Holiday entitlement calculator

What this works out, and what it does not

This gives you the statutory minimum: the least holiday the law says a worker must get. It is not a guess at what your contract says. For a mid-year start it shows the higher of two published methods, explained below, so it can sit a little above the strict legal share. Plenty of employers give more than the minimum, and if yours does, your contract wins. Check it.

It is also not legal advice. It is arithmetic applied to the rules published on gov.uk, with the working shown so you can check it yourself.

The rule: 5.6 weeks, capped at 28 days

Holiday, annual leave and statutory leave all mean the same thing here. Contracts and HR systems use them interchangeably, and the law calls it annual leave, so if your handbook says one and your payslip says another, they are the same 5.6 weeks.

Almost everyone classed as a worker is entitled to 5.6 weeks of paid holiday a year. In days, that is your days per week multiplied by 5.6.

• 5 days a week × 5.6 = 28 days
• 4 days a week × 5.6 = 22.4 days
• 3 days a week × 5.6 = 16.8 days

There is a ceiling: statutory entitlement is capped at 28 days. So someone working 6 days a week does not get 33.6 days; they get 28. The cap catches people out, which is why the calculator says when it has applied.

Part-time is pro rata, not a smaller version of full-time

Part-time workers get the same 5.6 weeks, and a week means whatever a week is for them. Someone working 3 days a week gets 5.6 of their weeks, which is 16.8 days. It is not a reduced entitlement, it is the same entitlement measured in their own working pattern.

Pro rata holiday, for part-timers and mid-year starters

"Pro rata" just means in proportion, and holiday gets scaled two different ways.

Part-time. Work three days a week and you get 5.6 of your weeks, which is 16.8 days. Use the full leave year option above and put in your days per week.

Part of a year. Join in October and you do not get a full year's leave. Entitlement is scaled to the share of the leave year you are there for, which is what the pro rata option does: it works out how much of the leave year is left from your start date, by days and by months, and takes that share of the full-year figure.

The two stack. Three days a week from October gives you 60% of a week, for roughly half a year. Note that holiday pro rata is not quite the same sum as pro rata salary, because holiday is capped at 28 days and salary is not.

There are two published ways to count part of a year, and they don't always agree. The regulations give the share of the leave year left, counted in days, with no rounding (regulation 13(5) and 13A(5) of the Working Time Regulations). gov.uk's own holiday calculator counts the months from your start date to the end of the leave year instead, with any part month counted as a whole one, and rounds up to the next half day. Start on 13 October in the April 2026 to March 2027 leave year and the first gives 28 × 170 ÷ 365, just over 13.04 days, while gov.uk gives 6 months of 12, which is 14 days. The day count is the strict legal floor. Your employer can round up but never down, and gov.uk's figure is the one most employers check against, so the calculator works out both and shows the higher.

In your first year in a job there is a second rule, about when you can take it. Leave builds up at a twelfth of a year's leave each month from your first day, and any part day is rounded up to the next half day. So a 5-day worker in their first month has 2.33 days built up, which becomes 2.5, and that is all they can take so far. That one is regulation 15A.

Irregular hours and zero hours

If your hours are wholly or mostly variable, or you only work part of the year, leave is not a fixed number of days. You build it up as you work, at 12.07% of the hours worked in each pay period, for leave years beginning on or after 1 April 2024.

That figure is not arbitrary. A year has 52 weeks, 5.6 of which are leave, leaving 46.4 working weeks. 5.6 divided by 46.4 is 12.07%.

Each pay period's figure is rounded to the nearest whole hour. Under 30 minutes rounds down, 30 minutes or more rounds up, so 68 hours worked gives 8.21 hours, which becomes 8. That rule is in regulation 15B of the Working Time Regulations.

Rolled-up holiday pay

Irregular hours and part-year workers can now be paid their holiday as they go, rather than when they take it. That is rolled-up holiday pay, and it became an option for leave years starting on or after 1 April 2024.

It is at least 12.07% of your total pay in each pay period, paid at the same time as the work, and your payslip must show the amount of holiday pay. If yours shows no holiday pay at all, ask your employer how your holiday is being paid.

Your employer does not have to do it this way, and many do not: paying you when you actually take the leave is still perfectly legal. It also only applies to irregular hours and part-year workers. On fixed hours, rolled-up holiday pay is not allowed.

Do bank holidays count?

This is the most common misunderstanding, so it is worth being blunt: bank holidays do not have to be given as paid leave. An employer can count them towards your 5.6 weeks, or give them on top. Both are legal.

So if you get 20 days plus 8 bank holidays, that is 28 days, and your employer has met the minimum exactly rather than being generous. If you get 28 days plus bank holidays, they are giving more than the law requires. Which one applies to you is in your contract.