How it works

Efficiency

Every trip has an efficiency score: total days off ÷ PTO days spent. A 9-day break that costs 4 PTO days scores 2.25. Higher means more time off for each day you spend.

Trips and bridge days

A trip is one continuous stretch of time off — weekends, public holidays, and the PTO days you'd take, all in a row.

A bridge day is a single working day wedged between a holiday and a weekend. Taking it as PTO turns a 3-day stretch into four or more — the highest-leverage day you can spend.

Plan strategies

The annual planner returns five year plans, each optimising for something different:

• Packed · Best leverage — the most total days off per PTO day spent.
• Packed · Longest breaks — the longest continuous breaks, even at lower efficiency.
• Spread · Quarterly — breaks distributed roughly one per quarter.
• Spread · Even — breaks spaced evenly through the year.
• One big trip — the whole budget concentrated into a single long break.

Budget mode

• Spend it all (exhaust) — uses your entire PTO budget.
• Only the good stuff (selective) — stops once the next trip's efficiency drops below the worthwhile line, so you keep days back rather than spend them on a weak break.

Regions

Pick a country, and where we have the data, a region (state or province) too. Holiday calendars differ inside a country — Bavaria isn't Berlin — so regional accuracy is free, never paywalled.

Holidays

When a public holiday lands on a weekend it is effectively lost, and we flag it. Some countries instead declare a substitute holiday on the next working day — we use whichever your country actually observes.