ProRata CalculatePro Rata Holiday Calculator — Leave That Matches Your Pattern
Work out your part-time holiday entitlement. Enter your pattern and the full-time leave allowance to see your entitlement in days and hours.
Pro Rata Holiday Calculator
Pick the tab that matches how your work is arranged. Most staff with a set weekly pattern use days or hours; the 12.07% tab is for irregular-hours and part-year work.
28 is the statutory minimum for a five-day worker, including public holidays in most contracts.
How leave follows the same fraction
The rule mirrors pay exactly: your entitlement is the full-time entitlement multiplied by your fraction of the week. The legal floor underneath it all is 5.6 weeks of paid leave a year for every worker in the UK. For a five-day worker that is the familiar 28 days. For you, the weeks stay at 5.6 and the days change: 5.6 weeks of a three-day pattern is 16.8 days. Anyone who offers you “four weeks plus bank holidays, pro rata’d somehow” without showing a fraction is guessing, and guesses about leave tend to guess low.
Counting in hours removes the other common unfairness. If your three days are not equal — say 8.5, 7.5 and 6.5 hours — then a “day” of leave is worth a different amount depending on which day you take. 126 hours of leave spends exactly what each absence costs, no more and no less. That is why schools, NHS services and shift-based employers increasingly record part-time leave in hours, and why this calculator always shows the hours figure alongside the days.
Worked examples
Three days, standard contract. Full-time entitlement 28 days, your pattern 3 of 5 days: 28 × 0.6 = 16.8 days. At 7.5 hours per day, that is 126 hours. Of the 16.8 days, 4.8 represent your share of the eight England and Wales bank holidays, leaving 12 days of bookable leave if bank holidays are inside the total.
Irregular hours, term-time kitchen work. You worked 640 hours across the year with no fixed pattern. Accrual is 640 × 12.07% = 77.25 hours of paid leave. Your employer may pay this as it accrues (“rolled-up” holiday pay at 12.07% on top of hourly pay) or let you take it as time off — for leave years from April 2024 both are lawful for this group, but the payslip must show the holiday element separately.
If your employer counts a more generous full-time entitlement — 33 days including bank holidays is common in the public sector — your figure rises in proportion: 33 × 0.6 = 19.8 days. Always start from the entitlement in your contract, not the statutory minimum, when the two differ.
The bank holiday muddle, sorted
Part-time staff who do not work Mondays used to lose out badly, because most bank holidays fall on Mondays. The pro rata approach fixed that: you receive your fraction of all bank holidays as part of your total, and any bank holiday landing on your working day is simply deducted from the pot like any other leave day. If your employer instead gives bank holidays “in addition”, check whether full-time colleagues get them inside their 28 days — if they do and you genuinely get yours on top, you are ahead; if the wording is just loose, the totals will tell the truth. Our full guide to holiday entitlement for part-time workers works through both contract styles with examples.
Questions people ask
Multiply the full-time entitlement by three fifths. On the statutory 28 days that gives 16.8 days a year. Because your working day is the unit that matters, book leave in your own days: a week off costs you three days of entitlement, not five.
Hours are fairer when your days are not all the same length. 16.8 days at 7.5 hours is 126 hours; if you work a long Monday and a short Friday, hours let each booking cost exactly what the day would have paid. Either unit is lawful — what matters is that the total value matches your fraction.
For irregular-hours and part-year workers whose leave years began on or after 1 April 2024, leave accrues at 12.07% of hours worked. Work 640 hours and you accrue 77.25 hours of paid leave. It does not apply to staff with a regular weekly pattern — those workers get a fixed entitlement instead, worked out with the days or hours tabs.
In most contracts, yes: the 28-day full-time figure already includes public holidays, so your pro rata share includes a pro rata share of bank holidays — 4.8 days at a 0.6 fraction. If a bank holiday falls on your non-working day, many employers credit that share back as extra leave. The toggle in the calculator shows both treatments.
Employers may round up, and many round to the nearest half day, but rounding down below the statutory minimum is not permitted. 16.8 days can lawfully become 17; it cannot become 16.5 if that takes you under 5.6 weeks of your own working pattern.
Your entitlement for the part-year is itself pro rata: fraction of the year remaining multiplied by your annual entitlement. Starting three months into the leave year at 0.6 FTE leaves you roughly 12.6 days. Our date calculator approach — active days over period days — is the same idea payroll will use.
Rates used: UK tax year 2026/27 · Last reviewed: October 2026. Calculations run in your browser — nothing you type is sent anywhere or stored by us.