Learner Log Book Bonus Hours Calculator

Road44, the driving log app mentioned below, is our app. The rules on this page were checked on NSW, Queensland, ACT and Tasmanian government pages and Wisconsin's statute in October 2026. Rules change, and your licensing authority has the final word.

How the calculator counts your bonus hours

A bonus scheme lets an hour with a driving instructor fill more than an hour of your log book. The calculator works it out in four steps:

1. Each lesson hour up to the limit earns bonus hours: the multiplier minus 1. At 3 for 1, that's 2 bonus hours for every lesson hour.
2. Hours counted are your supervisor hours, plus lesson hours, plus the bonus, plus any course credit.
3. Night hours left are the night hours required minus the night hours you've driven.
4. Hours left are the larger of two figures: the hours required minus the hours counted, or the night hours left.

Step 4 matters once the total is covered. Bonus hours and course credit fill the total but never the night requirement, so any night hours you still owe are what's left.

Take the default NSW figures: 40 hours with a parent, 6 hours of lessons and 8 hours at night. The 6 lesson hours earn 12 bonus hours, so 58 of the 120 hours count. That leaves 62 hours, 12 of them at night. You've driven 46 hours, so the log takes 108 hours of driving from start to finish. Your next 4 lesson hours are still worth 8 bonus hours.

Each entry is rounded to the nearest minute before any math, so type 1.5 for a 90-minute lesson. Results show hours and minutes and never read "2 h 60 min". The percentage rounds down, so 100% means the total is done.

If your log book has no bonus scheme, as in most US states, the supervised driving hours calculator takes your required and logged hours without the lesson math.

Bonus hour rules by state

These are the calculator's presets. Each state name links to the official page or statute the figures come from.

The ACT figures come from its driver licensing regulation and the City Services Safe Plates FAQ. Tasmania's are on the Plates Plus logbook FAQs and credit hours page.

Night hours. NSW says the bonus from a night lesson "can only count as daytime driving hours." Queensland handles it differently: a night trip with a driver trainer is counted "as triple time or night hours, not both." To claim it as triple time, enter it under lesson hours and leave it out of night hours. To claim it as night, enter it under supervisor hours and night hours. The ACT and Tasmanian pages don't say how instructor bonus hours treat night time, so the calculator applies the NSW rule to every preset: bonus hours are never night hours.

Limits. Count hours, not lessons. NSW allows "a maximum of 10 hours with a driving instructor", so a 90-minute lesson uses 1.5 of the 10. After the limit, lessons count as the time you drove. The ACT says "After that each hour with a driving instructor counts as an hour of driving," and Tasmania says lessons "are counted as normal once you have had your ten two-for-one lessons." For NSW and Queensland, the calculator reads the same rule from the bonus-hour cap. In NSW, the bonus also only applies "when you drive with instructors who are licensed in NSW."

Age. NSW's 120 hours are for learners under 25, and Queensland says "If you're 25 or over you don't have to complete a logbook". In the ACT, a licence issued at 25 or older needs 50 hours, 5 of them at night. In Tasmania, non-novice learners don't log hours.

Wisconsin is the one US state we found that credits instructor hours at more than face value: each hour with an instructor counts as 2 hours of behind-the-wheel experience, for up to 5 instructor hours. For US states without an instructor bonus, use the supervised driving hours calculator. The road test eligibility date calculator finds the earliest date your state's permit rules allow a road test.

Planning the fewest hours to your licence

In NSW, the shortest route uses the full lesson bonus and the Safer Drivers Course. Lessons can come at any time. The course opens once you have 50 hours of on-road driving, bonus hours not counted, with some of them at night. Ten lesson hours (logged as 30) and the course (20) count for 50 of the 120 hours, which leaves 70 hours to drive: 80 hours behind the wheel in all, including the lessons. At least 20 of the hours you actually drive must be at night. Lesson time after dark counts toward them, but the bonus doesn't.

In Queensland, 10 hours with a driver trainer log as 30, which leaves 70 of the 100 hours, 10 of them at night: 80 hours of driving in all. Decide each night trip with a trainer one way or the other, triple time or night hours.

In the ACT, 10 instructor hours (30), the Safer Driver Course (20) and the Vulnerable Road User Program (10) leave 40 of the 100 hours, with 10 at night. That's 50 hours behind the wheel in all.

Bonus hours shorten the log, not the practice you need. Our guide to what to practice in your first 50 hours of driving puts the skills in order, and how long it takes to log 50 supervised driving hours has the pacing math. To turn the hours left into weekly sessions before a test date, use the driving practice schedule calculator.

Keeping your own record next to the official log book

Your official record is your state's log book or app: Roundtrip in NSW, the Queensland learner logbook app, or Plates Plus in Tasmania. Road44, our driving log app, is a personal record that logs clock time only. It doesn't apply 3 for 1 or any other bonus, so set it up like this:

• Choose Hours, then set the all-time goal to the calculator's "Driving time, start to finish", rounded up to a whole hour (the goal takes whole numbers). Set the night goal to your night requirement.
• Log each lesson as its own drive with the instructor's name in Supervisor. The five most recent names come back as one-tap suggestions. Put the school details in Notes.
• Road44 marks a drive as night when it starts between 7 PM and 7 AM. The NSW, Queensland and Tasmanian pages define night as sunset to sunrise, so set the Night drive switch by hand to match. On a winter evening a drive can start after dark before 7 PM, and in summer, with daylight saving, a drive after 7 PM can still be in daylight. The Queensland app's own night toggle appears for trips between 4.35 pm and 7.55 am.
• A Road44 drive has one day-or-night flag. If a drive crosses sunset and your official log splits it, log the two parts as separate drives.
• The free export (Text, CSV, PDF or PNG) can include Supervisor and Period columns, so lesson hours and night hours add up in a spreadsheet.

If you've fallen behind, our guide on what to do when you forgot to log driving hours covers rebuilding missed drives, and the driving log template vs app guide compares paper and phone logs. Road44 is a personal record, not an official or certified log book.