Freelance or employee in France: comparing what you really earn

A day rate multiplied by the working days in a month gives a figure that looks like a dream. But turnover is not a salary, and a salary is not just the net pay that lands in your account. This guide puts the two statuses side by side, what each one pays, receives and funds in protection, using an example worked out by the site's engine, so that you can decide with your eyes open.

What a salary quietly includes

Take a non-cadre employee paid €3,000 gross a month. They take home €2,353 net before tax, but their employer spends €4,007 a month, or €48,086 a year. In between, employee and employer contributions pay for rights the employee never sees in their bank transfer:

• Unemployment insurance, funded by the employer: if you are dismissed or your contract ends, an allowance worked out from your salary.
• The basic and supplementary pension, earned on the gross salary, often a provident scheme (sick leave, disability, death) and at least 50% of the company health cover paid by the employer.
• Paid holiday: 30 working days a year (France counts Monday to Saturday), paid like days worked.
• The extras: 50% of the public transport pass refunded by law, training, equipment, and often meal vouchers. The guide to employee contributions explains every line.

What a freelancer pays for themselves

Under the micro-entreprise scheme, contributions are a percentage of the turnover actually received, paid monthly or quarterly to URSSAF: for professional services, 25.8% in our example, vocational training levy included; the rate is not the same for a commercial or craft business, where it also depends on what you bill (services or the sale of goods). They open pension and health rights, but no unemployment insurance. The rest, the freelancer pays for or goes without:

• Unbilled days: prospecting, quotes, admin, training, gaps between assignments, and holidays, which nobody pays for.
• Costs: computer, software, phone, travel, accountant, professional liability insurance (compulsory in some trades, often required by clients). Under the micro scheme they are not deductible: they come out of your net income.
• Extra protection: individual health cover, a provident policy, pension savings, loss-of-income insurance. None of it is compulsory, which is exactly the trap.

On unemployment, a self-employed worker is only entitled to the self-employed workers' allowance, small, short and reserved for specific business closures: nothing like an employee's allowance. Contributions, income tax and ceilings are covered in detail in the guide from turnover to net income.

The same net on both sides: a worked example

What day rate do you need to bill, as a micro-entrepreneur in professional services, to match the employee's €2,353 net a month? The site's engine looks for the turnover that gives exactly that net, costs deducted, for three typical years. The first uses 218 billed days: a full year for an employee on a day-based contract, with weekends, holidays and public holidays removed, and not a single quiet day.

Calculation: modele-social publicodes engine, non-cadre employee on a permanent contract with the site's standard health cover, micro-entreprise in unregulated professional services, without Acre relief or the flat-rate tax option. Net compared before tax.

Two lessons. First, the floor climbs fast: going from 218 to 160 billed days and paying your own costs takes the day rate needed from €175 to €280, for the same net. Second, even in the best case, the client pays €38,055 a year where the employer spends €48,086 on the employee: the €10,031 gap is contributions the micro scheme does not pay, and so rights it does not open: no unemployment insurance, and a pension worked out on a lower income than the employee's gross pay. A day rate at the floor is a salary without a safety net.

To redo the calculation with your own day rate, days and costs, the freelance day rate vs salary tool works both ways, and the micro-entrepreneur simulator adds income tax for your household.

Micro, company or umbrella: what changes

The micro scheme is the simplest and the cheapest in contributions, as long as your costs stay low. Once they weigh, the standard regime, an EURL or a SASU, which pay contributions on profit or pay, can suit better, at the price of full accounts. Umbrella employment keeps employee status and unemployment cover, but costs management fees and does not pay for periods without an assignment. An accountant will price these options better than any general rule.

Deciding without kidding yourself

1. Start from your value as an employee: the What am I worth? analysis works it out in gross annual terms from your CV and the salaries in your occupation. That is your benchmark.
2. Count your billable days honestly, over a year with quiet spells, not over your best quarter.
3. Add your costs and the protection you want to fund (provident cover, pension, a cash buffer): the day rate that comes out is your real floor.
4. Compare that floor with the rates charged in your occupation. If it is higher, employment pays better; if it is well below, freelancing has room. To present your assignments if you ever go back to employment, the guide to the freelance CV shows how.

And if you stay an employee, use this calculation the other way round: what your job costs the employer is a negotiating argument, and the guide to negotiating your starting salary helps you make it.