About Leave Atlas

Straight answers on paid leave for people who run teams and the people on them — written by one person, checked against the actual rules every time, and honest about what it doesn't know.

Who writes this

I go by Thoth. I'm an independent builder based in Europe, and Leave Atlas is a one-person project. I am not a lawyer and I do not pretend to be one — which is exactly why every page here links the primary law it summarises, carries the date it was last checked, and tells you plainly when to stop reading and call an employment lawyer.

That is a deliberate trade. A named expert can ask you to trust their judgement. I can't, so I show you the source instead. In practice that turns out to be the more useful thing: you can check my work in one click, and when the law changes you can see whether I've caught up.

Who this is for

• Business owners and founders with people on payroll and no HR department.
• Office managers and HR teams of one who have been handed "sort out the leave policy".
• Employees checking what they are owed, especially when leaving a job.

Not lawyers — they read the statute. This is for everyone who has to live with it.

Why this site exists

Search "how many days of holiday am I entitled to" or "does my employer have to pay out my PTO" and nearly every result is published by a company selling payroll or HR software. The information is often fine. But it is written to sell, it rarely cites the actual statute, it converts everything into whatever units flatter the product, and it never once tells you that a spreadsheet would do.

Leave Atlas is the other thing: 20 countries and 51 US jurisdictions, each summarised from the law that creates the right, converted to the same unit so the numbers are comparable, and dated. Plus the arithmetic of accrual and payout, and an honest look at the software people use to administer it — including the case for using none.

How pages are checked

1. Start from the statute or the national labour agency's own guidance, and link it.
2. Convert every entitlement to working days on a five-day week, so 30 Werktage, 5.6 weeks and 30 calendar days can sit in one table honestly.
3. Where the rule rests on a court decision rather than a statute, name the case.
4. Publish only once verified. Right now 17 of 51 US state pages have passed that check; the rest are drafts, hidden from search until they do.
5. Re-check twice a year and re-stamp the date. If you find something wrong first, tell me.

Full detail in the methodology.

How the site makes money

Some software links are affiliate links, disclosed above every one of them. If you sign up through one I earn a commission; you pay the same either way. I also recommend tools that pay me nothing, and I say on the software page when you should buy nothing at all. The relationships are listed in full at how we make money.

What this is not

Not legal advice. Employment law changes, collective agreements override statutory minimums, and local rules can differ from national ones. Use this site to understand the question and know what to ask. Use a lawyer or the labour agency linked on the page for a decision that affects real pay.

Corrections and contact

Email [email protected]. Corrections get fixed and the page gets a fresh review date. I would much rather be corrected than confident.