Weekends, or weekend days?
"How many weekends are there between two dates" has two reasonable answers and this page gives both, because which one you want depends entirely on what you are counting.
Weekend days is the simple count: every Saturday plus every Sunday inside the range. If you are budgeting staff cover, counting rental nights or working out how many days a car park sits empty, this is your number.
Complete weekends counts Saturday–Sunday pairs where both days are inside the range. A range that ends on a Saturday contains that Saturday but not a complete weekend, which is why the two numbers rarely divide neatly by two. If you are counting how many weekends away you could take, or how many two-day windows a project has, this is the number that matters.
The result shows both, along with the separate Saturday and Sunday totals — useful when a range starts or ends mid-weekend and the two are not equal.
Whether the end dates count
The most common source of disagreement in any date count is whether the first and last day are included. Both are counted by default here, so 1 March to 31 March is the whole of March. Untick "count the start date" to count only the days after it — the natural reading of "weekends between now and the deadline", where today is not really "between" anything. The result restates which convention it used so a number copied into an email cannot be misread.
Your weekend may not be Saturday and Sunday
The weekend is Friday and Saturday across much of the Middle East, Thursday and Friday in a few places, and Sunday alone in others. Hospitality, retail and healthcare rosters often define it differently again. Tick whichever days count as the weekend and every total follows, including the "other days" figure. The Saturday–Sunday pair count only appears when the weekend is actually Saturday and Sunday, since a pair is meaningless otherwise.
The same control makes this a general weekday counter: tick only Wednesday and the result tells you how many Wednesdays are in the range. The breakdown under the result always lists all seven days.
What this gets used for
Holiday lets and accommodation. Weekend nights are priced differently from weeknights, so a booking window's revenue depends on the split rather than the total nights.
Rosters and on-call rotations. Weekend shifts usually carry a premium and have to be shared out evenly, which starts with knowing how many there are in the period.
Study and training plans. Revision timetables and marathon plans are built around the weekends available before the exam or race, not the calendar days.
Project and renovation planning. Work that can only happen when a building is empty is limited by complete weekends, not by how long the project runs.
Shared schedules. Alternating weekend arrangements — custody, caravans, allotments, band practice — are easier to plan from the actual count.
The complement: working days
Counting weekends and counting working days are the same calculation from opposite ends. Calendar days minus weekend days minus public holidays gives working days, which is what the business days calculator reports, and what Excel's NETWORKDAYS returns. Turn on public holidays here and the result lists which ones fall in the range, so you can reconcile the two numbers.
In a spreadsheet the usual formula for Saturdays alone is =SUMPRODUCT(--(WEEKDAY(ROW(INDIRECT(start&":"&end)))=7)), which is both hard to read and easy to get wrong by one day at either end. Subtracting NETWORKDAYS from the total day count is tidier but silently folds public holidays into the "weekend" figure. Both problems are why this page exists.
Frequently asked questions
Are the start and end dates included?
Yes by default, so 1 March to 31 March covers the whole month. Untick either box to exclude that end, and the result says which convention it used.
What counts as a complete weekend?
A Saturday whose following Sunday is also inside the range. A range ending on a Saturday includes that Saturday but not a complete weekend.
Can I use a Friday–Saturday weekend?
Yes. Tick whichever days count as the weekend and every total follows. The Saturday–Sunday pair figure is only shown when the weekend is Saturday and Sunday.
Can I count how many Mondays are in a range?
Yes — the breakdown under the result lists all seven weekdays with their totals, whatever you have ticked.
Does it take public holidays into account?
Only if you turn them on, in which case the holidays falling inside the range are listed. Weekend counts themselves are unaffected.