Freelance or salary in Greece: what you keep on the same money

A salary and freelance work count money in different ways, and the comparison goes wrong before the sums even start. A salary is stated as gross pay per month and paid 14 times a year: 12 salaries, the Christmas bonus, the Easter bonus and the holiday allowance6,7. A freelance deal states a fee without VAT, paid as often as you issue an invoice, usually 12 times.

So the first step is to bring both to a year. A salary of €1,500 gross comes to 1,500 × 14 = €21,000 a year. Freelance work at €1,500 a month comes to only €18,000. For it to be truly “the same money”, the invoice needs to say 21,000 / 12 = €1,750 a month.

There is a second yardstick, and employees rarely think of it: what you cost the employer. On top of your salary, the employer pays their own contributions, 21.79%1. One payment of €1,500 costs them €1,826.85, and the year has 14 of them. On invoices, the employer pays no contributions for you. That leaves room to pay you more than the salary without spending a single euro more.

Keep two comparisons in mind, then. The first is the same money in your hands, €21,000 a year. The second is the same cost to the employer. The example below looks at both.

Two things come out of a salary. First, your contributions to e-EFKA, the national insurance fund: 13.37% of the gross, which on €1,500 is €200.55 a month1. Then the income tax, which the employer withholds each month with the 2026 scale. On €1,500 it is €134.66, with no children and over 302.

That leaves €1,164.79 per payment, and €16,307.06 for the whole year. An employee’s contributions are a share of the salary. If the salary falls, they fall too, and if the salary stops, so do they.

An employee’s tax also carries an advantage that many employees do not know they have: the reduction of article 16. It gets a section of its own below, because a large part of the gap hides there.

A freelancer pays e-EFKA a fixed amount each month, however much they earn. In 2026 the first contribution class is €250.77 for pension and health. On top of it comes €10 for DYPA, the public employment service, so you pay €260.77 a month3. For the first 5 years, newly insured people pay the special class, €150.46 plus the €10 for DYPA, which makes €160.463.

Over a year, the first class comes to 260.77 × 12 = €3,129.24. You pay it even in a month with no invoices at all. This is where the two paths first part. On a small income, a fixed contribution weighs far more than an employee’s 13.37%, while on a large income it becomes lighter. The six classes, and how to choose one, are explained in Freelancers: the contributions of 2026.

Then comes the tax. From the income of the year you subtract your business costs and your contributions, and what is left is your profit4. Profit is taxed on the same scale as a salary. For someone with no children and over 30, that means 9% up to €10,000, 20% from there to €20,000, and 26% up to €30,0002. Children, and an age under 30, lower the rates here as well, just as they do for a salary.

This is the part that makes the biggest difference, and the least known. The law takes a fixed amount off the tax of every employee, the tax reduction of article 16. For someone with no children it is €777 a year, and it shrinks by €20 for every €1,000 of income above €12,0005.

This reduction applies only to salaries and pensions. Freelance profit does not get it5. So two people with the same taxable income pay different tax. The employee pays the scale minus the reduction, while the freelancer pays the full scale.

Take €18,000 of taxable income. The scale gives 10,000 × 9% = €900 and 8,000 × 20% = €1,600, so €2,500 of tax. An employee on the same amount subtracts €777 minus 6 × 20 = €120, that is €657, and pays €1,843. A gap of €657 a year is almost half a month’s salary, and no freelance offer ever mentions it.

Many people do not pick one path. They work on a salary and also invoice for jobs they do in the evenings or at weekends. Then the salary and the profit go into the same scale together, and the profit sits in the bands above the salary2. The tax reduction counts only for the salary part5.

Take a taxable salary of €15,000 and €5,000 of freelance profit. On its own, the salary would pay €1,900 on the scale, minus a reduction of €717, which is €1,183. Together with the profit, the scale on €20,000 gives €2,900, and with the same reduction the tax becomes €2,183. So the €5,000 of freelance work cost €1,000 in tax, 20% of it.

These sums leave out the contributions of the freelance side, which run separately. Ask e-EFKA what applies to you before you open an activity next to your salary. The Income tax calculator takes salary and profit together and shows the tax on the whole.

Freelance tax has two rules that change with the years of your activity. The first is a discount for those who are starting out. In the first 3 years, if your income does not pass €10,000, the first band is taxed at 4.5% instead of 9%4. On €21,000 of income the discount does not apply, so it does not help in our comparison.

The second rule is the presumed income, or τεκμαρτό εισόδημα: a minimum profit on which your tax is counted, whatever you declare. In 2026 it is the minimum wage times 14, so 920 × 14 = €12,8808. It does not apply in the first 3 years. In the fourth year one third of it counts, €4,293.33, and in the fifth year two thirds, €8,586.67. From the seventh year it rises by 10% every three years, to €14,168 and then to €15,584.808.

What does this mean for the comparison? As long as your profit stays above the presumed income, it does not touch you. When your profit falls below it, you pay tax as if you had earned more than you did, and an employee has nothing like it. The law exempts people who work for up to 3 clients and some other groups, and it is worth checking with your accountant whether you belong to one of them8.

Let us turn the sum around. The salary of €1,500 gross leaves you €16,307.06 a year. How much do you need to invoice to keep about the same, if you are in your sixth year, in the first class, with €1,000 of costs?

The answer comes close to €23,140 a year. Here is the sum, line by line:

That is about €1,930 a month on 12 invoices, to match a salary of €1,500 paid 14 times. In other words, you need a little over 10% more than the €21,000 of the salary just to break even on money. And we have not yet counted leave.

Someone starting now, in the special class, needs less, around €21,940, because they pay €1,925.52 a year in contributions instead of €3,129.243. The special class lasts only 5 years, though. After that the sum is the one above, and from the fourth year the presumed income comes in too.

At high salaries the picture turns. At around €2,500 gross a month, which is €35,000 a year, a salary leaves €25,122.16 and freelance work on the same money about €25,075, almost the same. Above that, freelance work starts to win, because the fixed contribution stays the same while the employee’s contribution grows, and the reduction of article 16 fades away5.

So far we have compared money. A salary also brings things that never show in the sums of a month, and they have a value you can measure.

Paid leave. An employee on a five-day week has 20 working days of leave a year, and more as the years go by. Those days are paid as usual, and they bring the holiday allowance too7. A freelancer who closes for four weeks in August invoices nothing in those weeks, while the contributions keep running.

Severance if you are dismissed. On an open-ended contract, after the first year, a dismissal brings you severance pay9. A client who ends the collaboration owes you nothing.

Unemployment benefit. An employee who loses their job gets a benefit from DYPA, with a basic amount of €565 a month, if they have the insurance days the law asks for10. As a freelancer you also pay €10 a month to DYPA, but the conditions for a benefit are different. Ask DYPA before you rely on it.

The pension. A salary of €21,000 a year puts 35.16% into e-EFKA, from you and the employer together, which is €7,383.60 a year1. A freelancer in the first class pays €3,129.24. The contributory part of a pension grows with the contributions, so the gap shows when you stop working.

Money at the holidays. A salary brings money at the times you need it most: the Christmas bonus by 21 December, the Easter bonus, the holiday allowance in summer6. As a freelancer you set that money aside yourself, from every invoice.

Freelance work has its own side, of course. You can have many clients, deduct the costs of your work and raise your price when you are in demand. Those things have value, and they go on the scales next to the figures. They do not cancel the figures, though.

Two more things change the money you see in your bank account without changing the net of the year. The first is VAT. You charge it on top of your fee and the client pays it to you, but it is not yours. You pass it to the tax office with your VAT return, which for simple books is filed every quarter11. The article VAT on your invoice explains when you charge it and when you do not.

The second is withholding. When your client is a business and the fee on one invoice passes €300, the client keeps 20% of the fee without VAT and pays it to the tax office on your behalf12. On an invoice of €1,750 the client keeps €350. You do not lose it: you subtract it from your tax in your return, and anything left over comes back to you. The article 20% withholding on freelance invoices shows the sum.

Then there is the advance payment of tax. When you declare a profit, you also pay 55% of its tax as an advance on the next year, and the tax withheld on your invoices comes off it13. The first time you declare a profit, it is half. An employee never pays an advance, and that matters for cash every summer.