Day Rate to Annual Salary in Ireland: Why 220 Days Isn't the Same as 252

Anywhere from €110,000 to €126,000 gross a year, and the correct answer depends entirely on the billable-days assumption you use, not on the day rate itself. At 220 billable days (a typical contractor assumption allowing 8 weeks off a year), €500/day works out to €110,000. At 252 days (a full year with no time off at all, which no contractor actually works), the same rate reads as €126,000. That is a €16,000 swing on an identical day rate.

Because there is no single agreed billable-days figure, and small differences compound. A recruiter or job ad annualising a day rate to make it comparable to a permanent salary will often use the full 252 working days in a year, which flatters the number. A contractor doing their own planning should use a realistic 200-230 days once public holidays, annual leave, and gaps between contracts are accounted for. Both are technically valid arithmetic, they just answer different questions.

220 days is a reasonable default for an established contractor: it assumes roughly 8 weeks off across public holidays, annual leave, and sick time, with no allowance for gaps between contracts. If you expect downtime between engagements, or you are new to contracting and still building a client pipeline, 200-210 days is more realistic, and using 252 days will overstate your annual equivalent by €16,000 or more at a €500 day rate.

No, and this is the most important caveat with any day-rate-to-salary conversion. The annual figure from a simple day rate x billable days calculation is gross, before Income Tax, USC, and PRSI, and before any business overheads if you are operating as a sole trader or through a limited company. It is a useful like-for-like comparison against a permanent gross salary, but it is not what lands in your bank account. For the net figure, run the result through a full take-home or contractor calculator.

Often not. A contractor without an established client base typically experiences more downtime between engagements than someone with a steady pipeline, sometimes 15-25% of the working year rather than the roughly 15% implied by 220 days out of 260. Using 220 days as a planning figure in your first year of contracting risks overstating your realistic annual income; a more conservative 190-200 days is worth stress-testing against.

The most common inflation is using 252 or even 260 working days (the full calendar year with no time off at all) rather than a realistic billable figure. A recruiter or agency comparing a day rate against a permanent salary benefits from the day rate looking as favourable as possible, so the annualisation often defaults to the most generous assumption rather than the most realistic one. Always ask which billable-days figure was used before comparing a day rate to a salary.

Yes, ideally as a distinct line rather than folded into a single number, since it makes the assumption easier to sanity check. Starting from a working-days baseline (220-252 depending on how much annual leave and public holidays you assume) and then subtracting a separate allowance for sickness and gap time gives a clearer picture than picking one blended number, and makes it obvious how sensitive the final annual figure is to that specific assumption.

This conversion runs forward: day rate multiplied by billable days equals gross annual income, with no tax involved, useful for sanity-checking a quoted rate or comparing it to a permanent salary offer. Working out what you need to charge runs backwards from a target net income, through Income Tax, USC, and PRSI, and through your real business overheads, to arrive at the day rate itself. Our Freelance Rate Calculator guide for Ireland sole traders covers that reverse calculation in full.