A business day is a weekday (Monday to Friday) that is not a public holiday in the region you pick. Every count on this site comes from one holiday engine that covers 2025 to 2030. It uses official government calendars for the US, UK and Canada, and the open-source python-holidays library for other countries.
This page explains the counting rules, where each holiday list comes from, how far each list has been checked and what the data does not cover. For the options in the calculator itself, see About the Calculator. To run a count, use the business days calculator.
How business days are counted
A day is counted as a business day when it is not a Saturday or Sunday and is not a day off in the selected region’s holiday list. Every page and the calculator use the same rule and the same data, so the same date range gives the same answer everywhere on the site.
Start and end dates
- Calculator ranges: the start date and the end date are both counted by default, as long as they are business days. You can switch either one off in the calculator.
- “N business days from today”: today is not counted. Day 1 is the next business day after today, so 5 business days from a Monday with no holiday is the following Monday. Counting backwards works the same way.
- Countdowns (“business days until”): neither today nor the target date is counted, unless the page says it counts the target date. A countdown to a holiday therefore gives the working days left before it.
- Year and month totals: every business day from the 1st to the last day of the period, both included.
- “Today”: pages that show today’s date use US Eastern time (America/New_York), because most visitors are in the US. Near midnight, this can differ from your local date.
Each page states its own convention next to the answer. When a contract, court rule or carrier defines how days are counted, follow that definition.
Observed days off
When a holiday falls on a weekend, many calendars give a substitute weekday off. The data stores the day that is actually taken off and, where it differs, the calendar date of the holiday. Business-day counts remove the day off, not the weekend date. A weekend holiday with no substitute day is still listed, but it does not change any count.
US federal offices vs the Federal Reserve: the Saturday rule
- United States (federal): follows OPM. A federal holiday on a Saturday is observed on the Friday before; one on a Sunday is observed on the Monday after.
- US banks (Federal Reserve): a Saturday holiday is not moved. Federal Reserve Banks are open on the Friday before (the Board of Governors is closed), and most banks follow the Reserve Banks. A Sunday holiday moves to the Monday, the same as for federal offices. Individual banks can set their own hours.
So a Friday can be a day off for federal offices and a normal business day for banks. This happens three times in 2027: 18 June, 24 December and 31 December (written June 18, December 24 and December 31 on US pages).
US stock market (NYSE) and early closes
- The NYSE calendar is a separate region. The market closes on Good Friday but stays open on Columbus Day and Veterans Day.
- A Saturday holiday closes the market on the Friday before, unless that Friday ends a monthly or yearly accounting period, as December 31 does. That is why the NYSE is open on Friday, December 31, 2027.
- Early closes (1:00 p.m. ET, for example the day after Thanksgiving) are listed on the holiday pages, but a half day still counts as a full business day.
Canada: federal and provincial calendars
Canada has no single holiday list. The federal region uses the Canada Labour Code’s 10 general holidays, which apply to federally regulated workplaces such as banks, airlines and telecoms. Most other employers follow their province. The site has separate lists for British Columbia, Ontario and Alberta, so Family Day, Easter Monday, Boxing Day, the Civic Holiday and September 30 are only removed where that province’s law makes them holidays. Holidays that are widely given but not required (such as Ontario’s Civic Holiday or Alberta’s optional holidays) are listed as optional and not removed from counts.
Weekend holidays follow each law. In the federal region, a general holiday on a Saturday or Sunday is counted on the next working day, the day banks and federal offices usually close. The B.C., Ontario and Alberta laws do not move a weekend holiday (the one exception is Canada Day on a Sunday, which becomes Monday, July 2), so the holiday stays on its date. The weekday after, which many employers give off, is listed as an optional “substitute day commonly given; not statutory” and is not removed from business-day counts. The provincial pages explain each rule.
UK: England and Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland
The UK has three bank holiday lists, and the site keeps them as three regions. Scotland has 2 January and St Andrew’s Day but not Easter Monday, and its summer bank holiday is in early August. Northern Ireland adds St Patrick’s Day and the Battle of the Boyne. When a UK bank holiday falls on a weekend, gov.uk names a substitute weekday, and that substitute day is the one removed. The calculator’s “United Kingdom” option uses the England and Wales list.
Where the holiday data comes from
All holiday lists are generated by one script into a single data file that covers 2025 to 2030. The script starts from the python-holidays library and then replaces or corrects the library’s dates wherever an official source says something different. Each correction in the script cites its source.
| Region | Source | Checked against the source through |
|---|---|---|
| United States (federal) | OPM federal holidays and 5 U.S.C. 6103 | 2027 |
| US banks (Federal Reserve) | federalreserve.gov holiday schedule and frbservices.org | 2030 |
| US stock market (NYSE) | nyse.com holidays and trading hours | 2028 |
| England and Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland | gov.uk bank-holidays.json (the data behind gov.uk/bank-holidays) | 2028 |
| Canada (federal) | canada.ca general holidays (Canada Labour Code) | 2027 |
| British Columbia | gov.bc.ca statutory holidays | 2027 |
| Ontario | ontario.ca public holidays (Employment Standards Act) | 2027 |
| Alberta | alberta.ca general holidays | 2027 |
| Australia (national) | python-holidays state calendars; a day counts when at least 5 of the 8 states and territories observe it | Library data |
| Switzerland | python-holidays canton calendars; a day counts when most cantons observe it | Library data |
| India, France, Spain, Germany, Belgium, Italy, United Arab Emirates, Philippines, Japan, Brazil, Mexico | National public holidays from python-holidays, unmodified | Library data |
“Checked through” is the last year whose dates have been compared with the official source. Later years follow the same published rules (for example, “the last Monday in May”) but have not yet been confirmed. For the UK, gov.uk publishes dates only a few years ahead, so years after 2028 are expected dates.
Countries outside the US, UK and Canada come from python-holidays, an open-source (MIT-licensed) Python library maintained by volunteers and published on PyPI. The site pins one version of the library (currently 0.107), so dates do not change without a deliberate update.
How the data is updated
- Yearly refresh: once a year the data is rebuilt, the next year is checked against each official source above, and the “checked through” years move forward.
- New official dates: when a government adds a day off, it is added when it is announced. Examples already in the data: the National Day of Mourning for President Jimmy Carter on January 9, 2025, and Executive Order 14371, which closed federal executive departments on December 24 and December 26, 2025. The Carter day of mourning is also in the NYSE calendar, because the exchange closed. The two days under Executive Order 14371 apply to the federal region only, because the Federal Reserve and the NYSE stayed open.
- Christmas Eve and similar days: US presidents sometimes give federal employees an extra day off by executive order, often only weeks before. Until an order is issued, the day is treated as a normal business day.
- No hand edits: the data file is only changed by re-running the generator, so every date can be traced to the library or to a cited correction.
Known limitations
- Regional and local holidays are not included unless they have their own region. US state holidays (for example Cesar Chavez Day or Patriots’ Day), German or Spanish regional holidays and city holidays are not removed. Add them as custom holidays in the calculator.
- Some religious holidays are estimated. For India, the United Arab Emirates and the Philippines, holidays such as Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha depend on moon sightings and are announced close to the date. The data marks these as “(estimated)”, and the real day off can move by a day or two.
- Weekends are Saturday and Sunday for every region.
- Only 2025 to 2030 are covered. The calculator warns you when a range goes outside those years, because holidays there are not removed.
- Half days count as full days. Early closes and shortened office hours do not reduce a count.
- Employer and industry calendars differ. Courts, carriers, banks and employers can close on other days or open on public holidays.
Corrections
If you find a wrong date or a count that does not match an official source, email [email protected] with the region, the date and a link to the source. Confirmed errors are fixed in the data, and every page and the calculator update together.
Related: About the Calculator · Business days calculator · Holidays: what’s open and closed