Guide · Counting semantics · 2026
Per entry, rolling window, or something else — the two ways countries count your days, and why the difference decides whether leaving helps
A per-entry allowance restarts when you leave. A rolling window does not — days age out on the calendar instead, so a border run buys you nothing. Of the 1,160 passport-to-destination routes Stretch publishes that carry a day count, 838 are per-entry and 322 are rolling — and 13 of the 30 rolling destinations sit outside the Schengen area entirely. Which kind you are under decides whether stepping across a border resets anything.
The short answer
There are two common ways a country counts a visitor's days, and they behave in opposite ways when you leave.
A per-entry allowance restarts on exit. "Up to 90 days per entry" means each arrival opens a fresh 90. Leave, come back, and the count begins again — subject to whatever re-entry rules the country adds on top.
A rolling window does not restart. "90 days in any 180" means that on any given day, the officer counts backwards over the previous 180 days and adds up everywhere you were present inside the area. Leaving does not reset that sum. Days leave the window only by ageing out — 180 days after you spent them — whether you are inside the country or on the other side of the world.
The Entry/Exit System (EES) records external-border crossings; it does not turn this rolling window into a per-entry allowance or reset it when you leave.
The practical consequence is the one that catches people: under a rolling window, a border run buys you nothing. Crossing out and back does not clear the count; it just adds a departure day and an arrival day to it — and both of those days count.
Stretch publishes 1,555 passport-to-destination routes, and 1,160 of them carry a day count at all. Of the rest, 167 are free-movement rights, which have no clock to count, and 228 carry no day number for another reason — a visa sets the length, or nothing we trust records one. Of the 1,160 that do carry a count, 838 are per-entry and 322 are rolling. So per-entry is the common case, which is exactly why the rolling ones surprise people.
Where the rolling ones actually are
Most travellers meet the rolling window at Schengen and assume it is a Schengen peculiarity. In our published rulebook it is not. 30 destinations govern at least one of our passport routes with a rolling window, and 13 of them sit outside the Schengen area:
| The 30 rolling-window destinations in the Stretch rulebook |
|---|
| Albania, Austria, Barbados, Brazil, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Ecuador, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, India, Italy, Kiribati, Malta, Montenegro, the Netherlands, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, Türkiye, the United Arab Emirates |
The ones worth reading twice are the 13 that sit outside the Schengen area: Albania, Barbados, Brazil, Cyprus, Ecuador, India, Kiribati, Montenegro, Peru, Serbia, South Korea, Türkiye, the United Arab Emirates. Some are European and some are nowhere near Europe, which is the point — the shape does not follow the map. A traveller who has internalised "Schengen is rolling, everywhere else is per entry" will get every one of them wrong, and will get them wrong in the direction that produces an overstay rather than a wasted trip.
Where those allowances are longest, and which of the long ones can actually be repeated, is the published maximums ranked. The window length is not always 180, either. Across the 322 rolling-window routes we publish, the shapes are 90 in 180 (273 routes), 90 in 365 (26 routes), 180 in 365 (23 routes):
| Window | How it reads | Routes |
|---|---|---|
| 90/180 | 90 days in any rolling 180 | 273 |
| 90/365 | 90 days in any rolling 365 | 26 |
| 180/365 | 180 days in any rolling 365 | 23 |
Türkiye's is the familiar 90-in-180. India's tourist arrangement in our data counts 180 days in a rolling 365 — twice the allowance over twice the window, which is not the same rule at all. The shape is the thing to check, not the number you remember.
Worked example
Take a traveller with a European rolling window, 90 days in any 180.
They spend 89 days in Spain, 23 February to 22 May. They go home for the summer. They fly into Germany on 21 August.
On the day they land, the officer's 180-day window opens on 23 February — so every one of those 89 Spanish days is still inside it. Add the day they arrive and they are at 90 of 90. A remaining-balance sum says zero days left: leave immediately.
They do not have to. On 22 August the window slides forward one day, past 23 February, and that day drops off. They spend a new day on the 22nd, so the total stays at 90. The same thing happens on the 23rd, and every day after, for as long as the Spanish block keeps ageing off one day at a time. Their genuine last legal day is 18 November — almost three months after the sum said they were finished.
Run the same history under a per-entry rule instead and none of this applies. The Spanish days belong to a stay that ended in May. Arriving in Germany opens a fresh allowance, and the answer is simply the full allowance from 21 August.
Same traveller, same dates, two completely different answers — decided entirely by which counting shape the destination uses. The Schengen 90/180 calculator walks that window forward day by day rather than subtracting, which is why it produces 18 November rather than "leave today".
Where this does not apply
- Free movement is neither shape. If you hold an EU/EEA or Swiss passport travelling inside that area, or an Irish or British passport under the Common Travel Area, you are exercising a right of residence, not spending a visitor allowance. There is no clock to count. Our rulebook models those separately and shows no day number at all, because inventing one would be wrong.
- Calendar-period rules exist and we do not yet model them exactly. Some countries count per calendar year rather than on a rolling basis. Where our data currently represents one of those as a rolling 365, the page says so; treat those numbers as an approximation of the shape rather than a precise reading of the law.
- A residence permit or long-stay visa changes the question entirely. Both shapes above describe short-stay visitor allowances. If you hold a permit, its own conditions govern.
- Some countries add caps the shape does not capture. Nepal caps total tourist stay at 150 days per calendar year on top of the per-visit allowance, and Guatemala's 90 days is a regional clock shared with El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua that does not restart when you cross between them. Where we know about a cap like that, it is written into the rule's notes on the destination's page.
- The officer at the border decides. Everything here describes how the rules are written, not what happens at a desk on a bad day.
- Some shapes are neither of these two, and we do not model them exactly. Annual caps stacked on a per-visit allowance, and clocks shared between neighbouring countries, are counted by neither a per-entry nor a rolling rule. The hardest counting rules to get right says which destinations that affects and which direction each approximation fails in.
Frequently asked questions
Does leaving the country reset my days?
Under a per-entry allowance, yes — that is what "per entry" means. Under a rolling window, no. Leaving stops you accruing new days, but the days you have already spent stay in the window until they are old enough to fall out of it.
Does a border run work?
Under a per-entry rule it often does, subject to any re-entry restriction the country adds. Under a rolling window it does not, and it is worse than useless: the day you leave and the day you return are both days of presence in most counting conventions, so a same-day round trip can cost you two days and gain you nothing.
How do I tell which one applies to me?
It depends on your passport and the destination, not on the destination alone — the same country can give one nationality a per-entry allowance and another a rolling window. Every route in the Stretch rulebook states which shape governs it, along with the source it came from and the date we checked.
Why does my day count go down when I have not travelled?
Because the window moved, not because you did. Under a rolling rule the count is recalculated from today every day, so days drop out on their own. This is the mechanism behind the worked example above, and it is why "90 minus the days I have used" is not a reliable answer.
Is a rolling window always 90 days in 180?
No. That is the best-known one because of Schengen, but our rulebook contains rolling windows measured over 180, 365 and 730 days, with allowances that are not always 90. Check the specific route rather than assuming the Schengen shape.
Sources
- Regulation (EU) 2016/399 — the Schengen Borders Code, Article 6(1), which states the 90-days-in-any-180-day-period short-stay rule.
- The European Commission's short-stay visa calculator, the official implementation of that look-back.
- Regulation (EU) 2018/1806, which lists the nationalities exempt from the visa requirement for those short stays.
- Counts and destination lists in this guide are derived from the Stretch rulebook as published on 23 August 2026; each individual rule carries its own official source and checked date on its route page.
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Recommended reads
- EES 2026: how Schengen days are counted [2026]
- Do arrival and departure days count towards your visa days? [2026]
- Where can you stay visa-free the longest? The published maximums [2026]
- The hardest visa counting rules to get right [2026]
- Visa-free days by passport: what your passport actually gets [2026]
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