Free Team Capacity Calculator
Planning against a team's nominal hours instead of its real available capacity is why projects run late. This calculator starts from headcount and standard hours, then strips out holidays, leave and known non-project time so you can plan against a number the team can actually hit.
Results
- Productive capacity62.5%
- Meetings, admin, support26.8%
- Holidays and leave10.8%
You have room for roughly 36 more hours of work this period. Utilisation above 90% leaves no slack for the unplanned.
What the Team Capacity Calculator does
Team capacity is the total number of productive hours a team can realistically deliver over a given period, after accounting for public holidays, planned leave, sick time and recurring non-project overhead such as meetings and admin. It is always lower than headcount x hours x weeks, sometimes by 20% or more.
Methodology and formula
Team capacity = (Headcount x Hours per week x Weeks in period x Availability factor) − Holiday hours − Leave hours, where availability factor is the proportion of a working week left after subtracting recurring non-project time such as meetings and admin.
Worked example
- Inputs
- 6 people, 40 hours/week, 12-week quarter, 80% availability factor, 3 public holidays at 8 hours each per person, 1 person takes 5 days leave.
- Result
- Gross hours 2,880; after 80% availability 2,304; minus 144 holiday hours and 40 leave hours; net capacity 2,120 hours.
The naive plan of 2,880 hours overstates real capacity by about 760 hours, or 26%. Planning a quarter's workload against 2,120 hours instead avoids the common trap of committing to a scope the team was never actually available to deliver.
When to use this tool
Use this when planning a sprint, quarter or project against a team's real hours. Use the Meeting Cost Calculator to quantify how much of that non-project time recurring meetings are consuming, and the Break-Even Calculator when you need to know how much billable capacity is required to cover fixed costs.
About the Team Capacity Calculator
Why the availability factor should rarely exceed 80%
Even highly disciplined teams lose 15 to 30% of nominal work time to meetings, email, context switching, one-off requests and administrative tasks. Treating 100% of headcount hours as available for project delivery is the single most common cause of underestimated timelines. An 75 to 85% availability factor is a more defensible starting point for most knowledge-work teams.
Public holidays and regional variation
Public holiday counts vary meaningfully by country and even by state or region, from around 8 to 9 federal holidays in the US to 8 bank holidays in England and Wales under GOV.UK's official calendar. Distributed teams should calculate capacity per location rather than applying a single blanket figure across everyone.
Planned leave versus unplanned absence
Planned annual leave should be subtracted directly from capacity for the period once booked. Unplanned absence such as sickness cannot be scheduled for, but historical data — commonly 2 to 5% of working time for most teams — can be built in as a buffer so capacity estimates are not silently eroded mid-period.
Using capacity to set realistic commitments
Once net capacity in hours is known, divide it by average hours per task or story point to get a defensible ceiling on what the team can commit to in the period. Comparing committed scope against calculated capacity, rather than against headcount alone, is what turns capacity planning into a check rather than a guess.
Frequently asked questions
What availability factor should I use by default?
How do I account for part-time team members?
Should onboarding time for new hires be excluded?
How is this different from a timesheet total?
Does the calculator store team data?
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