An app that records your days, or a trip calculator
If Europe is a regular part of your year, choose an app that records your days. Geostay, Bounded, Immio, Days Monitor, Flamingo Compliance and TrackingDays log the country you are in as you travel, so the count is ready when you plan your next trip back.
If you go once or twice a year, or want to sketch an itinerary before booking, a trip-entry calculator does the job. Schengen Simple, Schengen Calculator 90/180 and 180 Days count the past and planned trips you type in.
For a family or a travel group, Schengen Simple gives each traveller their own calendar and calculations, and Schengen Calculator 90/180 keeps a separate profile for each person.
How do you calculate 180 days in Schengen?
A short stay in the Schengen Area, which is how UK and US passport holders usually visit, is limited to 90 days in any 180-day period. The 180 days roll: for each day you check, you look back over the 180 days that end on that day and add up the days you spent in the area. The total has to stay at 90 or below.
Any part of a day counts as a day, so the day you arrive and the day you leave both count in full. Days spent there under an EU residence permit or a long-stay visa are left out of the count. The area has 29 countries. Cyprus and Ireland are EU members but not part of it.
Planning a trip means repeating the count for every day of the stay, because the window moves forward a day at a time and old days drop out as new ones come in. A calculator app runs that count for every day at once. A good one tells you how many days you have used in the current window and how many you have left, the date you have to leave by, and when your full 90 days are available again.
Is the official EU calculator enough?
The European Commission's short-stay calculator is the official tool for the 90/180 rule, and it is enough for one trip or a quick check before booking. You type in the entry and exit dates of your stays. Check mode tells you whether you are within the rule on the day of the check, and the last day you could stay without breaking it. Planning mode works out the longest stay allowed on a future day.
If you are back in Europe several times a year, you type your dates in again for each check, and nothing warns you as the limit gets close. A calculator app keeps your history, updates the count as days pass and can warn you ahead of the limit.
An early warning has mattered more since 10 April 2026, when the Entry/Exit System replaced passport stamps at the external borders of the 29 countries that use it. Each time a non-EU traveller crosses, it records the date and place of entry and exit, and it detects overstays automatically.
Do I have to enter every trip myself?
With a trip-entry calculator, yes: every past and planned trip goes in by hand. With an app that records your days, the phone keeps the log. Geostay does it in the background, so a travel day is logged without you opening the app.
Geostay works out the country from a map stored in the app, so it keeps recording with no connection, even with data roaming off or the phone in flight mode. It ignores location readings taken in flight or close to a border, so flying over a country or driving along a frontier does not count as a visit. The Timeline tab shows every stay as a list or on a calendar. You can add a trip, change the country of a day or delete a day, and your own edits take precedence over what the phone recorded.
Past trips can be filled in from your photo library, a Google Maps Timeline export, a Flighty flight export or a CSV spreadsheet with dates and countries. The import happens on your iPhone, and your photos are not uploaded.
When can you go back, and for how long?
Geostay's Schengen card answers both questions from your own record. It shows how many days you have used in the current 180-day window and how many you have left, so you know how long this stay can run. It also gives the date you have to leave by and the date you have all 90 days again.
You can add your visa or residence permit to the card, with its dates, how long it lets you stay and how many entries it allows, so Geostay can remind you before it ends.
Geostay warns you ahead of time in a notification that gives the count and a date, such as "Staying past 4 Dec would cross the limit". It also tells you when your full allowance is available again.
You set how many days ahead it warns, and each kind of warning and each card has its own switch. On the Profile tab, a screen called Watching for you lists every card and how it warns you.
When you plan a second trip in the same half year, book it around two dates on the card: the day you have to leave this time and the day your full allowance returns.
