On €60,000 of profit, a SASU that pays you everything as dividends leaves you €38,119, an EURL €36,373. Except that the SASU then validates no pension quarter for you.
Pay yourself just enough salary to validate four, and the gap falls to €1,177. Meanwhile, the EURL pays €11,508 a year into your pension funds, and the SASU €2,018.
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In an EURL, it changes part of your self-employed contributions.
Information verified on October 16, 2026. Indicative calculator with no legal force. The figures it applies are taken from official sources and dated: only your tax notice and the tax authorities are binding.
The official pages where we read the rules and amounts applied here.
You will often read that a SASU paid entirely in dividends leaves you more than an EURL, which makes you pay contributions on everything it pays you. True, but in that case you validate no pension quarter, while the EURL validates four for you. So you are comparing a year with no pension to a year with one.
To validate your four quarters for the year, a SASU has to pay you €7,212 of gross salary. Compared that way, for a single person in a liberal profession, it never strays from the EURL by more than €2,000 a year between €10,000 and €100,000 of profit, either way.
On €60,000 of profit, the EURL pays €11,508 a year towards your pension, the four-quarter SASU €2,018. Your quarters set the age at which you get the full rate. The amount of your pension depends on what you have paid in.
As your profit rises, the gap changes sides several times:
In an EURL, you pay your contributions in advance, based on your past income, and the Urssaf adjusts them once your actual income is declared. In a SASU, they go with each salary payment. And in both cases, you have no right to unemployment insurance.
| Profit before pay | EURL: you keep | EURL: paid towards your pension | SASU: you keep | SASU: paid towards your pension |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| €30,000 | €20,730 | €5,743 | €19,652 | €2,018 |
| €60,000 | €36,373 | €11,508 | €37,550 | €2,018 |
| €100,000 | €56,901 | €15,021 | €56,570 | €2,018 |
| €150,000 | €84,063 | €18,424 | €82,165 | €6,547 |
For a single person with no other income, in a liberal profession, with €1,000 of capital. Each form pays you its best split between pay and dividends, and the SASU pays you at least enough to validate four quarters. In a SASU, we count neither the workplace accident contribution nor provident cover.
Sarah is a consultant. She lives alone and expects to make €60,000 a year before paying herself.
In a SASU, all as dividends, she would keep €38,119, without a single pension quarter.
In a SASU with €7,212 of gross salary, she validates her four quarters and keeps €37,550.
In an EURL, all as pay, she keeps €36,373 and pays €11,508 a year into her pension funds.
The €1,177 gap matters little to her. What makes her hesitate is the €9,490 the EURL would pay on top every year towards her pension.
Compare both forms with the same pension quarters, never with a SASU paid all in dividends.
First decide how much you want to pay towards your pension, then choose the form.
Show your choice to an accountant before registering your company.
Start by looking for the right split between pay and dividends in your current company.
Only change form if the gap comes back year after year.
Run the calculation again when your profit changes noticeably.
Comparing an EURL and a SASU with the same pension quarters avoids setting a year with no pension against a year with one, because a SASU that pays you everything as dividends validates no quarter for you, whereas an EURL that pays you a salary does. So we give the SASU just enough salary to validate as many quarters as the EURL, and then compare what you keep.
In 2026, a SASU needs €7,212 of gross salary over the year to validate four pension quarters. Each €1,803, that is 150 times the hourly minimum wage of 1 January, validates one quarter, up to four.
In 2026, an EURL manager validates pension quarters according to the basic pension contribution paid: €322 for one quarter, €1,289 for four. Your dividends above 10% of capital carry contributions too, and those count towards your pension.
A SASU that pays you everything as dividends often leaves you a little more than an EURL, but you contribute to nothing: no pension, no sick pay. With the same quarters, the gap with the EURL mostly stays under €2,000 a year, either way. And it is the EURL that pays the most towards your pension.
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