Canadian Citizenship Physical Presence Calculator
Count your 1,095 days, with pre-PR credit.
- Nothing leaves your browser
- Free, no sign-up
Related tools
All immigration calculatorsQuestions
How many days do I need for Canadian citizenship?
1,095 days of physical presence in Canada during the five years immediately before you sign your application. At least 730 of those must be days you spent here as a permanent resident, which is not a separate rule so much as an arithmetic consequence: time before permanent residence is credited at half a day and capped at 365 days, so the remaining 730 has to come from your time as a PR. IRCC recommends applying with more than 1,095 rather than exactly at the line, because one date remembered wrongly is enough to have an application returned.
Does the day I left Canada count as a day away?
No, and neither does the day you came back — both count as days in Canada. IRCC's own worked example is leaving on 1 December and returning on 31 December, which is 29 days outside Canada rather than 30 or 31. It sounds like a technicality until you add up a decade of travel: someone who takes ten short trips a year gains twenty days on this rule alone. This calculator applies it, so a trip that leaves on Friday and returns on Sunday costs you exactly one day.
Does my time as a student or worker count?
It counts at half rate, and only up to a point. Each day in Canada as a temporary resident — student, worker, visitor or temporary resident permit holder — or as a protected person counts as half a day of physical presence, to a maximum of 365 credited days. That ceiling is reached after 730 calendar days, so a person who spent five years here on study and work permits gets exactly the same credit as one who spent two. Only time inside your five-year eligibility window counts at all, however long you were here before it.
What time in Canada does not count?
Time serving a sentence, on parole or on probation is excluded, as is time spent waiting for a decision on a refugee claim. You can record these in the trip list as time in Canada that does not count, which subtracts it from the total without treating you as having been abroad. Time outside Canada as a Crown servant — employed by the Canadian Armed Forces, the federal public administration or a provincial public service — or as the family member of one counts at the full rate, and can also be recorded.
Do I need anything besides the days?
Yes. You must have filed Canadian income taxes for at least three years within the five-year period if you were required to file, hold valid permanent resident status with no unfulfilled conditions or removal order, and — if you are between 18 and 54 on the day you sign — prove English or French at CLB 4 in speaking and listening and pass the citizenship test. The day count is the part people get wrong; the rest is a checklist.
How it works, and more about citizenship calculator
How it works
- Enter the date you became a permanent resident. The date on your COPR or PR card — the day you landed, not the day you applied. If you have never left Canada since, that one date is the whole calculation.
- Add every trip outside Canada. Every trip, including day trips and weekends. The day you left and the day you returned both count as days in Canada, so a Friday-to-Sunday trip costs you one day.
- Claim your pre-PR time if you have any. Time in Canada as a student, worker, visitor or protected person counts as half a day each, up to a ceiling of 365 days of credit.
1,095 days, and the 730 hiding inside it
To apply for Canadian citizenship as an adult you need 1,095 days of physical presence in Canada during the five years immediately before the day you sign your application. That is the number everybody knows. The one that catches people is the second requirement sitting underneath it: at least 730 of those days must be days you spent here as a permanent resident.
It is not really a separate rule. Time in Canada before permanent residence counts at half a day, and the credit is capped at 365 days — so the remaining 730 has to come from somewhere, and the only place left is your time as a PR. But it lands hard on exactly the people who assume they are furthest ahead: someone who spent four years here on a study permit and a post-graduation work permit has banked the full 365-day credit and still needs two full years as a permanent resident before they can apply.
The day you leave and the day you come back are days in Canada
This is IRCC’s own rule and it is worth more than it sounds. Their worked example is leaving on 1 December and returning on 31 December: 29 days outside Canada, not 30 and not 31, because neither the departure day nor the return day is an absence.
Over a decade of travel that is not a technicality. A person who takes ten short trips a year gains twenty days annually on this rule alone, which is most of a month of eligibility. A trip that leaves on Friday and returns on Sunday costs exactly one day. This calculator applies the rule, which is why the totals here can come out slightly higher than a spreadsheet that counts calendar days between two dates. If you want to check a single trip, the days between dates calculator counts the raw span.
The half-day credit, and its ceiling
| Time in Canada | Counts as | Limit |
|---|---|---|
| As a permanent resident | 1 day | No limit |
| As a temporary resident or protected person | ½ day | 365 days of credit, from 730 calendar days |
| Abroad as a Crown servant or their family member | 1 day | No limit |
Two constraints ride on top. Only time inside the five-year window earns anything at all, so a decade spent here on permits before the window opened is worth nothing. And protected-person time only counts from the day the claim or pre-removal risk assessment was approved until the day before you became a permanent resident — not from the day the claim was made.
Time in Canada that does not count
Days spent serving a sentence, on parole or on probation are excluded, as is time spent waiting for a decision on a refugee claim. You were in the country; the days simply do not count. The trip list here has an option for exactly this, so you can subtract the period without recording yourself as having been abroad — which matters, because the same period does count towards the PR residency obligation. Two rules, one travel history, opposite treatment.
Apply with a margin, not at the line
IRCC says this themselves: apply with more than 1,095 days. Every calculation of this kind has edges where reasonable people disagree by a day — how the five-year window is anchored, whether a half day rounds — and this one deliberately resolves each of them in the direction that understates your presence rather than overstates it. An application returned for a miscounted day costs months.
The day count is also only one requirement of five. You need valid permanent resident status with no unfulfilled conditions or removal order; you must have filed Canadian income taxes for at least three years within the five-year period if you were required to file; and if you are between 18 and 54 on the day you sign, you must prove English or French at CLB 4 in speaking and listening — check yours with the CLB converter — and pass the citizenship test.
Sources. Presence rules from IRCC’s citizenship eligibility page; the departure and return day rule from their guidance on calculating physical presence. All figures on this page were read from IRCC in August 2026. This is not immigration advice and this site is not affiliated with the Government of Canada.