Free Everyday Tools: Dates, Text and Percentages

Everyday tools

Four calculators for the small arithmetic that otherwise ends up in a spreadsheet at midnight: the gap between two dates, working days, word counts, and percentages.

Dates and time

Text and word counts

Numbers and percentages

What these four have in common

• They run in your browser. No server call, no account, no usage limit, and nothing you type leaves the page. You can use them offline once the page has loaded.
• They contain no data tables. No holiday calendars, no unit-conversion tables from history, no reading-speed measurements presented as fact. Every number comes from your input or from arithmetic.
• They are tested against edge cases, not just the happy path. Leap years, month-end dates, weekends, negative numbers, reversed date order and the time zone you happen to be in are all covered — and the pages say what happens in each case.

Dates: the two questions that trip people up

Almost every wrong date answer comes from one of two ambiguities, and both tools make you choose instead of guessing.

The first is whether the start date counts. From 1 January to 2 January is a gap of one day, but the number of days you are there for, counting both ends, is two. The date difference calculator reports the gap (start date excluded) and also shows the inclusive count, so you can use whichever your situation needs.

The second is whether weekends count. Two calendar weeks are 14 days; ten working days are also about two weeks, but they end on a different date. The business days calculator counts only working days, and lets you paste the holidays that apply to you.

Text: why two word counters disagree

Word counts differ between tools because "word" has no single definition. A counter that splits on spaces reports a whole Chinese sentence as one word; a counter that splits on punctuation counts "don't" as two. Neither is wrong, but you need to know which rule you are getting.

The word counter on this site writes its rules out: Chinese and Japanese count by character, other scripts count by runs of letters and digits, apostrophes and hyphens join words, and characters are counted as Unicode code points so an emoji is one character rather than two. If your editor disagrees, you can see exactly why.

Which one do you need?

• How many days, weeks or working days until a deadline? Use the date difference calculator — it gives the gap in years, months and days, plus total days, weeks and working days.
• How many working days are left, or what date is 20 business days from now? Use the business days calculator, and paste your own holiday dates so they are skipped.
• Is this text too long, or how long will it take to read? Use the word and character counter — words, characters with and without spaces, sentences, paragraphs and a reading time estimate.
• What is 15% of this, or what percentage change is that? Use the percentage calculator for the four common percentage questions, including increase and decrease.
• When exactly does a notice period end? That one is about employment rather than dates in general: use the notice period calculator.

Other tools and guides on this site

The career tools answer the job-specific version of these questions.

• Career tools — notice period, job offer comparison, equity cliff and the ATS keyword check.
• Notice period calculator — the same date arithmetic, applied to the day you resign.
• Job offer comparison calculator — percentages and totals across two offers.
• ATS-friendly resume template — when the word count question is really "is my resume too long".

Common questions

Are these tools free, and is there a limit?

Free and unlimited. Every calculation happens in your browser, so there is no server call, no account and no daily cap. Close the tab and the text or dates you typed are gone.

Why is there no holiday calendar built into the business day calculator?

Because a built-in list would be wrong for most visitors. Public holidays differ by country and region, are set by different levels of government, change every year and are often moved. Paste your own dates instead and the tool skips exactly those.

Can these tools handle Chinese or Japanese text?

Yes. The word counter counts Chinese and Japanese by character rather than by whitespace, so a sentence does not come back as one word. The rule is written out on the word counter page so you can check it against what you need.

Do the date tools give different answers in different time zones?

No. Dates are treated as plain calendar dates and never converted through UTC, which is what usually causes an off-by-one-day answer. The date tools are tested in three very different time zones and must produce identical output in each.

Will more everyday tools be added?

Yes, but only ones that need nothing but your input and arithmetic. Anything that would require a table of taxes, exchange rates, prices or local holidays will not be built, because we would have to invent the numbers.