FOIA Statutory Response Timer
When the agency must respond to your public records request (20 business days under federal FOIA).
Written and maintained by Paul Clark, Redmoon Software · Rules last verified · Sources
These calculators are for informational purposes only and do not constitute legal, financial, or professional advice.
How the FOIA Statutory Response Timer works
The FOIA Statutory Response Timer works out when a federal agency's response to a Freedom of Information Act request comes due. The statute gives agencies 20 business days from receipt of a proper request to determine whether it will comply and to notify you of that determination, so the calculator starts at 20 business days — but the count is an input, because state public-records laws run on their own clocks and several are much shorter. Enter the date the agency received the request, confirm the period, and the tool returns the date the answer is owed.
Two settings decide whether the number you get is the right one. The first is the business-days toggle, which is on by default: federal FOIA counts working days, excluding Saturdays, Sundays and legal public holidays, and a request filed the day before a long weekend loses those days from the wall calendar without losing them from the count. The second is the holiday calendar, which the tool preselects from your browser's time zone — select United States yourself if you are filing a federal request from outside the country, or the tool will skip your local holidays instead of the federal ones. Day zero is the date of receipt by the office that can act on the request, not the date you hit send; a request misrouted to the wrong component can be re-dated when it arrives at the right one.
What the timer gives you is the statutory deadline, not a prediction of when documents will land. Those are very different things in practice. The 20-day clock runs to the agency's *determination* — its decision on whether to release records and the scope of any exemptions — and the records themselves can follow later. The clock can also be paused: an agency may toll it once to seek clarification from you, or to resolve fee issues, and may claim a 10-business-day extension in unusual circumstances, which the calculator will show if you raise the day count to 30. A missed deadline is not nothing, though — it is what exhausts your administrative remedies and opens the door to an appeal or a suit, which is exactly why the date is worth having on record.
Worked example
You file a FOIA request that the agency receives on Monday, 6 July 2026, with no holidays in the following month. Twenty business days lands on Monday, 3 August 2026 — four weeks later on the wall calendar, because eight weekend days fall inside the window. Move the receipt date back to Wednesday, 1 July and the Independence Day holiday observed Friday 3 July drops out too, pushing the determination deadline to Wednesday, 29 July. If the agency then invokes the 10-business-day unusual-circumstances extension, change the count to 30 and the deadline moves to Wednesday, 12 August.
Frequently asked questions
Is the FOIA deadline 20 business days or 20 calendar days?
Business days. The federal statute counts working days, so weekends and legal public holidays are excluded — which is why a 20-day deadline usually falls about four calendar weeks after receipt. Keep the business-days toggle on for a federal request. Many state public-records laws count differently (some in calendar days, some in far shorter windows), so if you are timing a state request, switch the toggle and the day count to match that statute.
When does the clock actually start?
On receipt by the agency component that can process the request, not on the date you sent it. If a request is submitted to the wrong office, the clock generally starts when it reaches the correct one — which can be days later. Agencies may also stop the clock once to ask you a clarifying question, and to sort out fee agreements; the time you take to reply is not counted against them, so a request that sat waiting on your answer will come due later than this calculator's date.
What happens if the agency blows the deadline?
Practically, agencies miss FOIA deadlines routinely and there is no automatic penalty or automatic release of records. What the missed date does is legally significant in a different way: it generally constitutes constructive exhaustion of your administrative remedies, meaning you can proceed to an appeal or to federal court without waiting further. It can also affect the agency's ability to charge certain fees. Recording the exact due date is what makes that argument available later.
The agency asked me a clarifying question. Does that change my deadline?
Yes, and the calculator cannot show it. An agency may toll the clock once to seek clarification and separately to resolve fee issues. The time spent waiting on your reply is not counted against the agency, so the determination comes due later than the date shown here — count the tolled days and add them.
What this calculator does not do
A limitation you know about costs far less than one you find after the deadline. These are the specific things this tool cannot work out for you.
- It does not model tolling. An agency may stop the clock once to seek clarification from you and again to settle fees; time spent waiting on your reply is not counted against it, so a tolled request comes due later than the date shown.
- It assumes the request reached the component that can act on it. A request routed to the wrong office is generally re-dated when it arrives at the right one.
- State public-records laws are not federal FOIA. Several run on calendar days and much shorter windows — change the day count and the business-days toggle to match the statute you are actually filing under.
Where these rules come from
The periods this calculator applies are taken from the primary sources below rather than from secondary summaries. Verify against them before relying on a date that matters.
- 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(6)(A)(i)
Sets the 20-business-day period for an agency determination, and the 10-day unusual-circumstances extension.
- DOJ Office of Information Policy — FOIA guidance
The executive-branch guidance agencies apply when computing receipt, tolling and extensions.