Paid leave, without the legal jargon.
How many days your people get in each country and US state, what happens to unused days, and what you owe when someone leaves — checked against the actual rules, written for the people who have to apply them.
- Business owners & founders
- Office managers & HR teams of one
- Employees checking their rights
The European Union guarantees a floor of four weeks — 20 working days — of paid annual leave, and several members go further: Luxembourg sets 26 days, and Austria, Denmark, France and Sweden set 25. Australia guarantees four weeks that never expire. The United States guarantees nothing at all — it has no federal paid leave law, and whether unused time is paid out when you leave depends on which of the 51 jurisdictions you work in.
Start here
Leave entitlement by country
Statutory minimums for 20 countries across Europe and Australia, each sourced to national law. Average: 21.9 days.
Compare countries →US PTO payout laws by state
All 51 US jurisdictions: whether unused PTO must be paid out when employment ends, and where use-it-or-lose-it is banned.
Open the state table →Accrual calculator
Convert an annual entitlement into days per pay period, a current balance and a payout value. Shows the formula.
Run the numbers →Leave management software
Tools tested against one identical 15-person policy — including an honest case for sticking with a spreadsheet.
Compare tools →Most generous statutory minimums
| Country | Minimum days | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| United Kingdom | 28 | Working Time Regulations 1998 |
| Luxembourg | 26 | Code du travail luxembourgeois |
| Austria | 25 | Urlaubsgesetz |
| Denmark | 25 | Ferieloven |
| France | 25 | Code du travail, Art. L3141-3 |
| Sweden | 25 | Semesterlagen (1977:480) |
Jump to a US state
12 jurisdictions require payout of unused PTO. California, Colorado, Montana, Nebraska additionally ban use-it-or-lose-it.
Why trust this site
- Primary sources, linked. Every page links the statute or agency guidance it summarises, so you can check our work rather than take our word.
- Comparable figures. Countries express leave in six-day Werktage, calendar days or weeks. We convert everything to working days on a five-day week, so the numbers actually mean the same thing.
- Review dates on everything. Employment law moves. A page with no date is a page you cannot rely on.
- We say when not to buy. Under ten people in one country, a spreadsheet is genuinely fine, and we say so on the page where we'd earn a commission for saying otherwise.
- Affiliate relationships disclosed up front, not buried in the footer. How we make money.