TJM calculator: work out your freelance daily rate
The TJM (Taux Journalier Moyen) is the daily rate a French freelancer charges a client for one day of work. Quoted excluding tax, it covers the freelancer's own pay, their social contributions and their business expenses. It is calculated by dividing target annual revenue by the number of genuinely billable days.
Simulator
Calculate your TJM
What TJM should you aim for, given your situation?
Your inputs
Hardware, software, insurance, accounting, travel, training — and above all health top-up, income protection and supplementary pension.
200 by default: roughly 5 weeks off and one month between missions. Overstating it can lead to a daily rate that is too low.
Your legal status
The rate depends heavily on status: at the same income, the gap between micro-entreprise and SASU approaches 10 points. Micro-entreprise is capped at €83,600 of revenue for services.
portage salarial is not offered here — URSSAF's engine does not cover it. Expect management fees of 5–10% on top, but also unemployment insurance, which the other statuses do not provide.
In a SASU you pay yourself in salary or dividends, taxed very differently. The remainder goes out as dividends, after corporate tax.
Estimated TJM
€522 ± 20
per billed day, excluding VAT
Our estimate of the charge rate is accurate to about 2 points: interpolation between income levels, rounding, and a contributions reform URSSAF flags as not yet built into its own model.
Based on a one-share household: single, no dependent children, no other taxable income. For a figure specific to you, use the official simulator. Household situation can move the TJM well beyond this range.
* What you need to bill each month to reach your target. Before charges and tax.
How we got there
Find missions at that rate
Migbirds matches you with missions that fit how you actually work.
Create my profileWhere our numbers come from
The contribution rates used here come from the open-source libraries behind URSSAF's official simulator: mon-entreprise.urssaf.fr
2026 schedule, grid generated 2026-09-28.
Method
How to calculate your TJM
1. Set your target annual net income
What you actually want to keep over a year, after contributions and tax. Remember that a freelancer self-funds their holidays, their gaps between missions and their own social cover.
2. Add your business expenses
Hardware, software, insurance, accounting, travel, coworking, training.
3. Estimate your genuinely billable days
This is the most decisive input, and the most commonly overstated. A year holds 261 weekdays; take out public holidays and five weeks of leave and about 227 remain. Our 200 days assume a month with no mission (a buffer period). Overstating it produces a daily rate that is too low.
4. Apply your charge rate
Social contributions and income tax are taken out of your revenue, not out of your displayed daily rate. To end up with a given net income you therefore have to bill more: that is the division by (1 − charge rate).
TJM = (target net income + business expenses) / (billable days × (1 − charge rate))
Worked example
Target of €50,000 net per year, €5,000 of business expenses, 200 billable days, as a SASU paying 65% as salary. URSSAF's engine computes a charge rate of 47.3%. Your revenue therefore has to cover €104,345 over the year — €522 per billed day, give or take twenty euros.
What this calculator does not do
- Income tax depends on your household — marital status, children, a partner's income. No single figure can represent what you will actually take home.
- Under certain conditions, a relief scheme called ACRE can apply and reduce the charge rate. It is not taken into account in this calculation.
- Minimum contributions exist: a self-employed person pays them even on very low income, so the estimate stops being reliable at the bottom end.
- CFE, the local business tax, is free in year one and payable from year two, at an amount that depends on your town. The official simulator excludes it too.
- VAT, health top-up, income protection and supplementary pension are not modelled — they are real costs of freelancing and belong in the “business expenses” field.
- URSSAF itself flags that a recent contributions reform is not yet built into its model.
This calculator gives you an order of magnitude to price against, not a net salary. Have your TJM checked by an accountant before you commit to a rate.
And choosing a status is not only about net income: portage salarial carries unemployment insurance, micro-entreprise essentially does not.
Your rate is set. Now find the right mission.
Migbirds looks at how you work to surface missions where you will genuinely fit — not just the ones that match your CV.