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5 on 4 off schedule
Five ten-hour shifts then four days off — a nine-day cycle that buys a long weekend every time round, at the price of never landing on the same days.
Also called: 5-4 rotation
- Shift length
- 10 hours
- Cycle
- 9 days
- Average week
- About 42 hours
- Teams
- 2 or more
What the 5 on 4 off schedule is
Five ten-hour shifts, four days off, nine days from start to repeat.
It is the ten-hour answer to the same question twelve-hour patterns ask: how do you get a real break without cutting the hours? Five tens is fifty hours banked in five days, and the four-day break comes out of that.
Some agencies run it at ten hours and forty minutes rather than a flat ten, which brings the average closer to a standard week.
How the cycle runs
One nine-day cycle:
Set a start day, set the length to 9 days, and paint each one. This pattern walks, so each time round it lands on different weekdays — which the app works out for you.
Start day: 1 September 2026Days: 9
Day shiftNight shift24-hour tourDay off
Set the template once. Your days show up on every month after it.
September 2026
Print this rotation (PDF) One page — the cycle above, and a blank grid for your own dates.
Weekends off on this rotation
This cycle is 9 days, which does not divide by seven — so it drifts through the week and every squad gets much the same share. Around 16 to 18 full weekends a year, wherever you sit in it.
A year on this rotation: 18 full weekends off, spread through the calendar. A weekend counts only when both the Saturday and the Sunday are free. All 21 rotations compared →
The four-day break, every nine days
Four consecutive days off arrives roughly three times a month. That is more long breaks than a five-and-two ever gives, and long enough to be worth something — travel, a course, a solid run of paid duty work.
The cost is the five-shift run in front of it. Five tens in a row is fifty hours in five days, and the fifth one is felt.
Hours and the work period
Five ten-hour shifts every nine days works out around forty-two hours a week averaged across the cycle, depending on the exact tour length.
Nine days does not divide into seven or fourteen, so the pattern drifts against both the week and most pay periods. What lands in a given pay period varies.
Who works it
Ten-hour agencies wanting a long break in the cycle:
- Municipal police patrol
- RCMP patrol divisions
- Investigative units
- Dispatch centres
- Corrections
- Utilities and field services
BlueShifts. Plan Your Year. Own Your Time.
The shift calendar built for your rotation, off-duty work, and life on and off the clock.
Save this pattern once and the year fills itself in — forward as far as you want, and back over the months you have already worked.
The trade-off
What works
- Four consecutive days off every nine
- Ten-hour shifts rather than twelves
- More long breaks than a five-and-two
- Overlap at shift change on ten-hour tours
What hurts
- Five shifts in a row before the break
- Nine-day cycle drifts through the week and the pay period
- No fixed weekend
- Harder to plan around than a seven or fourteen-day cycle
Put it on your calendar
Working it out by hand is where the mistakes happen.
Save the pattern once and BlueShifts fills the calendar in, forward and back.
What Canadian law does to this rotation
The cycle is the same shape in both countries. What sits underneath it is not, and in Canada it is provincial rather than federal — so the same rotation can be worked and paid differently depending on where you are.
The daily ceiling follows your shift, not the statute. Ontario's Employment Standards Act caps the working day at eight hours or the number of hours in an established regular workday, if it is longer than eight. On a 10-hour rotation that established day is 10-hour, so the ceiling is 10-hour — the rotation itself sets it. Going past that needs a written agreement, and no agreement lets anyone be required past 60 hours in a week.
Eleven consecutive hours off between shifts is the ESA minimum and it applies whatever the pattern. A 10-hour shift leaves 14 hours before the next one is due, so this cycle clears it — but a held-over shift or a court appearance on the turnaround eats straight into that margin.
The weekly rest rule is the one long runs meet. The ESA requires at least 24 consecutive hours off in each work week, or 48 consecutive hours off in every period of two consecutive work weeks. This cycle runs 5 shifts back to back, so it is the two-week version that has to carry it.
Overtime is triggered differently by province, and this rotation averages about 42 hours. The weekly threshold runs from 40 hours in Quebec, Newfoundland and Labrador, the territories and federally, through 44 in Ontario and New Brunswick, to 48 in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. Ontario and Quebec have no daily trigger at all; British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and the territories have both, so exceeding 8 hours in a day counts even if the week does not. BC adds double time past 12 hours in a day. Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador calculate overtime at 1.5 times the minimum wage rather than your own rate. Same roster, a different answer in almost every jurisdiction.
And one Quebec rule that catches shift workers out: premiums added to the hourly rate, such as night or evening shift premiums, are not taken into account when calculating overtime. Your overtime is worked out on the base rate, so a night premium does not carry into it.
Averaging is what makes a cycle like this work on paper. Where the pattern does not fit a calendar week, hours can be averaged over two to four weeks for the purpose of overtime, by written agreement. If you are in a union, your union can make that agreement with your employer — and in a policing or fire service it usually has, which is why your collective agreement rather than the statute is the document that decides your pay.
Two employers sit outside all of that. The RCMP works under one national agreement with the Treasury Board rather than provincial standards — its default workweek is forty hours from Monday to Friday with a workday of a minimum of eight consecutive hours, and separate articles for variable and shift work that take a detachment off that default. Federal enforcement uses a Variable Shift Schedule Arrangement, negotiated branch by branch, so two workplaces under one contract can run different rosters. In both cases the agreement is the whole answer and the province you live in does not enter into it.
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.
Common questions
How many hours a week is 5 on 4 off?
Around forty-two on ten-hour shifts, averaged across the nine-day cycle.
Does it give a fixed weekend?
No. Nine days does not divide into seven, so the days off move through the week each cycle.
Why ten hours and forty minutes?
Some agencies stretch the tour slightly so five shifts a cycle land closer to a full-time average.
Put the 5 on 4 off schedule on your calendar
Save the 5 on 4 off schedule once, tell BlueShifts the day your cycle starts, and the rest of the year draws itself. The paid duty jobs, the hours and the pay go on top of it.
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