How to calculate working days between two dates

To count working days between two dates, count every day from the day after the start date up to and including the end date, then drop every Saturday and Sunday. In the UK a working day is normally Monday to Friday. If you need a business-day count, also subtract any bank holidays that fall on a weekday in the range. For example, there are 253 working days in 2026 in England and Wales: 365 days, less 104 weekend days, less 8 bank holidays. The date-difference calculator does the Monday-to-Friday count for you; bank holidays are listed separately.

What counts as a working day

A working day, or business day, is a day people are normally at work. In the UK that is Monday to Friday. Saturdays and Sundays do not count. For strict business-day counts, such as payment or notice periods, bank holidays are usually excluded too, but plain working days only remove weekends.

The method, step by step

First, count the whole days between the two dates: subtract the start date from the end date. Next, walk each day from the day after the start to the end date and keep only the ones falling Monday to Friday. That running count is the number of working days. If you want business days, remove any bank holidays in the range that land on a weekday, using the official list.

A worked example

From Monday 1 June 2026 to Friday 12 June 2026 there are 11 calendar days. Two of those are a weekend (6 and 7 June), so there are 9 working days. No bank holiday falls in that window, so the working-day and business-day counts are the same. Change the range to include the late-August bank holiday and you would subtract one more for a business-day count.

Use the calculator

The date difference calculator returns days, weeks, years and months, plus the Monday-to-Friday working-day count. It does not yet deduct bank holidays; for those, see the 2026 UK bank holidays, and for the full working-days-per-year arithmetic see UK calendar data.

Source: gov.uk Bank Holidays for the holiday list, plus a standard Monday-to-Friday working week.