How to Add Days to a Date in SQL

Use the DATEADD() function to quickly add days to a date in SQL. This function uses three parameter values:

DATEADD(interval, number, date)

interval — the unit you want to add

• year, yyyy, yy
• quarter, qq, q
• month, mm, m
• dayofyear, dy, y
• day, dd, d
• week, ww, wk
• weekday, dw, w
• hour, hh
• minute, mi, n
• second, ss, s
• millisecond, ms

number — the quantity of interval you want to add

This value can be positive if you want dates in the future, or negative to retrieve past dates.

date — the date to be modified

Formatted as YYYY/MM/DD.

For example, if you wanted to add 7 days to the date 2020-01-01, you would use the following SQL query:

SELECT DATEADD(day, 7, '2020-01-01');

DATEADD() Examples

Suppose you have a table called orders with an order_date column. If you wanted to add 7 days to each of these dates, you would use the following query:

SELECT DATEADD(day, 7, order_date) FROM orders;

Use negative intervals to look backwards — no need for a separate DATESUB.