Home › Compare schedules › 4/10 vs 5-2 5-3
4/10 vs 5-2 5-3
The two patterns most departments choose between when they are not going to twelves. One buys you a third day off every week; the other keeps a familiar working week.
4/10
Day shiftNight shift24-hour tourDay off
5-2 5-3
Day shiftNight shift24-hour tourDay off
| 4/10 | vs | 5-2 5-3 |
|---|---|---|
| The cycle | ||
| 10 hours | Shift length | 8 hours |
| 7 daysOften inside a longer rotation | Cycle length | 15 days |
| 40 hours | Average week | 37.3 hours |
| About 17 | Shifts a month | About 20 |
| 3 | Days off a week | 2 or 3 |
| Your week | ||
| Yes | Three days off every week | NoOnly at the end of the cycle |
| YesOn a pure 4/10 | Days off land on the same weekdays | No |
| No | Familiar five-day working week | Yes |
| Yes | A three-day break in the cycle | Yes |
| On duty | ||
| YesTwo hours a day, typically | Overlap between watches | No |
| Yes | Longer day on duty | No |
| No | More handovers and briefings | Yes |
The extra day off
4/10 gives three days off every week, permanently, for the same forty hours. That is the reason most agencies moved to it, and the reason officers defend it.
5-2 5-3 gives two days off, then two, then three, on a fifteen-day cycle that never lines up with the week. The three-day break at the end is what people plan their year around.
What the agency gets
The 4/10 overlap is the operational argument. Two watches sharing a couple of hours a day means more units on the street when call volume peaks, which is why chiefs like it even when it costs more.
BlueShifts. Plan Your Year. Own Your Time.
The shift calendar built for your rotation, off-duty work, and life on and off the clock.
Whichever of the two your agency runs, save it once and the calendar keeps track of it for you.
Hours in your check
4/10 sits at forty hours. 5-2 5-3 comes in around thirty-seven, and the gap usually gets filled with overtime, court and training. Two patterns that look similar on paper can land in very different places on a pay statement.
Full detail on each pattern: 4/10 schedule · 5-2 5-3 schedule
In Canada this is a bargaining question
Everything above holds either side of the border — the cycles are the cycles. What changes here is who decides, and what the two cost.
A Canadian service does not simply adopt a rotation. The schedule sits in the collective agreement as a compressed work week article, and the Toronto Police Association and OPP agreements both carry one. In the OPP's case the terms of a compressed work week agreement are themselves subject to the grievance procedure. So moving from 4/10 to 5-2 5-3 is not a decision a new inspector makes — it is bargained, and it stays until it is bargained again.
It also does not follow that a whole service runs one of them. The Toronto Police Association agreement carries a Shift Schedules schedule in the plural, so which one you work can depend on where you are posted. The answer is in the agreement.
The two do not cost the same in every province
This is where the choice stops being about lifestyle. Ontario has no daily overtime trigger at all — overtime starts after 44 hours in a work week however the hours are arranged, so a 12-hour day and a 10-hour day are treated alike. British Columbia is the opposite: time and a half after 8 hours in a day, and double time past 12. Under those rules the 5-2 5-3 side is a materially more expensive way to cover the same ground, and the daily trigger does the deciding rather than the weekly total.
Ontario's daily ceiling follows the roster rather than the statute: the cap is eight hours or the established regular workday, if it is longer. Put a 12-hour day in the agreement and 12 hours becomes the lawful day. That is why the agreement matters more than the Act here.
Checked 7 August 2026. Provincial rules are quoted from the Employment Standards Act of the province named and, for Quebec, from the CNESST; federal provisions from the Treasury Board agreements. Employment standards are amended and collective agreements are renegotiated — check the current text before relying on a threshold or a figure.
The shift schedule you actually work
Save whichever one your agency runs and a police shift calendar built by an officer fills the rest of the year in. Everything stays on your phone unless you choose to share it.
Scan to install
