quoting 'lieferung in 10 Arbeitstagen', a contract giving you a set number of working days to reply, or HR confirming how much annual leave a holiday block will consume.

It handles the practical questions savers and planners across member states ask: when a payment term measured in working days falls due, how many billable days a project phase contains, or how much of a statutory leave allowance a fortnight away will use. Because it skips Saturdays and Sundays and lets you paste in the public holidays that apply where you are, the figure matches how working time is genuinely counted in your country.

Understanding your result

The result counts the weekdays in your range and includes both the start and end date, so a Monday-to-Friday in the same week returns 5 rather than 4. If your context counts the gap between the dates instead — the 'days between' convention — subtract one from the figure, or use the Days Between Dates Calculator, which applies that exclusive count by default.

Hold it against the calendar-day span and the weekend effect is obvious: a 30-day calendar window typically contains around 21 to 22 working days, and every public holiday you paste in removes one more. The longer the range, the larger the gap — which is why a deadline expressed in working days runs considerably longer than the plain date difference implies.

A worked example

Imagine an order placed on Monday 05/01/2026 with delivery quoted in working days through 30/01/2026. That window covers 26 calendar days, but only 20 are weekdays once the four weekends drop out. If a national public holiday falls midweek inside the range, the count slips to 19 — and crucially, whether that holiday exists at all depends on the member state. The single working-day figure, not the 26-day calendar gap, is the realistic estimate to quote.

Points to be careful about

Across the euro area the usual traps are missing holidays and assuming one country's calendar applies everywhere.

• Leaving public holidays out of the box — the calculator only subtracts the dates you supply, so a forgotten midweek holiday overstates the count.
• Assuming a uniform Monday-to-Friday week — some sectors and southern European traditions have used Saturday-morning working, so a five-day week can under-count.
• Using one member state's holiday list for a cross-border count — France, Germany and the Netherlands do not share the same dates, so the same range yields different totals.
• Treating the inclusive result as a 'days between' figure; subtract one if your contract or directive counts the gap rather than the days.

EU public holidays vary by country

This is the detail that makes a euro-area working-day count tricky: public holidays are set nationally, not by the EU, and they differ sharply. France observes around 11 jours fériés, Germany between 9 and 13 Feiertage depending on the federal state, and the Netherlands roughly 10. So an identical start and end date can produce different working-day totals in Paris, Munich and Amsterdam — there is no single 'EU' answer.

Regional and moving holidays compound the variation. German Feiertage differ by Land, several countries observe Orthodox or Western Easter on different dates, and some — Spain among them — roll a weekend holiday to the following Monday as a substitute day. Look up the official list for your country and year, and paste those specific dates into the holidays box so the count reflects the working days that actually apply where you are.