Trip Duration Calculator
Work out nights, days and the annual leave a trip actually costs, from departure and return dates.
Processing: This tool runs entirely in your browser. Your input and any file you open stay on your device — nothing is uploaded to a server.
How to use the trip duration calculator
- Fill in the fields — they start with a worked example.
- Read the answer, and the arithmetic shown beneath it.
- Copy the results, or adjust the inputs to compare scenarios.
About this tool
Nights and days are not the same number, and almost every booking mistake starts there. A hotel sells nights; an airline sells a departure and a return. Leaving on Friday and coming back on Sunday is two nights and three days, and a booking made for three nights puts you in a room after you have flown home.
The second number this gives is the one that costs money: how many working days the trip consumes. A trip covering a weekend uses fewer leave days than its length suggests, which is the entire logic behind booking around a public holiday. Enter the holidays that fall inside the trip and the leave figure drops accordingly.
Weekends are counted as Saturday and Sunday, which is the working week in most but not all of the world. Where yours differs, read the weekday count as a guide and adjust — the arithmetic is the same, only the labels change.
Every calculation is done in UTC. Working in local time silently gains or loses an hour across a daylight saving boundary, which turns a trip of exactly seven days into six days and twenty-three hours, and that rounds down to the wrong answer twice a year.
Common uses
- Checking how many nights of accommodation a trip needs.
- Working out how much annual leave a holiday will use.
- Comparing two sets of dates for the same number of days off.
Frequently asked questions
- How many nights is a Friday to Sunday trip?
- Two nights and three days. Hotels charge by the night and airlines sell the days, which is why the two numbers so often get confused at booking.
- How is the annual leave figure worked out?
- By counting the Mondays to Fridays the trip covers, then subtracting any public holidays you enter. Weekend days cost you nothing from your allowance.
- Does it count the day I fly home?
- The return day counts as a day away but not as a night. If you land in the evening it may still cost a day of leave, which is why the leave count includes it when it is a weekday.
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