Definition
You have just registered your activity.
One article calls you an auto-entrepreneur, your bank offers a micro-entrepreneur account, and the document that arrives a few days later calls you an entrepreneur individuel (sole trader).
Three words for one person, and the feeling that you ticked the wrong box somewhere.
A micro-entrepreneur is a sole trader whose activity falls under the Micro-enterprise regime: a tax side, which computes income tax on a flat-rate allowance, and a social side, which computes contributions as a percentage of what is actually collected.
Auto-entrepreneur is the former name of the very same regime, and it never left official vocabulary: the URSSAF portal is still called autoentrepreneur.urssaf.fr, and the administration still refers to losing the statut d'auto-entrepreneur when the regime stops applying.
There is nothing to choose between the two words.
A regime, not a legal form
The distinction sounds academic, yet it decides what happens the day something moves. The business itself is a Sole proprietorship: no share capital, no articles of association, no partners.
The micro regime is not that business, it is a calculation method bolted on top of it.
So nobody loses their business by losing the micro regime.
The Turnover threshold stands at €203,100 for the sale of goods and hotel accommodation, and €83,600 for services and liberal professions, for the years 2026 to 2028.
Going over it in a single year changes nothing. The regime only ends if the threshold is exceeded in two consecutive years.
On 1 January of the following year the business then moves to the régime réel, the actual-profit regime, where contributions are calculated on real income with an annual adjustment.
The nothing-collected-nothing-to-pay rule disappears that day. If turnover falls back below the threshold, the micro regime applies again as of right the year after.
What a micro-entrepreneur really pays
Take a freelance developer, in an unregulated liberal profession, collecting €3,000 in one month of 2026.
Their Social contributions are calculated at 25.6%, the general-scheme rate applying since 1 January 2026 to unregulated liberal professions, which comes to €768; regulated professions affiliated to the Cipav pension fund have their own rate, 23.2% in 2026.
On top of that comes the CFP (contribution à la formation professionnelle, the vocational training levy), 0.2% of turnover for a liberal profession in 2026, which comes to €6.
It is only due if turnover was declared in the previous calendar year: our developer was already invoicing in 2025, so they pay it. Total paid to URSSAF: €774.
A contribution rate never covers everything that is owed: not the training levy, not the chamber levy paid by traders and craftspeople, and not income tax, which is settled separately.
That leaves €2,226, and it is still not income. Turnover is what lands in the account, not what stays there: hardware, software and travel come out of that sum and are never deductible.
The 34% allowance applied in 2026 to bénéfices non commerciaux (BNC, non-commercial profits) is a flat tax allowance, not an estimate of real expenses.
ACRE, the start-up relief that lowers a founder's contributions, is never granted without a formality.
A micro-entrepreneur already had to apply for it before 2026, and since 1 January 2026 that application is required of every self-employed worker: it is filed with URSSAF within 60 days of the start-of-activity date declared to the Guichet unique (the single business formalities window).
Miss that deadline and the relief is lost for this business, and claiming it again requires not having received ACRE in the previous 3 years.
Claiming it too early costs just as much: the exemption period runs even with not a single euro collected.
Frequently asked questions
Do you have to choose between auto-entrepreneur and micro-entrepreneur?
No: the two words designate the same person and the same regime.
Auto-entrepreneur is the original name, still alive in everyday speech and on government websites, and micro-entrepreneur is the term used by the current legal texts.
Does exceeding the threshold once cost you the regime?
No. The regime only ends if the ceiling is exceeded in two consecutive years, and it keeps applying throughout that second year: the exit takes effect on 1 January afterwards.
A provider at €90,000 one year and €70,000 the next stays a micro-entrepreneur.
Can you be a micro-entrepreneur and an employee at the same time?
Yes in most cases, and it is by far the most common starting point.
Combining with employment means rereading your employment contract, which may contain an exclusivity clause, and staying loyal to your employer.
Public-sector staff follow their own separate rules.