How the working days calculator works
Last updated 10 November 2026
Contracts, notices and delivery promises are often counted in working days rather than calendar days. A working day here is any day that is not a Saturday, a Sunday or a South African public holiday. This calculator counts them for you, or moves a date forward or back by a number of working days, and lists the public holidays it met along the way.
The holiday dates come from the same rules as the public holidays page, so the two always agree. They are built for 1994 to 2200, and dates outside those years are refused.
How it works
- Count: every day from the start date to the end date is looked at once. Saturdays and Sundays are skipped, and so is any public holiday that falls on a weekday. What is left is the answer.
- Add: starting from the day after your start date, the calculator steps one day at a time and counts only working days until it has counted the number you asked for. A negative number steps backwards.
- A holiday that falls on a weekend is not subtracted twice.
Worked example
Counting April 2026:
- 1 to 30 April 2026 has 30 calendar days.
- 8 of them are weekend days and 3 are public holidays (Good Friday on 3 April 2026, Family Day on 6 April 2026, Freedom Day on 27 April 2026).
- That leaves 19 working days. Leaving the holidays in would give 22.
- Adding 10 working days to Thursday 2 April 2026 gives Monday 20 April 2026.
The Sunday rule
Section 2(1) of the Public Holidays Act: whenever a public holiday falls on a Sunday, the following Monday is a public holiday.
For example, Human Rights Day falls on a Sunday in 2027, so 22 March 2027 is a public holiday and is removed from the count. The calculator applies the rule exactly as the holiday data and its source state it. Where the Monday after a Sunday holiday is already a holiday, the Act adds nothing, so nothing extra is removed here either. The public holidays page explains this in more detail.
Easter moves the count around
Good Friday and Family Day follow Easter, so they move every year. Between 19 and 30 March 2027 there are 12 calendar days but only 5 working days, because Human Rights Day (21 March 2027), Human Rights Day (observed) (22 March 2027), Good Friday (26 March 2027), Family Day (29 March 2027) all fall in that stretch, along with two weekends.
One-off public holidays
The President can declare extra public holidays. The holiday data records 2026's one-off day on 4 November 2026, and the calculator removes it. Any other one-off day that is not in the data is not removed, so check the date yourself if it matters.
Switching things on and off
Untick the weekend box if you work Saturdays and Sundays and only want public holidays removed. Untick the holiday box for a plain Monday to Friday count. Your choices only change the answer you see, and they are not stored.
What it does not know
The tool does not know about school holidays, your employer's shutdown, a half day or a regional holiday. It also does not tell you what a contract or the law means by working days, because that wording differs between documents. Read the clause, then use the calculator to do the counting.
Related tools
For all the days between two dates, use the date difference calculator. For annual leave rules, see the leave calculator.
Privacy
The dates stay in your browser. Nothing is stored or sent anywhere.
Things to watch
- Check whether your document counts the start date and the end date, and set the boxes to match.
- Public holiday data was last checked on the date shown at the bottom of this page.
This is a counting tool, not legal advice.