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Practical guide
Your employer pays part of each meal voucher and you pay the rest, deducted on your payslip. How much the employer must pay, how far its share escapes contributions, how vouchers show on the payslip and where to spend them: the rules and examples worked out by the site.
Meal vouchers (titres-restaurant, often called tickets-restaurant) are among the most common perks in France, and among the simplest to put a figure on. They still have their rules: a regulated employer share, a cap beyond which that share bears contributions, a deduction on your payslip that many people mistake for a contribution, and spending rules that have changed in recent years. Here is how they work, what they are really worth each month and how to count them in a job offer.
A meal voucher is a means of payment reserved for meals, on paper, on a card or in an app. The employer does not have to offer them; if it does, every employee in the same situation is entitled, whether on a permanent or fixed-term contract, full or part time, on site or working from home. The rule: one voucher per meal that falls within your working day. So no voucher for a day of leave, a sick day, or a day when the meal is already paid for, during a reimbursed business trip for instance.
The employer must fund between 50% and 60% of each voucher's value; you pay the rest. For a €10 voucher funded at the minimum, the employer pays €5.00 and you pay €5.00. Your share is not a contribution: it is the price you pay for vouchers worth more, deducted straight from your payslip.
The employer's share escapes social security contributions up to €7.32 per voucher for vouchers issued in 2026. Beyond that, the excess goes back into the contribution base, like salary. To get the full exemption without exceeding it, the voucher's value must therefore lie between €12.20 (with a 60% employer share) and €14.64 (with 50%). A €13 voucher funded at 60% exceeds the cap by €0.48 per voucher. The cap is revised every year.
Your share shows up as a deduction, after contributions, which lowers your take-home pay. Example worked out by the site's engine: employee on €3,000 gross a month, 20 vouchers in the month.
| Situation | Vouchers received | Payslip deduction | Take-home pay | Net + vouchers | Employer cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No meal vouchers | — | — | €2,353 | €2,353 | €4,007 |
| €10 voucher, 50% employer share | €200 | €100 | €2,253 | €2,453 | €4,107 |
| €13 voucher, 60% employer share | €260 | €104 | €2,247 | €2,507 | €4,169 |
With the first voucher, your net pay falls by exactly your share (€100), but you have €100 more to spend on meals, free of contributions and tax. With the second, the employer's share exceeds the cap: the excess (€10 over the month) bears contributions and counts in your taxable pay, which goes from €2,459 to €2,467.
To find this deduction and the other lines on your payslip, the guide to your payslip explained walks through them in order.
The employer is free to decide how many vouchers it hands out, within one limit: one voucher per meal that falls within your working day. In practice the number often follows the days you actually work: in a month when you take a week's holiday you receive fewer, and the deduction from your pay falls accordingly. Part time, it all depends on your hours: a day that spans the lunch break gives you a voucher, a morning that ends before it does not. To estimate what the vouchers are worth to you in a month, multiply the number of qualifying days by the employer's share of one voucher: with 20 days and a €10 voucher funded at 50%, that comes to €100.
Most employers have moved to a rechargeable card or an app: the exact amount is debited, no change is lost, and checking your balance by text message must be free. Paper vouchers still exist; they give no change, which pushes you to round up your purchases. Whatever the format, the funding, exemption and spending rules are the same.
What meal vouchers are really worth to you is the employer's share: your own share you pay yourself. In the standard example, that is €100 a month of exempt top-up. The job offer comparison tool adds that share to each offer's net pay. Vouchers follow different rules from meals supplied by the employer, which the guide to benefits in kind describes. If an offer has a canteen instead, compare the price of a meal with your share of a voucher; the full method for weighing two offers is in the guide to comparing two job offers.
No. The employer does not have to hand them out: it can offer a canteen, a staff restaurant or a meal allowance instead, or nothing at all if no agreement requires it. If it does hand them out, however, it must follow the funding rules and offer them to all employees in the same situation.
Yes, on the same terms as your colleagues on site: one voucher per working day when a meal falls within your working hours. Employees on fixed-term contracts, part-timers, temps, apprentices and interns are entitled too, on the same terms.
During the calendar year in which they were issued and until the end of February of the following year, up to €25 a day. Until 31 December 2026, they can be used for any food product, even items not ready to eat, such as pasta or flour.
Yes: you do not have to accept them, unless a collective agreement says so. It is advisable to tell your employer in writing. The deduction disappears from your payslip, but you also lose the employer's share: refusing means giving up a tax- and contribution-free top-up.
This guide gives you a method, not legal advice: the official rules and amounts are those of the sources above, as at their date.
The site's tools and features that go with this guide: the figures there are calculated by the code, never by the AI.