Two of them: Ireland and Cyprus. Both are EU member states that sit outside the Schengen area, so days spent in either do not touch your Schengen 90-day allowance, and Cyprus runs a separate 90/180 clock of its own. Schengen 90/180 Counter tracks several of these limits side by side, free on iPhone.
Disclosure: AppStoryo is operated by the studio that develops Schengen 90/180 Counter. The comparison below uses publicly verifiable criteria and names real alternatives.
Which EU countries are not in the Schengen area?
Exactly two, and the arithmetic is the quickest way to see it. The European Union has 27 member countries and 25 of them are inside the Schengen area, which leaves Ireland and Cyprus outside. The EU's own country list records Cyprus as an EU member state since 2004 and Ireland as one since 1973, with no Schengen membership line against either entry — the same list that shows Croatia joining Schengen in 2023 and Czechia in 2007. EU and Schengen membership are two different things, and this limit follows the second.
That distinction is the whole trap. Travellers plan around a mental map of the EU, hit the 90-day ceiling, and cannot see where the missing days went. Schengen 90/180 Counter keeps the Schengen total apart from the days that belong to no Schengen count at all.
Do days in Ireland count towards your Schengen 90 days?
No, and the UK's official travel advice for Ireland says so in one line: although Ireland is in the EU, it is not part of the Schengen area, and Schengen rules do not apply. A fortnight in Dublin leaves your Schengen balance exactly where it was. The same page adds that Ireland is outside the Entry/Exit System too, so there is no biometric Schengen record of the visit to reconcile later.
Ireland does, of course, run its own entry rules, and the permission an officer grants you on arrival there is a separate matter from your Schengen allowance. What it is not is a deduction: nothing you spend in Ireland is subtracted from the 90.
Does Cyprus count, and does it have a limit of its own?
Cyprus is the more interesting case, because the independence runs both ways. The UK's advice for Cyprus states that it is not part of the Schengen area, so visits to Cyprus do not count towards your 90-day visa-free limit in the Schengen area — and, in the same breath, that visits to other EU or Schengen countries do not count towards your 90-day limit in Cyprus. Two ledgers, neither of them reading the other.
So Cyprus is not a free pass; it is a second meter. You can travel there without a visa for up to 90 days, and to stay longer than 90 days in a 180-day period you have to take it up with the Cyprus High Commission. Overstay and the same advice warns you could be questioned on exit or put on a stop list and refused entry next time.
Which countries do count towards the Schengen 90/180 limit?
Twenty-nine of them, and four are not in the EU at all. The European Commission records that the Schengen area is composed of 29 countries: 25 EU member states plus Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and Liechtenstein. A week in Switzerland counts against the same 90 as a week in Spain, which catches out travellers who sort countries by EU membership rather than by Schengen membership.
The list also changed recently enough that older advice is still circulating. Bulgaria and Romania were the last countries to join, on 1 January 2025, and the UK's guidance now says plainly that Bulgaria follows Schengen area rules. If you were told a Black Sea fortnight would not touch your Schengen total, that stopped being true at the start of 2025.
Which means the territory list is itself a moving part, and a stay planned against last year's map can be an overstay against this year's. Schengen 90/180 Counter carries the current 29-country area as the basis of its count, so the geography is not something you have to remember.
How do you keep two separate limits straight at once?
By tracking them as separate totals from the start, not by trying to split one number afterwards. The EU's own guidance for non-EU nationals defines the Schengen short stay as up to 90 days in any 180-day period across those 29 countries; Cyprus applies its own 90 days in its own 180-day window. A traveller who spends spring in Greece and autumn in Cyprus is running two clocks that happen to use the same numbers. The App Store description of Schengen 90/180 Counter names the shape of that problem in its own feature list:
Multi-zone overview: Schengen Area, post-Brexit UK (180 days), US ESTA, 183-day tax residency, custom rules
Most people subject to the Schengen rule are subject to at least one other day limit as well, and the work is less about arithmetic than about never posting a day to the wrong ledger. Ireland and Cyprus are only the nearest case of a day that has to go somewhere other than the Schengen column.
When is a day counter not the right tool for this?
When the question is about permission rather than about days. Whether you may enter Ireland or Cyprus at all, on what documents, and for what purpose, is decided by those countries' rules and by the officer at the border. A counter that correctly excludes those days still has nothing to say about any of that.
It is also the wrong tool once your stay stops being a short stay. Days spent on a residence permit or a long-stay national visa sit outside the 90/180 count altogether, and no app can detect that change of category from your dates. Near a ceiling that matters, confirm it with the consulate.
Which app should you actually use?
Choose Country Days Tracker: Bounded if you want the most reviewed tracker here
- 347 ratings at an average of 4.6 on its App Store listing, the only app in this comparison with a rating base of that size
- last updated on 7 October 2026, so it is actively maintained
- needs iOS 18.0, the steepest requirement of the four, and the listing offers English only
Choose Nomad Tracker: Schengen Visa if you want the most recently updated option
- version 3.13.3, published on 13 October 2026 — the freshest build of the four
- listed in 6 languages and built for travellers tracking several countries at once
- 61.4 MB and iOS 17.1, so older iPhones are ruled out
Choose Schengen IO: 90/180 Calculator if you want the smallest download
- 14.9 MB, roughly a tenth the size of the largest app in this comparison
- listed in 10 languages and free, with version 1.73 published on 24 August 2026
- needs iOS 17.6, and its listing carries no ratings yet
Choose Schengen 90/180 Counter if you track more than one limit, or run an older iPhone
- works on iOS 13.0, the lowest requirement of the four, which covers iPhones the other three will not install on
- 44 languages listed on its App Store page, against 10, 6 and 1 for the others
- 22.0 MB, and it keeps the Schengen area, a UK 180-day total and a 183-day tax-residency count as separate ledgers
- free on iPhone and works offline with no account: Schengen 90/180 Counter on the App Store.
Questions travellers actually ask about EU days and Schengen days
Do days in Ireland count towards the Schengen 90/180 limit?
No. The UK's official travel advice for Ireland states that Ireland is in the EU but not in the Schengen area and that Schengen rules do not apply, so a fortnight in Dublin leaves your Schengen 90-day balance untouched.
Does time spent in Cyprus count towards my Schengen days?
No. Official advice for Cyprus says visits there do not count towards your 90-day visa-free limit in the Schengen area. The reverse holds too: Schengen and other EU days do not count towards the separate Cyprus limit.
Do Bulgaria and Romania still count separately?
Not any more. They were the last two countries to join the Schengen area, on 1 January 2025, and UK guidance now states plainly that Bulgaria follows Schengen area rules, so days there count against your Schengen 90.
Is Croatia inside the Schengen area?
Yes. The EU's own country list records Croatia as a Schengen area member since 2023, so Croatian days count against the same 90 as French, German or Italian ones, even though Croatia itself joined the EU only in 2013.
Do days in Switzerland count even though it is not in the EU?
Yes. Switzerland is one of the four non-EU member countries of the Schengen area, alongside Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein, so Swiss days count against the Schengen 90 exactly as days in any EU member of the area do.
Does the Entry/Exit System record a stay in Ireland?
No. UK advice for Ireland states that the country sits outside the Schengen area and is therefore not affected by the Entry/Exit System, so no biometric Schengen entry or exit record is created when you travel there.
Do I need ETIAS before travelling to the Schengen area?
Not yet. The European Commission states that ETIAS is not in operation and that no applications for travel authorisations are collected at this point, and that it will announce the specific start date well in advance.
Can I reset my Schengen clock by spending time in Ireland or Cyprus?
No. Days outside the area are simply not counted; they do not hand back days you have already spent. Your Schengen total falls only as old days drop out of the rolling 180-day window, wherever in the world you wait.
The short version: count Schengen days across the 29 countries, keep Ireland and Cyprus out of that total, and give Cyprus a ledger of its own. Schengen 90/180 Counter is free on iPhone; the European Commission's own calculator settles any disagreement.
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