Keeping more
What day rate matches your salary?
Almost every day rate calculator divides your salary by working days. That is the wrong starting number. Your employer is not spending your salary on you, they are spending between 11% and 34% more, and pricing from the smaller figure is how people underprice themselves on day one.
Your employer spends
73.560 €
a year, on you
You keep
37.561 €
a year, after everything
The gap
35.999 €
a year, that you never see
Day rate to match what you cost today
334 €
At 220 billable days. This is the rate that leaves your employer spending exactly what they spend now.
What most calculators tell you
273 €
salary ÷ days, and it is too low
Rate that also covers what you lose
418 €
+25% for holiday, sick and pension
The difference between those two numbers is the whole point. Almost every day-rate calculator divides your salary by working days. Your employer is not spending your salary on you. They are spending 73.560 €, and pricing from the smaller number is how people underprice themselves on day one.
The +25% is not a law. It is a rough cover for paid holiday you no longer get, the weeks you are ill or between contracts, and a pension nobody is paying into for you. Price your own version of it rather than trusting mine.
What this does not tell you, on purpose. What you would actually keep from that invoice. That depends on your country and on the structure you use, and those rates are not verified here, so no number is better than a confident wrong one. Take this figure to an accountant and ask them three things: which structures are available to you, what each one costs to run, and whether your work would be treated as employment anyway.
Why the usual answer is too low
The standard method is salary divided by 220 days. It feels reasonable and it is wrong by the size of the employer contributions, which is not a rounding error.
In Germany an employer spends about 22% on top of gross. In Ireland around 11%. In Estonia nearly 34%. That money is being spent on you right now. It never appears on anything you sign.
When you contract, the client stops paying it and starts paying you an invoice instead. If your rate only reflects your old salary, you have handed them the difference.
The three things people forget to price
- Paid holiday. Twenty-five days you used to be paid for and now are not. That is 10% of a working year.
- Illness and gaps. Nobody bills 260 days. Contracts end, notice periods happen, and you get flu.
- The pension. Somebody was contributing to it. Now that is you, out of the same invoice.
The calculator adds 25% for those. It is a rough figure and you should price your own, because a single parent with a mortgage and a 23-year-old with a flatshare are not carrying the same risk.
The part I am not going to guess at
What you keep from that invoice depends on your country and on the structure you use. Sole trader, limited company, umbrella, an Estonian company, and each has different rates and different running costs.
Those rates are not verified here, so this page does not produce a contractor take-home number. A confident wrong figure about tax is worse than no figure, and this is the kind of decision where being wrong is expensive and slow to notice.
Before you change anything
Whether your work can be contracted at all is decided by how it happens, not by what the contract says. Somebody sets your hours. Somebody supervises how you work. You cannot send anybody else. Most European systems call that employment, whatever the paperwork says.
That is not a technicality. Getting it wrong means back taxes and penalties for both sides. The person who signed the invoice usually ends up holding it.
Three questions for an accountant: which structures are available where I live, what does each cost to run, and would my work be treated as employment anyway. Ten minutes of their time answers all three.
Questions people actually ask
How do I convert a salary to a day rate?
Take what your employer actually spends on you in a year, not your salary, and divide by the days you would really bill. Then add for the paid holiday, sick days and pension contributions you stop receiving. Starting from salary alone produces a rate that leaves you worse off doing the same work.
How many billable days should I assume?
There are about 260 weekdays in a year. Take off holiday, public holidays, illness and the gaps between contracts. Most people land between 200 and 230. Assume 260 and a rate that looked fine in a spreadsheet becomes a pay cut.
Is contracting better paid than employment?
The invoice is bigger. Whether you keep more depends on your country, the structure you use and what it costs to run, and none of that is modelled here because the rates are not verified. The honest answer is that it can be, and that the gap between employer cost and net pay is where the opportunity sits.
What is the difference between a worker, an employee and a contractor?
It is decided by how the work actually happens, not by what the contract is called. If somebody sets your hours, supervises how you do the job and you cannot send a substitute, most European systems will treat that as employment regardless of the paperwork. Get that checked before you change anything.
Where this actually works
Ten countries where changing how you are paid is worth real money, and the one rule that decides whether any of it applies to you.
Read the guide
Who wrote this
Fifteen years in sales, starting at €700 a month. Ranked first of more than 250 account executives globally at Deel in the first half of 2023. Everything you can check is on the proof page, including the parts that cannot be checked.
This is education, not advice, and I am not a licensed adviser. What that means in full is in what this is and what it is not.