Date calculators · Pay & leave
Vacation Days Needed Calculator
Find the leave needed for a trip with partial departure and return days. Exclude work holidays and lunch, then apply hourly, half-day or full-day charging.
Your calculation
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Choose your dates.
Select your counting rules and calculate.
Calculation details
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How to use this calculator
Enter when you leave and return in your usual work location's local time. Set your workweek, choose a country holiday calendar or enter closures, and set daily working periods. Choose how your employer charges partial days.
Missed work and charged leave are separate outputs. Rounding happens on each affected date. A half-day is half the entered daily working hours, not necessarily a morning or afternoon block. Add travel preparation or recovery time to the away interval yourself.
A worked example
With seven daily working hours, leaving Wednesday at 13:00 misses four hours. Returning Monday at 12:00 misses three. If Thursday and Friday are holidays, half-day charging uses 1.5 leave days for seven missed hours.
US Thanksgiving 2026 example: leave for a nine-day trip
A trip from November 21–29 spans nine calendar days and five Monday–Friday working days. You need 4 full leave days if your employer closes on Thanksgiving, November 26, or 3 if it also closes Friday. Friday is an optional employer closure, not a US federal holiday.
Enter your own trip, workweek and closures above. Optional printable: Thanksgiving leave worksheet (one-page PDF, opens in a new tab).
Holiday-date reference: US Office of Personnel Management.
Does this find the best dates to take leave?
This measures a fixed trip. Holiday Leave Planner instead searches for leave opportunities around days off. Flight times must first be converted to your work location's time zone.
Further reading: Source workflow and conventions. Your entered rules determine this result.
Choose a country and region to load holidays automatically, then review the selected dates and uncheck holidays you work. Add your own closures separately. The country holiday lists explain regional coverage; public holidays do not guarantee time off for every employer.
Which calendar and years are supported?
Use Gregorian dates from 1900 through 2100, with results inside that range. Most daily plans are limited to 366 dates; academic terms and sprint plans allow up to 731. Forms limit the number of entries to keep calculations responsive. Holidays and policy rules come from your inputs. Date-only plans ignore DST; tools with time-zone inputs use the browser's time-zone data and explicitly resolve repeated times. Calendar exports preserve date-only markers or exact timed events as appropriate. Calculations run only when requested, without background polling.
What happens to my dates?
Calculations run on your device. Saving a calculation is optional and keeps it in this browser. A setup link contains the dates and settings you entered; anyone with the link can read them. Use one tab per saved calculator. Clear saved data from Privacy & settings.
Loading automatic holidays sends only the country, region and calendar years to TimeCubby. Your exact dates, times and workplace closures are not sent.