What Is a Business Day?
A business day, also called a working day, is any day that falls within a company or organization's standard operating schedule — typically Monday through Friday in most of North America, Europe, and East Asia, but not universally. Some regions use a Sunday through Thursday workweek, or shift the weekend to Friday and Saturday. Weekends and any officially recognized holidays are excluded from the business-day count, since these are the days most workplaces are closed.
How to Calculate Business Days
Calculating business days between two dates means counting every calendar day in that range, then subtracting weekends and any holidays that fall within it. Doing this by hand is easy to get wrong, especially across month or year boundaries, leap years, or when weekends don't fall on Saturday and Sunday. This calculator handles all of that automatically: pick your dates, choose the correct workweek, add any holidays that apply, and it computes the result instantly.
Business Days vs. Calendar Days
| Concept | What it counts |
|---|---|
| Calendar days | Every day in the range, including weekends and holidays. |
| Business days | Only days that fall on a working day and aren't a holiday. |
| Weekend days | Days that fall outside your selected workweek. |
| Holidays | Dates you've manually added that should be treated as non-working, even on a weekday. |
How This Calculator Works
Choose a workweek preset that matches your region, or select Custom to pick your own working days. Add any holidays that fall within your date range — this version uses holidays you enter yourself, since public holidays vary by country, region, and organization and there's no single correct list to assume automatically. From there:
- Between Dates counts business days across a date range, with options to include or exclude the start and end dates.
- Add Business Days moves forward from a date, skipping weekends and holidays, to find a future working date.
- Subtract Business Days does the same in reverse, to find a past working date.
Common Business Day Calculations
A few situations where this comes up often: figuring out a shipping or delivery estimate quoted in business days, calculating a legal or contractual deadline that excludes weekends, working out when a "10 business day" refund or processing window will actually end, or checking how many working days are left before a project due date.