At a glance
In a 5-day week, the hours from the 41st to the 45th of the week are extra hours, paid at the hourly pay plus 20%. Above 45 hours they are overtime, at 40%, or 120% without approval. On a salary of €1,200, one extra hour is paid €8.64.
- In a 5-day week, the hours from the 41st to the 45th of the week are extra hours, the υπερεργασία, paid at the hourly pay plus 20%1.
- Above 45 hours, legal overtime begins, the υπερωρία, at 40%. If your employer has no approval, overtime is paid at 120%.
- Legal overtime is up to 4 hours a day and 150 hours a year. Extra hours do not count towards that limit.
- On a salary of €1,200, the hour is €7.20. One extra hour is paid €8.64 and one hour of overtime €10.08.
- Since 2025, the premium carries no contributions for people who work full time. Tax counts on the whole amount.
The gist
“Why were Thursday’s hours paid less than Friday’s?” The question comes up often in November, when the payslips of a heavy week arrive. The hours were the same, the work the same, the effort the same. The answer lies in two Greek words that look alike but pay differently.
Extra hours and overtime are both hours above your normal working time. But the law divides them with a line, 45 hours a week, and gives each a different premium. It also divides them by their limits: one counts towards the 150 hours of the year, the other does not. And on the payslip they are written, or should be written, on separate lines.
This article is for people who work full time and often stay late: in warehouses, shops, offices and restaurants. You will see where one ends and the other begins, how much each hour is paid on your salary, what “without approval” means, why you keep more net pay from these hours, and how to check the lines on your payslip. November and December are months with many extra hours, so this is a good time to know.
Where extra hours end and overtime begins
Full-time work is 40 hours a week. In a 5-day week, the five hours that follow, from the 41st to the 45th, are extra hours1. Every hour from the 46th upwards is overtime.
The rule counts the hours of the week. You add up your hours from Monday to Friday and see at what point you passed 40 and at what point you passed 45. That is why the calculator asks for the hours of the month split into extra hours and overtime: you make the split week by week.
| Hours of the week | What they are | Premium |
|---|---|---|
| 1 to 40 | Your normal hours, inside your salary | - |
| 41 to 45 | Extra hours | 20% |
| 46 and up, with approval | Legal overtime | 40% |
| 46 and up, without approval | Overtime without approval | 120% |
This explains the opening question. If a week reached 47 hours, the hours up to Thursday may all have been extra hours, and the last two on Friday overtime. Friday was paid more, because it came after the line.
The rule of hours 41 to 45, as the calculator counts it, concerns the 5-day week. If you work a 6-day week, ask the payroll office how they count your hours. And if you are asked to work a sixth day in a 5-day week, that is another case, with its own rule: see the article The sixth day of the week.
How much each hour is paid
Each extra hour is paid at the hourly pay plus its premium. Hourly pay is the gross monthly salary divided by 25, times 6, divided by 402. On a salary of €1,200 it is €7.20. To see in detail how it is worked out, read the article How hourly pay is worked out.
Here is what one hour pays on three salaries:
| Gross salary | Extra hour, +20% | Overtime, +40% | Without approval, +120% |
|---|---|---|---|
| €920, the minimum | €6.62 | €7.73 | €12.14 |
| €1,200 | €8.64 | €10.08 | €15.84 |
| €1,500 | €10.80 | €12.60 | €19.80 |
The amounts in the table are the whole hour: the plain hourly pay plus the premium. That is right, because extra hours are not inside your salary. Your salary pays for the 40 hours. Anything above them is paid in full, from the start.
The minimum wage of €920 applies from 1 April 20263. If that is your salary, one extra hour brings you €6.62, while one hour of overtime without approval brings €12.14. The gap is wide, and that is why the way each hour is recorded matters.
The limits: 4 a day, 150 a year
Legal overtime has limits. It is up to 4 hours a day and up to 150 hours a year1. Above 150, your employer needs a special permit, and then the premium becomes 60%. On a salary of €1,200, such an hour is paid €11.52.
Extra hours do not count towards this limit. The five hours of the week from the 41st to the 45th take nothing away from the 150. So in a year with many extra hours, overtime reaches the limit more slowly than people think.
To give you a picture, 150 hours a year is a little over 3 hours of overtime a week, over 46 weeks of work. Together with the 5 extra hours, someone would have to work 48 hours every week to reach the limit of the year. Most people never reach it.
The limits protect you. They do not put you at risk. If your employer goes beyond 4 hours of overtime a day or 150 a year without a permit, the problem is theirs, and your hours must still be paid. The overtime calculator shows you a warning when the legal overtime of the month passes these limits.
Overtime without approval: 120%
Legal overtime is done with approval, in the way the law sets1. When your employer asks you for overtime without having taken that step, those hours are paid at the hourly pay plus 120%. On a salary of €1,200, each such hour is €15.84, more than double an ordinary hour of yours.
The high premium exists so that hiding hours does not pay for the employer. For you, though, it has a practical problem. When an hour is not declared, you have to be able to show that you worked it. A note of your hours each day, messages with your manager, a photo of the rota: all of these count.
The note does not need much. Write the day, the time you started and the time you left, and who asked you to stay. Do it on the same day, not at the end of the month from memory. A note on your phone, with its date, is more convincing than a sheet written all at once.
Watch out too for hours paid “cash in hand”, outside the payslip. They show nowhere: not in your insurance record, not in your earnings. If you ever need to claim them, only your notes will speak for them.
If you believe your hours are not being declared, the first conversation is with the payroll office, in writing. If that leads nowhere, the next step is the Labour Inspectorate. The sooner you start keeping notes, the easier it is to prove what you are owed.
Contributions and tax: why the net is better
Here is some good news for people who work longer. Since 2025, the premium for extra hours and overtime carries no contributions for people who work full time. Contributions, 13.37%, apply only to the plain hourly pay of those hours4.
Take 10 extra hours on a salary of €1,200. The plain hourly pay of the 10 hours is €72.00, and that carries contributions. The 20% premium, €14.40, does not. On overtime at 40% the gain is larger, because the part without contributions is larger too.
The tax counts on the whole amount, and your employer withholds it together with the tax of the month5. The overtime calculator counts it at the average tax rate of your salary. That means anyone who pays little tax on their salary also pays little on their extra hours. A young person aged 25 or under, who pays no tax on the first bands, keeps almost the whole premium.
One thing does not change. The net pay of the hours depends on your own details: your salary, your children, your age. That is why the calculator asks for them too, and shows you the net of the hours separately from your salary.
When extra hours are also night or Sunday hours
An extra hour can fall after 22:00, or on a Sunday or public holiday. Then each premium counts on the plain hourly pay, and they add up. One does not count on top of the other.
On a salary of €1,200, an hour of overtime at 23:00 is paid €10.08 as overtime, and on top of that it earns the night premium, €1.80. If the same hour also falls on a Sunday, the 75% is added as well, €5.40.
On the payslip this means the same hour can appear on two or three lines: overtime, night work, Sunday. That is not double pay. It is three premiums that the law gives for three different reasons. For night work, see the article on the clock change, and for holidays the article Working on 28 October?.
What they bring in a year
Five extra hours a week sound like little. But look at the year. If you work them for 46 weeks, outside your leave and the holidays, that is 230 hours. On a salary of €1,200, they are paid €1,987.20, and of that the premium is €331.20.
The 230 hours do not touch the limit of 150 overtime hours, because they are all extra hours. If in some weeks you pass 45, the hours above count towards the limit, and they are paid at 40%. Two hours of overtime a week for 46 weeks make 92 hours, within the limit, and they bring €927.36.
These amounts are too large to lose to a mistake in the lines. A mistake in the ratio, 1.20 instead of 1.40, repeats itself every month. That is why it is worth checking the first payslip with extra hours, and asking for a correction from the start.
How to read the lines on your payslip
On a Greek payslip, extra hours appear among the earnings, below the salary. Usually there is one line for extra hours and one for overtime, each with its hours and amount. Some programs write them all together, as “overtime”. That is not wrong in itself.
The check is done with the amount for each hour. Divide the amount of the line by its hours. Then divide the result by your hourly pay. For extra hours you should get 1.20. For legal overtime, 1.40. If you get 1, you were paid the hours plain, without a premium.
If all the hours are on one line, the ratio should come out somewhere in between, depending on how many are extra hours and how many overtime. If it comes out at exactly 1.20 while you know you passed 45 hours in some week, your overtime was counted as extra hours.
Finally, look at the deductions. The contributions of the month should count on your salary and on the plain hourly pay of the hours, not on the premiums, if you work full time. If you cannot tell them apart, ask the payroll office for the breakdown of the deductions.
Before you stay: three questions
Extra hours are usually asked for in a hurry, at the end of a shift. It is not the easiest moment for a talk. But it is worth settling a few things in advance, once, for all the times to come.
Are the hours declared? If your overtime is declared, it is legal and paid at 40%. If it is not, it is paid at 120%, but you must be able to show it. Either way, you should know which applies.
How are they split? Ask whether the payroll office separates extra hours from overtime, and which hourly pay it uses for them. If the answer is “all the same”, you know some of your hours are paid less than they should be.
When are they paid? Usually with the salary of the same month or the next. If the hours are “saved up” to be paid some day, or to become days off, ask to see it in writing, with the hours and the method.
In part-time work
Extra hours from the 41st to the 45th are a rule of full-time work. In part-time work something else applies: every hour above the hours in your contract is paid at the hourly pay plus 12%.
Your hourly pay here comes from the hours in your contract, not from 40. On €600 for 20 hours a week, your hour is €7.20, the same as a colleague on €1,200 for 40 hours. Each hour above 20 earns 12% on top of that amount, so it is paid €8.06. The premium is smaller than the 20% of extra hours, but it applies from the first hour above the contract.
The overtime calculator counts with full-time hours. For part-time work, the article Part-time work, four hours a day shows the sums step by step.
An example
Giorgos is 38, with one child, and works as a warehouse worker for a logistics company in Aspropyrgos. He works a 5-day week of 40 hours, on a gross salary of €1,200. In November the warehouse loads up for the holidays, and for three weeks of the month he works 47 hours. In the fourth he stays at 40. His employer declares his overtime.
Step 1: the hourly pay. €1,200 divided by 25 makes €48.00, and times 6 divided by 40 gives €7.20.
Step 2: he splits the hours. Each week of 47 hours has 5 extra hours, from the 41st to the 45th, and 2 hours of overtime. Over three weeks, that makes 15 extra hours and 6 hours of overtime. He has the hours from the note he keeps on his phone every evening.
Step 3: the extra hours. The 15 hours at 20% are paid €129.60. Of that, the premium is €21.60.
Step 4: the overtime. The 6 hours at 40% are paid €60.48. Of that, the premium is €17.28.
Step 5: the contributions. The plain hourly pay of the 21 hours is €151.20. Giorgos pays contributions only on that amount: €20.22. The two premiums carry no contributions. The tax counts on the whole amount, at the average tax rate of his salary, and because he has a child, it is lower than it would be without children.
Step 6: the check. On his November payslip, Giorgos sees two lines. The extra hours line shows 15 hours and the right amount. The overtime line shows 6 hours, but the amount is €51.84, which is at 20%. His overtime was counted as extra hours. The difference is small, but it is his, and he claims it with a message listing his hours for each week.
In the calculator, Giorgos enters a salary of €1,200, 15 extra hours, 6 hours of legal overtime, one child and his age. The calculator shows him the gross of the hours, the contributions on the plain hourly pay only, the tax and the net pay he will see on top of his salary.
In December the hours will be many again. Giorgos asks the payroll office to correct the way it splits the hours, so the mistake does not happen again. And he keeps writing down his hours until he sees two correct payslips in a row.
The mistakes that cost
Calling all extra hours “overtime”. Hours up to the 45th are extra hours, at 20%. Above 45 they are overtime, at 40%. If you do not tell them apart, you cannot check whether you were paid correctly.
Forgetting that the limits are weekly. The 40 and 45 hours count across the whole week. Add up your hours from Monday to Friday and see where you passed each line.
Accepting the hours plain. If the amount for each hour equals your hourly pay, the premium is missing. The ratio should come to 1.20 or 1.40.
Keeping no record. Overtime without approval is paid at 120%, but only if you can show you worked it. A simple note each day is enough.
Counting the net as if it were salary. The premiums carry no contributions, if you work full time. If you put the whole amount of the hours into the net salary calculator, you will get less net pay than you will actually receive.
Mixing up part-time and full-time work. In part-time work, each hour above the contract earns 12%, and your hourly pay counts with your own hours. Hours 41 to 45 do not concern you.
What the law says
Extra hours and overtime are set by article 194 of Presidential Decree 62/2025, the Labour Code, as Law 5239/2025 amended it. That is where hours 41 to 45 at 20%, legal overtime at 40%, the limits of 4 hours a day and 150 a year, the 60% premium above them with a special permit, and overtime without approval at 120% come from1.
The hourly pay on which the premiums count is the salary divided by 25, times 6, divided by 40, as KEPEA, the labour institute of the GSEE trade union confederation, explains it2. Employee contributions are 13.37%4, and tax is withheld each month under article 60 of the Income Tax Code5. The minimum wage of €920 applies from 1 April 2026, under joint decision 8934/20263.
To find what the extra hours of the month bring you, gross and net, enter your hours in the Overtime calculator. It separates extra hours from overtime and counts the contributions and the tax with the rules of 2026.
