Portage salarial (wage portage) is the umbrella-company route: the portage company invoices your client, deducts its fee and your real business expenses, then runs the remainder through payroll exactly like a permanent employee, barème progressif income tax plus CSG/CRDS. It's the closest a contractor gets to salarié-equivalent tax treatment, with the trade-off of the portage company's monthly fee.
Auto-entrepreneur (micro-BNC for services) is a genuinely different mechanic, not a variant of the same one. Instead of CSG/CRDS plus URSSAF bands, you pay a flat social-contribution rate on turnover itself, not profit, 25.6% for commercial/liberal services in 2026. Income tax applies to turnover after a flat 34% abattement forfaitaire (the micro-BNC allowance stands in for real expenses), run through the same barème progressif brackets as any other filer.
That flat-on-turnover mechanic is why French contractors compare day rates against permanent salaries so closely: it caps effective cost growth in a way PAYE-style progressive bands don't. At higher rates, auto-entrepreneur can retain meaningfully more than portage salarial, at the cost of no expense deductions and a turnover ceiling (auto-entrepreneur status is capped annually; contractors who exceed it must switch regimes).
The permanent-equivalent-salary figure this calculator shows works backwards from your net take-home: what gross salaried pay, taxed the same barème progressif plus CSG/CRDS way as the portage structure, would produce the same net income. It's a useful anchor when comparing a contract offer against a permanent role.
