residex.ioEvery trip accounted forThe UK Statutory Residence Test
Where the line sits depends on your ties — and the year does not start in January
The year does not start in January
The UK tax year runs from 6 April to 5 April. Almost every other rule residex.io tracks uses the calendar year, and applying the wrong one does not shift your count slightly — it produces an entirely different number.
Ninety-five days in the UK from January to early April, and another ninety-five from April onwards, is 190 days in calendar 2026 and would look like a clear breach. Split at 6 April as the rule requires, it is 95 days in one tax year and 95 in the next, and neither is close to anything.
Residex counts UK days on the UK tax year for exactly this reason.
Midnights, not travel days
The UK generally counts a day if you were in the country at the end of it — at midnight. This makes it the exception among the rules here: Schengen and the US count the day you arrive and the day you leave, so their totals run one higher per trip.
If your UK figure looks lower than your Schengen figure for a similar stay, that is the rule, not a discrepancy. (There is a further "deeming rule" that can count qualifying days without a midnight for people with several ties and recent UK residence — one of several places the test stops being a simple count.)
Three tests, applied in order
The automatic overseas tests come first, and meeting one settles it: you are non-resident. Fewer than 16 days in the UK if you were UK resident in any of the previous three tax years; fewer than 46 days if you were not resident in any of them; or full-time work abroad with under 91 UK days and under 31 days worked in the UK.
If none applies, the automatic UK tests are next, and meeting one makes you resident: 183 days or more in the tax year, your only home being in the UK, or full-time work in the UK.
If neither set decides it, the sufficient ties test does — and that is where the day threshold stops being a fixed number.
How many days is too many depends on your ties
The more connections you keep to the UK, the fewer days it takes to become resident. Someone who left the UK recently ("a leaver" — resident in at least one of the previous three tax years) is held to a stricter line than someone arriving fresh.
Which is why "how long can I spend in the UK?" has no single answer. With four ties as a leaver, 16 days is enough.
| Days in the UK | Ties needed — arriver | Ties needed — leaver |
|---|---|---|
| 16–45 | Not resident on ties alone | 4 |
| 46–90 | 4 | 3 |
| 91–120 | 3 | 2 |
| 121–182 | 2 | 1 |
| 183+ | Automatically resident | Automatically resident |
The five ties
A family tie (spouse, civil partner or minor children resident in the UK). An accommodation tie (a UK home available to you for a continuous 91 days, which you use). A work tie (40 days or more working in the UK). A 90-day tie (more than 90 days in the UK in either of the two previous tax years). And, for leavers only, a country tie — more midnights in the UK than in any other single country.
What residex.io does, and what it will not do
Residex counts your UK days on the UK tax year, using midnights, and flags two points: 183 days, where the automatic UK test is met, and 45 days, past which no automatic overseas test can apply any more and your ties decide.
It does not compute an SRT outcome, because it does not know your ties — where your family lives, what accommodation is available to you, how much you work in the UK. Anyone claiming to settle your UK residence from a day count alone is skipping most of the test.
Who needs to watch this
- UK nationals living abroad who still visit regularly
- Recent leavers, who face the strictest thresholds
- Non-doms working partly in the UK
- Business owners and property owners splitting time with the UK
Counting days is where this stops
Residex tells you exactly where you stand against this threshold and warns you before you cross it. Crossing it is not a conclusion, though: it does not tell you what you owe, whether a treaty offers relief, which forms to file, or how this interacts with residency you already hold elsewhere.
That is where Amanda picks up — turning a day count into a read on your real cross-border obligations.
Track it automatically
Free forever. No account required. Your data never leaves your device.
How residex.io works
residex.io tracks where you have physically been, and tells you where that puts you against each country's own residency threshold.
What it does: • Counts your days per country, and per area for the Schengen 90/180 rule • Applies each country's actual rule — 183 days for most, 180 for Thailand, the UK's 6 April tax year, Portugal's rolling twelve months, and the US weighted three-year test • Counts days the way each rule counts them, including the arrival and departure days that most tests count and a nights-based tally misses • Warns as you approach a threshold, and can notify you on the date a trip you have already planned would take you across it • Exports to CSV, or hands off to Amanda for the compliance picture
Built for digital nomads, frequent travellers, expats, and anyone whose year is split across borders.
On your device, and nowhere else. There is no account, no login, and no copy of your travel history on our servers — residex works offline because the data never needed to be anywhere else.
It leaves your device only when you decide to send it: • A backup file you save yourself • A transfer to another device, encrypted with a code only you hold — the server relaying it cannot read what it is carrying • A hand-off to Amanda, which you start
We do receive a small amount of anonymous usage information — how many trips are in a log, how old an install is, the language the app is used in, and a random identifier that is not linked to you. Never a trip, a date, a destination, or your name. It is listed in full in our Privacy Policy.
The trade-off worth knowing: because your device holds the only copy, clearing your browser data or deleting the app erases it, and we cannot restore it. Save a backup before you switch devices.
No — residex is a day counter, not a compliance engine. It flags when you cross a threshold like the 183-day rule, but turning that into specific filings, tax exposure, or reporting obligations depends on your jurisdictions and personal ties.
For that, our partner Amanda maps your full cross-border legal exposure across countries, surfaces the filings and deadlines you trigger, and turns the data residex collects into a concrete compliance picture you can hand to your accountant.
You can export your residex trips and import them straight into Amanda — the CSV formats are aligned.