How the countdown works
This counts the whole days from today to your target date. A date in the future shows the days remaining; a past date shows how many days ago it was. Today shows zero. It's handy for events, deadlines, holidays and birthdays.
The count is in whole calendar days rather than 24-hour blocks, so it is unaffected by the time of day you check. Leap days are handled automatically: a countdown that crosses 29 February simply includes one extra day. Daylight saving changes, which shorten or lengthen one day by an hour, make no difference either.
Typical uses are a wedding, a product launch, a tax deadline, a holiday, an exam or a due date. Because a past date returns a days-ago result instead, the same page doubles as a simple elapsed-day counter for anniversaries or for the date you started something.
How to use this calculator
Pick a target date and read the countdown, plus the figure in weeks. To count your birthday each year, set it to this year's date; for the gap between two arbitrary dates, use the days between dates calculator.
Worked example: if today is 1 March and the target is 25 December of the same year, the result is 299 days, which also reads as 42 weeks and 5 days. Divide days by 7 for weeks, or by 30.44 for a rough month figure — 299 ÷ 30.44 is just under 10 months.
Two things to watch. The count comes from your device's clock and time zone, so a phone set to the wrong region can be a day out. And the countdown measures nights between the two dates, which is the convention most planners expect. For the gap between two dates that are both in the future or both in the past, use the days between dates calculator; to find the date a set number of days ahead, use the days from today calculator.
Frequently asked questions
- How many days until a date?
- Subtract today from the target date and count the calendar days. This calculator shows the remaining days instantly.
- What if the date is in the past?
- It shows how many days ago the date was instead of a countdown.
- Does it update every day?
- Yes. The countdown is measured from the current date each time the page loads.
- How many weeks is the countdown?
- The calculator divides the days by 7 to show whole weeks plus leftover days.
- Does the countdown include today or the target day?
- It counts the nights between today and the target, so neither day is counted twice. If the target is tomorrow the answer is 1, and if it is today the answer is 0.