Excel NETWORKDAYS vs an Online Business Day Calculator

Last reviewed: October 14, 2026

If your dates are already in a spreadsheet, Excel is hard to beat. The NETWORKDAYS family counts working days and the WORKDAY family shifts a date forward or back by working days, both excluding weekends and any holidays you supply. This page shows the exact syntax, then explains the few situations where a browser tool does the job faster. The honest summary: for column-based, repeatable math, use the formulas; for quick or shared one-off answers, use the calculator.

Counting business days: NETWORKDAYS

The base function is =NETWORKDAYS(start_date, end_date, [holidays]). It returns the number of whole working days between the two dates and counts both the start and the end date when they fall on weekdays. Saturday and Sunday are treated as the weekend automatically.

To exclude public holidays, put their dates in a range and pass it as the third argument. With holidays listed in cells H1:H10, the formula becomes =NETWORKDAYS(A2, B2, H1:H10). A holiday that falls on a weekend is already excluded as a weekend day, so listing it changes nothing.

Custom weekends: NETWORKDAYS.INTL

The plain NETWORKDAYS always treats Saturday and Sunday as the weekend, which is wrong for Egypt, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, among the countries this site covers. =NETWORKDAYS.INTL(start_date, end_date, [weekend], [holidays]) adds a weekend argument. Pass a number code or a seven-character string:

1 or omitted: Saturday and Sunday (the default).
7: Friday and Saturday, the weekend in Egypt, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
6: Thursday and Friday.
11 through 17: a single weekend day (11 is Sunday only; 17 is Saturday only, the weekend this site counts for Israel).
A string like "0000011": seven digits for Monday through Sunday, where 1 marks a non-working day. "0000011" is the standard Saturday-Sunday weekend; "0000110" is a Sunday-Thursday week, with Friday and Saturday off.

A Sunday-to-Thursday working week, with Friday and Saturday off, is =NETWORKDAYS.INTL(A2, B2, 7, H1:H10).

Adding business days: WORKDAY and WORKDAY.INTL

To find a due date rather than count days, use =WORKDAY(start_date, days, [holidays]). =WORKDAY(A2, 30, H1:H10) returns the date 30 working days after the start, skipping weekends and the holidays you list. A negative day count walks backward, so a Net 30 deadline measured in business days is one formula. For a non-standard weekend, WORKDAY.INTL takes the same weekend codes as NETWORKDAYS.INTL.

Google Sheets has the same four functions with the same arguments in the same order, and the same weekend codes, so these formulas carry across. Our Excel guide and Google Sheets guide walk through more examples.

Where an online calculator helps

The spreadsheet functions are excellent, but they assume two things: that you are in a spreadsheet, and that you are willing to keep a holidays range accurate. Both break down often. You are on a phone. A client asks for a date over chat. You need the public holidays for Brazil and Japan and do not want to copy them into a column by hand. Someone on the team does not use Excel.

For those cases a browser calculator answers faster, carries the holiday data for you, and produces a link that reproduces the exact calculation when you paste it to someone else.

Excel NETWORKDAYS family vs BusinessDayCalculator.org. Function details read from Microsoft's and Google's function pages on 9 October 2026 (linked below).
Feature	Excel NETWORKDAYS / WORKDAY	BusinessDayCalculator.org
Cost / account	Part of Excel and Google Sheets	Free, no account or sign-up
Count business days between dates	Yes, =NETWORKDAYS(start, end)	Yes, built in
Add or subtract business days	Yes, =WORKDAY(start, days)	Yes, built in
Custom weekend (Fri-Sat, Sun-Thu)	Yes, via NETWORKDAYS.INTL / WORKDAY.INTL codes	Yes, set automatically per country
Public holidays	Only if you build and maintain a holidays range yourself	Built in for 25 countries plus 88 sub-national regions
Works without a spreadsheet	No, needs Excel or Sheets open	Yes, any browser or phone
Sharing a result	Share the workbook or sheet	A link: the inputs are encoded in the URL
Embed on your own site	Not as a calculator	Yes, free iframe widgets for 18 calculators

Try it without the spreadsheet

Count working days with the business days between dates calculator, or shift a date forward with add business days. Both carry public holidays for 25 countries and apply the working week of the country you pick. Running a help centre or docs site? The same tools are available as free embeddable widgets.

More comparisons on the alternatives hub.

Sources for these rules

NETWORKDAYS function: the number of whole working days between start_date and end_date, excluding weekends and the dates in holidays (Microsoft Support)
NETWORKDAYS.INTL function: weekend numbers 1 to 7 and 11 to 17, or a seven-character string starting with Monday (Microsoft Support)
WORKDAY function: the date the indicated number of working days before or after the start date; days not an integer are truncated (Microsoft Support)
WORKDAY.INTL function: WORKDAY with a weekend argument (Microsoft Support)
NETWORKDAYS: the number of net working days between two provided days; typed dates such as 10/10/2000 are read as division (Google Docs Editors Help)
NETWORKDAYS.INTL: weekend as a number (1 to 7, 11 to 17) or a string of seven 0s and 1s starting with Monday (Google Docs Editors Help)
WORKDAY: the end date after a number of working days; the decimal part of num_days is truncated (Google Docs Editors Help)
WORKDAY.INTL: WORKDAY with a weekend argument (Google Docs Editors Help)
Royal Order: Weekly Holiday on Friday and Saturday (23 June 2013) (Saudi Press Agency)
Emiri Decision No. 57 of 2025 on working days and official holidays (Al Meezan, the Qatari Legal Portal)
Circular No. 1 of 2006 unifying the weekly holiday on Friday and Saturday (archived copy) (Egyptian Government Portal)
Business days of the ZAHAV RTGS system, 2026: operating days Sunday through Friday; the banking business day ends at 18:30, and at 14:00 on Fridays and holiday eves (Bank of Israel)

Checked October 11, 2026. All sources

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the exact NETWORKDAYS syntax in Excel?

NETWORKDAYS(start_date, end_date, [holidays]). The first two arguments are required and the holidays range is optional. It returns the count of whole working days between the two dates, counting both endpoints, with Saturday and Sunday treated as the weekend and any dates in the holidays range removed.

How do I handle a Friday-Saturday or Sunday-Thursday weekend in Excel?

Use NETWORKDAYS.INTL instead of NETWORKDAYS. Pass a weekend code as the third argument: 7 gives a Friday-Saturday weekend, 6 gives Thursday-Friday, and 11 through 17 give a single weekend day. You can also pass a seven-character string such as "0000011" where 1 marks a non-working day, Monday through Sunday left to right.

How do I add business days to a date in Excel rather than count them?

Use WORKDAY(start_date, days, [holidays]) to add or subtract working days, or WORKDAY.INTL for a custom weekend. WORKDAY(A1, 10) returns the date 10 working days after A1, skipping Saturdays and Sundays. A negative number subtracts, so WORKDAY(A1, -5) walks back 5 working days.

When is an online calculator better than NETWORKDAYS?

When you are not in a spreadsheet, when you do not want to build and maintain a holidays range for every country, when you need to share the exact result as a link, or when a colleague who does not use Excel needs the same answer.