A holiday entitlement calculator answers one question the employer is asked every time someone joins or changes hours: how many days is this person owed this leave year? The calculation is short. Take the days a week the person works, multiply by the weeks of leave the contract gives with the statutory 5.6 weeks as the floor, and cap the statutory part at 28 days. A five-day week on the minimum is 28 days; a three-day week is 16.8. Where it goes wrong is not the arithmetic but the inputs: a part-timer typed as 28 days, a starter given a full year, a compressed week counted in days when it should be hours. This page walks the calculation the free annual leave calculator on this site does, and the cases that trip a spreadsheet.
The holiday entitlement calculation, in one line
Days a week, times weeks of leave, capped at 28 days for the statutory part. Someone on four days a week with the 5.6-week minimum gets 22.4 days; someone on five gets 28, and someone on six still gets 28, because the statutory cap bites. If the contract gives more than the minimum, put the contract's weeks in and the cap no longer applies to the extra. The employee holiday entitlement calculator on this site takes those two numbers and a third, the months of the leave year the person is employed, and returns the full-year and the pro rata figure side by side.
Part time: the holiday calculator part time employers get wrong
The mistake is to take the full-timer's 28 days and scale it by a fraction the employer estimates. Scale the weeks instead. A part-timer on two and a half days a week gets 2.5 times 5.6, which is 14 days, and that already includes their share of bank holidays if the policy counts them inside the entitlement. Where a part-timer works different days each week, the days figure hides what they are owed; work in hours a week times 5.6 and record the entitlement in hours.
Starters and leavers: calculate holiday entitlement UK style, pro rata
A starter in the leave year gets the full-year figure scaled by the months, or more precisely the days, left in the year. Someone joining with nine months to run on a three-day week has 16.8 times nine twelfths, which is 12.6 days. A leaver's untaken balance on the same arithmetic is what is paid in the final pay. The pro rata calculator on this site works both, and the leave year's start date has to be right or every starter's figure is out.
Holiday days calculator or hours? Choose before you type
Days work when everyone works the same length of day. The moment a team has a compressed week, a job share or a part-timer whose days vary, days stop adding up and hours are the only honest unit: 5.6 weeks of a 20-hour week is 112 hours. The calculator on this site works in days a week; enter hours a week instead and read every output as hours. The policy template states which unit the record is kept in, so the answer does not depend on who typed it.
Questions people ask about holiday entitlement calculator
How do I calculate holiday allowance for a full-time employee?
Multiply the days worked a week by 5.6, the statutory minimum for almost all workers, and cap the result at 28 days. A five-day week gives 28 days; the contract may give more, and if the policy counts bank holidays inside the entitlement they come out of that figure.
Does the employee holiday entitlement calculator include bank holidays?
It returns the total entitlement. Whether bank holidays sit inside it or on top is a policy choice: an employer can count them as part of the statutory 5.6 weeks, and the policy template on this site states the choice so the calculator's answer is read the right way.
How is holiday entitlement calculated for someone on irregular hours?
For leave years beginning on or after 1 April 2024 an irregular-hours or part-year worker accrues holiday at 12.07 per cent of the hours actually worked in each pay period, rather than from a days-a-week figure. The zero hours page on this site walks that calculation.
Is this calculator the same as the GOV.UK one?
GOV.UK publishes its own entitlement calculator and this page cites it. The calculator here adds the pro rata figure for months employed and the days left to book after leave taken, which is the number the employee actually asks for.