Calculate exactly how many Monday-Friday workdays exist between any two dates.
Last updated: August 2026
Accurate Project Planning
Estimating a project's completion date based on total calendar days often leads to missed deadlines because it assumes employees are working through the weekend. Using a workdays calculator ensures your estimates reflect reality.
Built for HR, Payroll, and PTO Tracking
Beyond project planning, this tool is especially useful for HR and payroll tasks: pro-rating a new employee's first paycheck, calculating how many working days someone was out on leave, or figuring out the exact length of a payroll cycle. Since PTO and payroll are almost always tracked in workdays (not calendar days), this gives you the number you actually need.
Worked Example: Pro-Rated Pay
Say an employee's monthly salary is $4,400, and this month has 22 workdays. That's $4,400 ÷ 22 = $200 per workday. If they start on the 15th workday of the month and work the remaining 8 workdays, they'd earn 8 × $200 = $1,600 for that partial month.
The Difference Between Calendar Days and Workdays
A standard month has 30 or 31 calendar days, but usually only between 20 and 22 workdays. If you allocate 30 days of effort to a one-month sprint without accounting for weekends, you will be short by almost an entire week of working hours.
Tracking a shipping window or contract deadline instead of payroll or PTO? Our Business Days Calculator uses the same weekend-excluding math, framed for logistics and legal timelines.
Frequently Asked Questions
A workday is any standard business operating day, typically Monday through Friday. This calculator counts every Monday-Friday date in your range and automatically skips Saturdays and Sundays.
HR and payroll teams use workday counts to pro-rate a new hire's first paycheck, calculate how many paid time off (PTO) days an employee has used over a date range, and figure out exact payroll cycle lengths for semi-monthly or bi-weekly pay periods.
Divide the employee's monthly salary by the total workdays in that month, then multiply by the number of workdays actually worked. For example, a $4,400 monthly salary over a 22-workday month is $200/workday - if someone starts partway through and works 15 of those days, they'd earn $3,000.
No, it only excludes weekends. If your company observes specific holidays (like Thanksgiving or Memorial Day) within your date range, subtract those days manually from the total.
Most calendar months have between 20 and 23 workdays, depending on how the weekends fall and the total number of days in the month. February in a non-leap year has as few as 20.
Yes. Enter the start of your leave period and the date you plan to return, and the total workdays figure tells you exactly how many PTO or leave days you'll use, separate from calendar days that include weekends off anyway.
