Pay Period Calendar Calculator
Get every pay period start, end, and pay date for the year from one payday. Flags three-paycheck months and paydays moved by a weekend or holiday.
Pay Period Calendar Calculator
Your pay schedule
Weekly and biweekly are interval schedules built from an anchor payday. Semimonthly and monthly are pinned to calendar dates.
Rows that spill past December show as carry-over and are left out of the count.
Copy the first pay date of the year off a stub. Everything else is generated from it, so this one date decides your three-paycheck months.
A period ending Sunday and paid the following Friday is a lag of 5. Paid on the last day of the period? Lag 0. Paid on the 5th of the next month? Lag 5.
Weekend and holiday handling
ACH does not settle on weekends or Federal Reserve holidays, so the money moves to a business day either way. Paying early is the common default and the safer one under state payday laws, which set a deadline rather than a floor.
Semimonthly paydays
A day above the month's length clamps to the last day, so 31 reliably means "last day".
That first payday was blank or outside the calendar year, so the table falls back to the first Friday of the year the banks are open. Enter a date from a stub for your own schedule.
Those two paydays collide once the month-end clamp is applied (February is the usual culprit), so the table falls back to the 15th and the last day.
Worth knowing about this year
The first check of the year shifts back across January 1 and settles in the prior year. Wages go on the W-2 for the year they are paid, not the year they are earned, so that check belongs to the prior year's W-2 and not this one.
Full-year pay period calendar
| # | Period start | Period end | Days | Pay date | Adjusted |
|---|
Dimmed rows are carry-over: a period that starts in the prior December, or one paid in the following January. They are shown because they appear on real stubs, and left out of the payday count. Rows with an accent land in a month that holds an extra paycheck.
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What a pay period calendar actually is
Every pay stub carries three dates, not one. The period start and period end mark the window of work the check covers. The pay date is the day the money settles. A stub that shows only a pay date is missing two thirds of the story, and a payroll calendar that lists only paydays cannot fill in the other two.
The gap between the period end and the pay date is the pay lag, and it is the only employer-specific number you need to project a whole year. Payroll needs a few days to collect timecards, run the numbers, and hand the file to the bank, so almost nobody pays on the last day of the period. Three to seven days is the usual range. Find yours by taking any stub and counting the calendar days from the period end to the pay date. That number does not change from check to check.
Once you have a frequency, one anchor payday, and a lag, the rest of the year is just arithmetic. The table above runs it and hands back the period start, period end, and pay date for every period, which happens to be exactly what you fill in at the top of a stub.
How each pay frequency generates its dates
The four frequencies split into two families, and that split explains almost everything else on this page.
Weekly and biweekly are interval schedules. You pick an anchor payday and add 7 or 14 days forever. They always land on the same weekday, which is convenient, but they drift against the calendar because 52 weeks is 364 days and a year is 365 or 366. That drift is where 27-paycheck years and three-paycheck months come from. It also means the anchor date is not a minor detail: two employers on the same biweekly cycle one week apart get completely different three-paycheck months.
Semimonthly and monthly are calendar schedules, pinned to fixed days of the month, usually the 15th and the last day, or the 1st and the 16th. They never drift, so they are always 24 and 12 periods, and they never hand you an extra paycheck. The tradeoff is that the period length swings between 13 and 16 days and the payday lands on a different weekday every time, so weekend and holiday shifts hit them more often than they hit a Friday biweekly schedule.
If your question is about the money rather than the dates, say what a check becomes when an employer moves from biweekly to semimonthly and what that does to the deductions, that belongs to the Pay Frequency Converter. This page stays on the calendar.
When payday lands on a weekend or a federal holiday
There are eleven US federal holidays: New Year's Day, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Washington's Birthday, Memorial Day, Juneteenth, Independence Day, Labor Day, Columbus Day, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Six of them float to a set Monday or Thursday by rule, so they never land on a weekend. The other five sit on fixed dates: New Year's Day, Juneteenth, Independence Day, Veterans Day, and Christmas. When one of those lands on a Sunday, the Federal Reserve Banks close the following Monday. When one lands on a Saturday, they stay open the Friday before, even though federal offices take that Friday off. This calendar follows the Fed.
The reason this matters to payroll is settlement, not ceremony. ACH does not process on weekends or Federal Reserve holidays, so a deposit scheduled for one of those days simply cannot arrive that day. It has to move. Most employers move it earlier, to the last business day before, and no federal law requires either direction. State payday laws set a deadline rather than a floor, which makes paying early the safe choice and paying late the one that can go wrong.
The awkward cases are the back-to-back ones. A Christmas that falls on a Monday pushes a Monday payday back to the preceding Friday. July 4, 2027 is a Sunday, so the banks close Monday July 5, and a Monday payday that week moves back to Friday July 2. Saturdays go the other way: Christmas 2027 and January 1, 2028 both fall on a Saturday, the banks are open on Friday December 24 and Friday December 31, and a Friday payday on either date stands. The year line is why the calculator builds its holiday set across three years instead of one: December 31, 2028 is a Sunday, so under pay later that payday passes Monday January 1, 2029 and lands on Tuesday January 2. The day after Thanksgiving is the opposite trap: banks settle that Friday, so a payday there does not move even if your own office is shut.
One implementation note, because it changes the answer: the shift applies to the displayed pay date only. It never feeds back into the interval. If a holiday moved one payday and the next payday were counted 14 days from the moved date, the whole schedule would walk backwards through the year. The table above always counts from the anchor.
Three-paycheck months and the 27-paycheck year
A biweekly schedule pays 26 times across 364 days, one day short of a common year and two short of a leap year. Twice a year that leaves a month holding three paydays instead of two, and roughly every 11 years the drift adds up to a calendar year holding 27 paydays instead of 26. Weekly schedules do the same thing at a different scale: four five-paycheck months a year, and 53 paydays in the years where the payday weekday matches January 1.
Which months those turn out to be depends entirely on your anchor. In 2026, a first payday of Friday January 2 gives three-paycheck months in January and July. Move the anchor one week to Friday January 9 and they become May and October. Anchor to Thursday January 1, 2026 and you get 27 paydays, scheduled three each in January, July, and December, though the January 1 check settles a day early on December 31, 2025, which leaves July and December as the months that actually hold three deposits. January 1, 2027 is a Friday, so a Friday schedule anchored there does the same thing a year later. That is why the generic "three paycheck months" lists so rarely match a real stub, and why the input above asks for your date instead of guessing at one.
For an employer, a 27th check is a decision rather than a surprise. Either the per-check amount stays as it is and annual payroll rises by one twenty-sixth (about 3.85%), or the salary gets re-cut across 27 periods so annual pay is unchanged and every check comes out slightly smaller. If you spread it, check that exempt salaries still clear the FLSA floor, and that per-check 401(k), FSA, and HSA deductions sized for 26 periods do not overshoot across 27.
The January 1 anchor has one more wrinkle. January 1 is a federal holiday, so under the pay-earlier rule the first check of the year settles on the last business day of the prior year. Wages are reported on the W-2 for the year they are paid, not the year they are earned, so that check lands on the previous year's W-2. The calculator flags this when it happens.
Putting the right dates on a pay stub
The three columns in the table are the three date fields at the top of a stub, in the order a stub asks for them. Copy the row and the period start, period end, and pay date are done. If someone leaves partway through a period, that partial row is the one to work from, and the Final Paycheck Calculator handles what goes on it. Once you know which period number you are on, the YTD Earnings Calculator projects the running totals, and the Hourly to Paystub Earnings Calculator turns the hours inside a period into the earnings lines.
Payslip44 stores pay period start, pay period end, and pay date as inclusive dates on every stub, and its Insights views filter on them, so a calendar you work out once here lines up with the documents you produce all year. Everything runs on-device, and stubs export to PDF, PNG, CSV, or plain text.
Got your calendar sorted? Download Payslip44 and put the right dates on your stubs.
Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions about pay period calendar calculator
How many pay periods are in a year?
Weekly is 52, biweekly is 26, semimonthly is 24, monthly is 12. But the two interval schedules drift. Weekly lands 53 times in some calendar years and biweekly lands 27 times, and which years those are comes down to where the first payday falls. Semimonthly and monthly are pinned to calendar dates, so they stay at 24 and 12 every year.
How many pay periods are in 2026?
Most biweekly employers have 26 in 2026. You get 27 only if the first payday of the year is January 1, 2026: 27 checks span 364 days, so they fit inside a 365-day year only when the first one lands on January 1. (A leap year has room for a January 1 or January 2 start.) Weekly employers paid on a Thursday get 53, because January 1, 2026 is a Thursday and the year holds 53 Thursdays. Semimonthly is 24 and monthly is 12, same as always. Set the year and your own first payday above and the count is yours rather than a generic one.
Which months have three paychecks?
This comes down to your first payday and nothing else, which is why the lists you find online rarely match your own stub. Start from Friday January 2, 2026 and the three-paycheck months are January and July. Start from Friday January 9, 2026 and they move to May and October. Start from Thursday January 1, 2026 and you get 27 checks, scheduled three each in January, July, and December, though January 1 is a federal holiday: under the pay-earlier rule that check settles on December 31, 2025, so only July and December hold three deposits in 2026. Weekly schedules work the same way, except the crowded months hold five checks. Semimonthly and monthly never produce one at all.
What happens when payday falls on a weekend or a federal holiday?
ACH only settles on business days, so the deposit has to move somewhere. Most employers pay the preceding business day, though some pay the following one. No federal law forces either direction. State payday laws set a deadline rather than a floor, so paying early is the safer default, and that is what this calculator does first. Switch the shift control if you want to compare all three.
What is the difference between semimonthly and biweekly pay periods?
Biweekly pays every 14 days on the same weekday, 26 times a year, with two three-paycheck months. Semimonthly pays twice per calendar month on fixed dates, usually the 15th and the last day, 24 times a year. It lands on a different weekday each time and never gives you a three-paycheck month. Semimonthly periods also run anywhere from 13 to 16 days, which the Days column above makes visible. For the money side of the same question, use the Pay Frequency Converter.
What is the difference between the pay period and the pay date on a pay stub?
The pay period is the range of work the check covers. The pay date is the day the money arrives. They are never the same thing, which is why a stub prints all three: period start, period end, and pay date. The gap between the period end and the pay date is the pay lag, usually 3 to 7 days while payroll runs.
What is a pay lag and how do I find mine?
Take any stub, subtract the period end date from the pay date, and count the calendar days. That number holds steady at a given employer, so once you have it you can project the rest of the year off a single anchor payday. Enter it in the pay lag field above and the whole table shifts with it.
Why do some years have 27 biweekly pay periods?
26 biweekly periods span 364 days, one day short of a calendar year and two short in a leap year. That missing day piles up until a calendar year happens to hold 27 paydays, which works out to roughly every 11 years. The employer then either absorbs the extra check, raising payroll by about 3.85% for the year, or re-cuts salaries across 27 periods. The Pay Frequency Converter models both options side by side.