Countdown Calculator
How much time is left before a date, in days, weeks and working days.
Counting down to a date is easy until you need the useful version of it: how many weekends, how many working days, and how many weeks there are to prepare.
Enter the target date and the date to count from, and this calculator gives the days remaining, the weeks, the weekends and the working days in between.
At a glance
- What you enter
- Count from, Target date, Total days in the original plan
- What you get
- Days remaining, Weeks remaining, Working days remaining, Weekends remaining
- Formula shown
- Yes - every step, right below your results.
- Cost and privacy
- Free, no account needed, and nothing you type is stored.
See worked examples ↓ Read the FAQ ↓ Share this calculator ↓
Results are estimates for general information only - always verify with a professional or official source before acting on them.
How to use the Countdown Calculator
- 1 Enter Count from
- 2 Enter Target date
- 3 Enter Total days in the original plan - Used to show how much of the period has passed.
- 4 Press Calculate. You get Days remaining, Weeks remaining, Working days remaining, Weekends remaining, and every intermediate step stays visible under “How is this calculated?”
- 5 Change one number at a time to see what moves the result - that is usually the most useful thing a calculator can tell you.
Worked examples
Real numbers run through this calculator. Open any example to load it into the form above and change it.
A ninety day plan with a quarter of it left
A project deadline counted from today.
You enter
- Count from
- 2026-01-01
- Target date
- 2026-04-01
- Total days in the original plan
- 90
You get
- Days remaining
- 90
There are 90 days between the dates, which is 12.9 weeks. Of those, 64 are not weekend days and 26 are, and about 1 per cent of the ninety day plan has passed at the start date, rising as the date approaches.
A short deadline two weeks out
The range where working days matter most.
You enter
- Count from
- 2026-06-01
- Target date
- 2026-06-15
- Total days in the original plan
- 14
You get
- Days remaining
- 14
There are 14 days between the dates, about 2 weeks, of which 10 are working days and 4 are weekend days. A plan made only on calendar days would overestimate the available working time by nearly a third.
Guides that go with it
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Frequently asked questions
Do the days counted include today?
No. The figure is the number of whole days between the two dates, so today counts as neither the start nor the end. That is how a countdown in a diary behaves, and it is why a date that is a week away reads as seven days.
If you need both end dates included, the date difference calculator counts inclusively instead, which is the convention most people use when they say "from the 3rd to the 10th".
Why are working days different from calendar days minus weekends?
Working days are the days in the range that are not Saturdays or Sundays. The calculator counts whole weeks and removes two weekend days for each, so a range that starts or ends mid-week has its two figures disagree slightly.
Public holidays are deliberately not subtracted, because they differ by country and by year. For a contractual deadline, take the working day figure and subtract the holidays that fall inside the range.
What does the "original plan" field do?
It gives the total length of the period you are counting down within, which is what allows a percentage elapsed to be worked out. Without it there is no way to know how far through the plan you are.
Set it to the whole period, not to the days remaining. A ninety day plan with thirty days left is a third of the way from the end, which is a different thing from two thirds complete.
Can the target date be in the past?
Yes. If the target date is before the count-from date, the calculator orders the two and reports the number of days between them, so a past deadline reads as a positive number of days rather than an error.
Read it as an elapsed interval rather than a countdown in that case, and check the two dates are the ones you meant.
Terms used here
Short, plain-language definitions of the words this calculator uses.