France had 225 portage companies in 2015. By 2022, the count reached 518, according to the PEPS branch report, all chasing roughly 43,000 consultants. With competition like that, every provider advertises one thing above all else: the management fee, which is somewhere between 5% and 10%.
But counterintuitively, two consultants can sign contracts at 5% and 10%, bill the same day rate over the same number of days in the same month, and end up with completely different take-home pay.
There's no trickery involved here. A management fee describes what one company charges for its own service, and it says nothing about the base it applies to, the point at which it stops increasing, or the several other percentages moving through the same payslip. Some of those genuinely reduce your take-home pay, while others come back to you later or get added to your gross instead of taken out of it.
So what should you be asking your provider before you sign? This article goes through every percentage in a portage arrangement and a ten-second calculation that ranks two quotes correctly for whatever you bill. By the end, a fee schedule will be as clear to you as it is to the person who wrote it.
Key takeaways
- The quoted management fee is one of several percentages in play, and by itself it cannot tell you which provider leaves you with more money.
- Two of those percentages never reduce your income at all: the 10% financial reserve, which is returned to you later, and the 5% business-referral allowance, which is added to your gross pay.
What the percentage is calculated on
We should begin with the question that rarely gets asked out loud: 8% of what?
Your client pays €12,000. Your provider bills €10,000 plus €2,000 of VAT, collects the lot, and forwards the VAT to the tax authorities, so that money was never yours to begin with. Any provider calculating a commission on the full €12,000 is charging you €960 for a service priced at €800, and you'd have agreed to it without realizing.
Reputable French providers all price on turnover excluding VAT, so this is rarely a problem in practice, but it's still better to confirm in writing before you sign.
The second variable is subtler and more costly. Some providers apply their rate to everything you invoice. Others apply it to what remains in your activity account after professional expenses are reimbursed. Same rate, same billings, smaller commission under the second method. Depending on how much you expense, that difference could outweigh a full point of advertised commission.
Ask both questions on the first call. What is the rate calculated on, and do professional expenses come off before or after? Providers with nothing awkward buried on an obscure page on the website will answer in a sentence each. A salesperson who needs to check and call you back has already given you the answer.
Three ways of a fee structure
A fee comes in one of three forms, and 8% means something different under each.
Flat. The rate never changes. Bill €8,000, pay €640. Bill €18,000, pay €1,440. Your provider does not work twice as hard in the second month, but you pay twice as much anyway. This model with fixed fees suits providers and nobody else.
Sliding. The rate drops as your annual billings increase. A typical structure starts at 8% and falls to around 6% once you pass six figures for the year. That works well for an established consultant, but it does little for someone just starting out, who pays the highest rate for twelve months before the discount ever applies.
Capped. A percentage with a maximum euro amount. Six percent capped at €600 costs you 6% until your billings reach €10,000 a month, then stops increasing entirely.
The third one can make a 10% quote end up cheaper than a 5% one. Take a consultant billing €18,000 in a good month. The 5% flat provider charges €900. The 10% provider, limited to €600, charges €600, which works out to an effective rate of 3.3%.
Here's the ten-second calculation: take the threshold and divide it by the rate. That gives you the monthly billing figure at which the threshold starts. Below that figure, you're just paying the flat percentage and the threshold isn't helping you yet. Above it, every extra euro you bill costs you nothing in commissions.
Which model is the best depends entirely on how much you bill. At €5,000 a month, the flat 5% quote is genuinely cheaper, and the threshold hasn't helped anyone. At €15,000 is the other way around. No provider can be called cheapest without knowing your day rate first, which is what makes generic comparison tables so unhelpful.
What else you might be charged for
Some umbrella companies charge you more than once.
The most common second line covers processing professional expenses, usually around 2% of turnover. This is a fair charge for real work, since someone has to check every receipt against the URSSAF scales. It's harder to defend as a presentation. A provider quoting 6% and charging 2% for expenses on top has actually quoted you 8%.
Other charges to look for include entry fees, exit fees, a charge per bank transfer, a fee to release your pay early, and mandatory national insurance contributions billed as its own line. Professional liability and health cover should be included in the commission. If they appear separately, the attractive rate advertised at the top was never the full picture.
None of these charges look large on their own. Fifty euros here, a hundred there, a percentage point or two nobody mentioned upfront, but over a year, at a decent day rate, they add up to a figure you would have negotiated over, had anyone shown it to you clearly.
One question clears all of this up. Ask for a personalized simulation based on your actual day rate, itemized line by line, and compare those documents instead. That single step does most of the work in any umbrella company comparison.
The financial reserve
One line on a French Portage payslip takes 10% and doesn’t cost you anything. Plenty of consultants have talked themselves out of a good provider by mistaking it for an expense.
The collective agreement requires a financial reserve, generally 10% of base salary, held back each month. Its purpose is to cover you between assignments. Under the conditions the agreement sets, it comes back to you, either during inactive periods or when your contract ends.
In other words, it's deferred income. Your own money, simply held aside for a while.
This creates a comparison trap. One provider sends you a simulation showing net pay after the reserve is deducted. Another shows it before. The difference between those two documents can be hundreds of euros a month, but it doesn't say anything about either provider's actual pricing. You'd be choosing between two accounting conventions and mistaking it for a real decision.
Read the release conditions closely, though, since they differ between providers. A reserve you can draw on during a two-month break between clients does exactly the job it was designed for. A reserve locked away until your employment contract ends is a different thing altogether, even if it's marketed the same way.
The referral allowance
One percentage travels in the opposite direction.
The same collective agreement grants a business-referral allowance worth 5% of gross pay, since you found the client yourself instead of being handed an assignment. That 5% is added to your gross pay rather than taken from it.
Simulations vary on whether they include this allowance. Two quotes built on identical fees and identical pension contributions can still land in different places for that reason alone. A payslip carries percentages moving in both directions, and treating every line as a loss will overstate what you're actually paying.
When you ask for an itemized simulation, ask specifically whether the referral allowance and the reserve are already included in the figures you're being shown.
Six percent in Barcelona, six percent in Lyon
The collective agreement standardizes minimum pay by seniority, the reserve, and the referral allowance, so two French quotes describe roughly the same product at two different prices.
That comparability isn't universal in all European markets, though. The Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, and Switzerland each have their own social security systems, with no equivalent framework on top. Six percent in Barcelona and six percent in Lyon can cover completely different services and produce very different net figures.
A bigger problem hides behind the pricing, too. Take a consultant who signs a six-month contract in Amsterdam while keeping two clients in Paris. Where is she a tax resident? Which country collects her contributions? Who issues the contract her Dutch client needs to sign? A provider built for a single country can't answer any of that, because nobody built it to. Two points of management fee won't matter much next to getting any of those three wrong.
How Hightekers can help
Comparing providers on a single advertised number was never going to work. There are too many other percentages involved, too many different ways to calculate the base, and too many simulations built on different conventions.
Hightekers starts from the far end instead: what reaches your account. Income is structured as base salary plus profit share, legitimate business expenses go through without artificial caps, and employment brings a pension, unemployment protection, and an account manager who knows your name from the first day. Hightekers employs freelancers across France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, and the UAE, so the arrangement moves with you across borders instead of ending at one.
Run a personalized simulation on your actual day rate, itemized down to the last line, and see exactly what lands in your account. No obligation, and no vague answers about what is included.
FAQ
What percentage do most umbrella companies take?
In France, umbrella companies charge fees between 5% and 10% of turnover excluding VAT, with premium packages reaching 12% to 15%. That commission covers the provider's own service. Social contributions come out separately, which is why consultants typically keep 45% to 60% of what they bill.
Is the fee calculated on the invoice total including VAT?
It should not be. VAT collected from your client belongs to the income tax authorities and passes straight through. A €10,000 invoice billed at €12,000 including VAT should generate a fee on €10,000, and a provider doing otherwise is charging you 20% more than advertised.
Is a capped fee always better than a low percentage?
Only above a certain billing level. Divide the cap by the rate to find where it engages: a €600 cap at 6% begins saving you money at €10,000 of monthly turnover. Below that, the cap has no effect.
What is the financial reserve, and is it a fee?
No. Some agreements require around 10% of base salary to be held back and returned to you during inactive periods or at the end of your contract. It reduces this month's payslip without reducing your income.
