Your holiday entitlement
16 days 6 hrs
3 days/week × 5.6 weeks = 16.8 days
A full-time, 5-day week gets 28 days (capped at the statutory minimum).
Pro Rata Holiday Calculator UK
Part-time workers in the UK get the same paid holiday as everyone else, just scaled to the days or hours they work. This pro rata holiday calculator does the maths for you. Tell it how many days or hours you work each week, and it returns your statutory holiday entitlement in seconds. It is free, built around the UK 5.6 weeks rule, and updated for 2026/27. For pay rather than leave, our pro rata salary calculator works the same way, and you can switch between every tool from the main pro rata calculator hub.
What pro rata holiday entitlement means
Pro rata means "in proportion", so pro rata holiday entitlement is the share of paid leave you earn for the hours you actually work. A full-time member of staff and a part-time one are entitled to the same amount of holiday relative to their hours. The part-timer simply has fewer working days to spread it across, so the number of days they receive is smaller.
This is a legal right, not a favour from your employer. Every worker in the UK, including part-time and agency staff, builds up paid holiday from their first day. The calculator turns that right into a clear figure so you know exactly how much leave you are owed.
How the holiday calculator works
The tool only needs two things. First, how much you work each week, either in days or in hours. Second, your holiday allowance in weeks, which defaults to the UK statutory minimum of 5.6 weeks but can be increased if your employer is more generous.
It then multiplies your weekly days or hours by the number of holiday weeks to give your annual entitlement. Work three days a week and you get 16.8 days. Work 22.5 hours a week and you get 126 hours of paid leave. The result updates as you type, and you can switch between the days view and the hours view depending on how your contract sets out your time.
The 5.6 weeks rule
UK law sets paid holiday at 5.6 weeks a year. For a standard five-day week that comes to 28 days, which is the figure most people recognise. The 5.6 weeks is the key number, because it applies to everyone regardless of their pattern.
Holiday entitlement = days you work per week × 5.6 weeks
That single line covers almost every situation. Someone on four days a week gets 4 × 5.6 = 22.4 days. Someone on two days gets 11.2 days. The 28-day figure is a statutory cap, so employers do not have to give more than 28 days even to staff who work six or seven days a week, though many choose to.
Holiday in days or hours
How you measure your leave depends on how you work. If you work set days, counting holiday in days is simplest, and the calculator’s days view handles it. If your hours vary across the week, or you work part-days, counting in hours is more accurate.
To work out holiday in hours, multiply your normal weekly hours by 5.6. A 22.5-hour week gives 126 hours of paid leave across the year. Booking time off then comes out of that hours total rather than a day count, which avoids the unfairness of treating a short day and a long day as the same single day of holiday.
Part-time holiday examples
The table below shows the statutory paid holiday for the most common part-time patterns, all based on the 5.6 weeks rule. Use the calculator for any pattern that is not listed, including half-days and hours.
| Days worked per week | Paid holiday (days) | Equivalent in weeks |
|---|---|---|
| 1 day | 5.6 days | 5.6 weeks |
| 2 days | 11.2 days | 5.6 weeks |
| 3 days | 16.8 days | 5.6 weeks |
| 4 days | 22.4 days | 5.6 weeks |
| 5 days | 28 days | 5.6 weeks |
Notice that the entitlement in weeks never changes. Whether you work one day or five, you get 5.6 weeks of your normal pattern. Only the day count moves, because a week looks different for each person.
Irregular hours and zero-hours holiday
If your hours change from week to week, or you are on a zero-hours contract, you still build up paid holiday. For these patterns, leave is usually worked out in hours rather than days, based on the time you have actually worked over the year.
A widely used method is to treat holiday as 12.07% of the hours worked, a figure that comes from the 5.6 weeks of leave spread across the remaining 46.4 working weeks of the year. So for every hour on the clock, you accrue just over seven minutes of paid leave. The calculator’s hours view gives you a clean annual figure once you know your typical weekly hours, which is a good starting point even when the week-to-week total varies.
Bank holidays and part-time staff
Bank holidays are where part-time leave gets misunderstood. There is no automatic right to take bank holidays off, and no rule that they are paid on top of your 5.6 weeks. They can be included within your statutory entitlement.
Where a workplace does give bank holidays as paid leave, the fair approach is to give part-time staff a pro rata share rather than all eight. England and Wales have eight bank holidays, so a three-day-a-week worker should receive 8 × (3 ÷ 5) = 4.8 of them towards their allowance. Without this, anyone who never works the day a bank holiday falls on would quietly lose out, which is exactly what the pro rata principle prevents. Your contract sets out how your employer handles this.
Term-time and part-year workers
Staff who only work part of the year, such as term-time school employees, have their own version of pro rata holiday. Because they work fewer weeks than a full-year employee, their leave is based on the time they actually work rather than a flat 5.6 weeks of a full year.
This area changed after recent case law, and the safest approach for part-year and irregular workers is the 5.6 weeks method applied to actual working time. If you are a teaching assistant, exam invigilator or seasonal worker, it is worth checking your holiday is calculated on the weeks you work, not assumed from a full-time pattern, since underpayment here is common.
Carrying over unused holiday
You cannot always use every day of leave within the year, and the rules on carrying it over depend on why it was left unused. Of your 5.6 weeks, four weeks come from EU-derived law and 1.6 weeks from UK law, and they are treated slightly differently when it comes to carry-over.
In general, you can carry over leave if you were unable to take it because of sickness, maternity or other statutory leave, and in some cases your employer may allow you to carry a few days by agreement. Holiday should not simply be lost, and it cannot usually be swapped for cash except when you leave the job. Check your contract for your employer’s specific carry-over policy.
Holiday when you start or leave mid-year
If you join or leave partway through the holiday year, your entitlement for that year is itself pro-rated to the months you are employed. Start in July on a 28-day full-time allowance and you would earn roughly half of it, around 14 days, for the rest of that year.
When you leave, any holiday you have built up but not taken is paid to you in your final pay. If you have taken more than you had accrued, your employer may deduct the difference. The same proportional thinking runs through your pay in these situations, which our pro rata salary calculator covers in detail.
Your holiday rights at work
Under UK employment law, part-time workers cannot be treated less favourably than full-time colleagues. That means the same rate of holiday, the same access to time off, and holiday pay based on your normal earnings. If your pay varies, holiday pay is usually based on your average weekly earnings over the previous 52 working weeks.
You are entitled to be paid your normal wage while on holiday, not a reduced rate, and your employer can set reasonable rules about when leave is taken but cannot deny you the entitlement itself. If something looks wrong, Acas and GOV.UK both publish clear guidance on where you stand.
Checking your holiday is right
It is worth checking your entitlement rather than assuming the figure on your contract is correct. Take the days you work each week, multiply by 5.6, and compare the result with what your employer has given you. If they match, you are on the right amount. If your figure is higher, you may be owed extra leave.
Keep an eye on how bank holidays and any contractual extra days are counted, since that is where most differences appear. If you also want to confirm the pay behind your leave, or split costs like a part-month of rent, you can run those through our salary calculator and rent calculator from the same pro rata calculator hub.
Last updated June 2026 for the 2026/27 year. Holiday figures are based on GOV.UK and Acas guidance on holiday entitlement and part-time workers' rights. Use these as estimates and check your contract for your exact allowance.