French Salary Calculator (Salaire Brut en Net)
Free French take-home pay calculator: enter your gross annual salary, cadre status and withholding tax rate to instantly calculate social contributions and net pay after tax.
What is a French gross-to-net salary calculator?
This calculator estimates your take-home pay from your gross annual French salary by applying the employee social contributions (CSG, CRDS, old-age insurance, Agirc-Arrco supplementary pension, CEG, CET) and, optionally, the income tax withheld at source.
Unlike a flat-percentage estimate, it accounts for the two contribution tranches (tranche 1 up to the social security ceiling, tranche 2 above it) and distinguishes net pay before tax from net pay after tax — two figures that are often confused on a French payslip.
How the calculation works
- Enter your gross salary Type your gross annual salary in euros, or use the slider.
- Set your cadre status Check the box if you are a cadre (slightly affects the Apec contribution).
- Choose your withholding rate Use the default neutral rate, or enter your own personalized rate from the DGFiP.
- Read the result The contribution breakdown, net pay before tax, and net pay after tax appear instantly.
Tips for getting more out of it
- Unemployment insurance and health insurance no longer have an employee share since the 2018-2019 reforms.
- Agirc-Arrco and CEG rates have been identical for cadres and non-cadres since the 2019 merger; the Apec contribution remains the one cadre-specific item.
- CSG and CRDS apply with no ceiling — even above the social security ceiling, they continue to apply to the entire salary.
- Your personalized withholding rate is automatically recalculated by the DGFiP up to three times a year (September, January, and after you file your tax return).
- A jointly-taxed couple can end up with a lower effective rate thanks to the family quotient (quotient familial).
Payslip terms explained
- Neutral rate
- A non-personalized withholding tax rate based only on the current month's salary, used by default for new employees or anyone who prefers not to share their personal rate with their employer.
- Net imposable
- Net pay before tax with the non-deductible CSG and CRDS added back in — this higher base, rather than net pay before tax, is what withholding tax and income tax are actually calculated on.
- PASS
- Plafond Annuel de la Sécurité Sociale, the annual social security ceiling (€48,060 in 2026) used to split several contributions into tranche 1 and tranche 2.
- CSG
- Contribution Sociale Généralisée, levied on nearly all income to fund social protection; part of it is deductible from taxable income, part is not.
- Agirc-Arrco
- The single points-based supplementary pension scheme, mandatory for all private-sector employees since the 2019 merger of the former executive (Agirc) and non-executive (Arrco) schemes.
Frequently asked questions
Side Note — why is the gap between gross and net pay so large in France?
French payslips are famous for the long list of contribution lines between gross and net pay. The system is built on a principle of solidarity: nearly all social protection — health, pensions, unemployment — is funded through contributions pooled at the national level, which is why an employee typically takes home somewhere between 75% and 78% of their gross salary once social contributions are deducted.
Withholding tax at source (prélèvement à la source) is a relatively recent reform, introduced in 2019. Before that, income tax for year N was paid in year N+1, creating a timing mismatch: someone who lost their job or saw their income drop still had to pay tax calculated on their higher earnings from the previous year. Withholding at source now lets tax adjust in near real time.
The personalized withholding rate is calculated by the tax administration from a household's total income and family quotient, then passed on to the employer — who never sees the underlying income or family details, a design meant to protect privacy. New employees, or anyone who'd rather not share their personal rate, can opt for the neutral rate instead, calculated solely from the salary paid by that one employer.