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Hourly rate calculator
for autónom@s in Spain

Learn how much you need to charge to really get your desired income.

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Enter what you want to actually keep per month — after business expenses, Social Security and income tax.
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Your gross income is your profit from your self-employed activity, with all expenses, including Social Security, already deducted, but before your personal income tax is applied.

Net is the amount that you get to keep after income tax is taken away.
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You can set your income tax details here. If you have activated the 'save data on device' switch, the details will be stored for use everywhere on the site.

The advanced details around family status, dependants etc. are not yet fully tested and don't make that much difference to most cases. If unsure, don't change anything and we use the default case: single, no children, standard tax scale.

Tax settings

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Children under 25 who live with you or depend on you and earn under 8.000 € a year. No age limit with a disability of 33% or more.

The first is worth about 450 € a year, and each one after that a little more.

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Half your IRPF is set by your comunidad, and the scales differ. At 60.000 € of taxable income the gap between the cheapest and dearest is over 1.400 € a year.

Unset, we use a standard scale that can be out by several hundred euros.

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Filing jointly with a spouse reduces your taxable base by 3.400 €. Filing as a single parent reduces it by 2.150 €.

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New autónomos pay tax on 20% less in the first year that shows a profit and the year after. It is the first PROFITABLE year, not the first calendar year: a loss-making start moves the window rather than wasting it.

Leave blank if it was long enough ago not to matter.

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If nearly all your invoices go to one company you may take 2.000 € off your taxable income, and up to 8.498 € if you earn under about 19.750 €. The biggest single reduction an autónomo can get.

All of these must be true:

  • One client you are not related to, or you are a registered TRADE.
  • Expenses under 30% of what you invoice.
  • At least 70% of invoices carry IRPF retención. Spanish companies normally withhold; clients abroad and private individuals normally do not.
  • No salary this year beyond 4.000 € of unemployment or pension. Sick pay counts as salary.

We check the expenses and the salary against your figures and take your word for the rest, and say so under the result. Not sure? Leave it off.

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Gross pay from a job, unemployment benefit or a pension received in the same year. It is added to your taxable base, so your business profit is taxed at a higher rate. Common in a first year as autónomo.

Dividends, interest and capital gains are taxed separately and do not belong here. Rental income is taxed in the same base, but this estimate does not include it.

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Only matters from 65, and again from 75. Leave blank if under 65.

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Parents or grandparents who live with you and earn under 8.000 € a year. Each is worth 1.150 € of allowance, and 2.550 € from 75.

hours Hints
Enter your planned average number of work hours per day. The typical work day for a Spanish full-time employee is about 8 hours. The legal maximum for employees is 9 hours per day. As an autónomo, you can usually choose freely how much you want to work.
workdays Hints
Enter your planned average number of work days per week. The typical work week for a Spanish full-time employee is 5, sometimes 6 days. As an autónomo, you can usually plan your work week as you please.
% Hints
As an autónomo, not all the work you do is paid ('billable') work. Part of your work will be monthly bookkeeping and other administrative chores, downtime because of delays or something isn't working, customer acquisition, advertising, research, training and education, et cetera. Estimate here how much of your work will actually be paid work.

If all the hours you entered above will be paid work, enter 100.
workdays Hints
A full-time employee in Spain is entitled to 22 working days (30 calendar days) of vacation.

As an autónomo, you are free to choose as many or as few vacation days as you want. Of course, the more days you choose, the higher your hourly rate ends up being (or the less you earn).

If you do not want to take any vacation days, enter 0.
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When a self-employed person is sick, they usually cannot bill their client.

Social Security helps a little: you get 60%-75% of your 'base cotizable' for each day you can't work (with an official baja from your centro de salud). However that is usually too little to survive and autónomos should either have extra insurance for illness, or calculate some reserves into their hourly rate - which you can do in this field.

Enter how many sick days you want to plan for in your hourly rate.

If you have separate sick pay insurance, an arrangement with a client that you will get paid on sick days like a regular employee, or want to bear all the risk yourself, enter 0.
Days Hints
Spain has 12 official bank holidays.

When a work day coincides with a bank holiday, regular employees typically get paid anyway. Autónomos typically do not. That's why bank holidays need to be reflected in your hourly rate.

If you have an arrangement with a client under which you will get paid on bank holidays like a regular employee, or you don't care about bank holidays, enter 0.
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Enter here the sum of all of your deductible business expenses (but not your Social Security contributions, those are calculated automatically.)
  • Purchases like computers and tools*
  • Business premises or office
  • Work related mortgage costs, interest
  • Internet and telephone bills (if separate from private use)
  • Software purchases and subscriptions
  • Car / transport costs for work purposes*
  • Business travel and hotel costs
  • Restaurant food during business travel
  • Office equipment
  • Any additional work-related insurance
  • Gestor and consulting costs
  • Work-related bank account costs
  • Web site, hosting, domains
  • Advertising on web sites, in magazines, etc.
* this tool treats amortizaciones, purchases of equipment > 300 Euros that need to be written off over several years, as normal purchases deductible in the same year which can skew the results. If your expenses include a lot of amortizaciones, the calculated hourly wage may end up being too low.
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Choose the year for which you want to calculate your mandatory Social Security contributions.
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Choose a discount scheme if you know you are eligible for it. Most of these have to be actively applied for and come with many conditions - do not just assume you are eligible. One assumption is fairly safe though: if you're just starting as autónomo for the first time, you're most likely eligible for the first-year 80 Euro flat rate.

In case of a temporary discount like the tarifa plana, you may want to use that for yourself to build reserves - not to artificially lower prices for your clients and have to raise them a year later!

In that case simply select "None" and the resulting hourly rate will ignore the discount, which will just be additional profit for you.
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For definite information, especially before making any life-changing decisions, talk to a professional to confirm.

Results are merely orientative and provided without any guarantee. Many special cases are not covered. All calculations have been tested to the best of the author's knowledge, but no guarantee is given in regard to accuracy. Note that there are conditions around how and when you can receive sick pay, paternity pay, and pensions.

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MEI (Mecanismo de Equidad Intergeneracional)

MEI is an extra Social Security contribution that funds the state pension reserve. In 2026 it is 0.90% of your contribution base, paid in full by the self-employed. It rises 0.1 points a year to 1.2% in 2029 and buys you no additional pension rights.