Which EU country is cheapest to hire in? Employer cost, country by country

A salary offer is the same everywhere: a number. What sits on top of it is not. Employer social security, holiday pay and a 13th month are set by the country, and the gap between the lightest and the heaviest is large enough to change where a role should sit. Here is the employer load across the five countries the calculator models, and why the cheapest one is not always the one with the lowest percentage.

The employer social-security load, lightest first

• Netherlands: roughly 20% employer premiums on gross, plus an 8% holiday allowance owed on top by law. No statutory 13th month, though some sectors add one.
• Germany: around 21% employer share of social insurance. Paid leave, but no separate statutory holiday allowance and no statutory 13th month (frequent in collective agreements).
• Belgium: around 25% employer NSSO on gross, plus statutory double holiday pay (about 8%). A 13th month is very common, set by sector agreement rather than federal law.
• France: roughly 25 to 42% employer charges, about 30% mid-range after the reductions an employer qualifies for. A 13th month is common by collective agreement, not by law.
• Spain: roughly 31 to 32% employer social security, the heaviest of the five. Two extra payments (pagas extra) are mandatory, but they sit within annual gross rather than adding on top.

(Indicative 2026 planning averages, reviewed against each country social-security body. They move, and they depend on the salary band and the reductions a role qualifies for.)

Why the percentage is not the ranking

Reading that list top to bottom is tempting, but the social-security line is only one of the meters, and the other two do not line up with it. Belgium sits mid-table on social security, yet its statutory double holiday pay is added on top of gross, so the all-in multiple lands around 1.33x. Spain looks heaviest on the percentage, but its two extra payments are counted within annual gross, so they do not stack the same way a Belgian 13th month does. And France carries the widest band of all: the same role can cost meaningfully more or less depending on the branch agreement and the reductions it qualifies for, before a collective 13th month is added.

The same salary, three worked numbers

Put a 50,000 euro gross base salary through the calculator and the country does the rest. In Belgium it is about 66,500 euro all-in, roughly 1.33x, once the about 25% employer social security and the roughly 8% double holiday pay are added. The same gross in Germany, where the load is lighter, lands nearer 60,500 euro. In France it can run to about 65,000 euro or well above once a collective 13th month applies. That is a five-figure swing on an identical offer, decided entirely by where the person sits.

We deliberately do not print a single headline total for the Netherlands and Spain here, because their totals assemble differently: the Dutch 8% holiday allowance and the Spanish pagas extra within gross change how the stack builds, so a like-for-like number would mislead more than it helps. Run your real gross through the calculator, pick the country, and read the exact breakdown for each.

Hiring where you have no entity

Knowing the country load is the first half of the decision. The second is whether you can even run local payroll. For a first hire in a new country, opening a legal entity is slow and expensive, so most teams use an employer of record, which hires the person on its own local payroll for a flat monthly fee while they work for you. The EOR does not lower the employer burden the country sets, it just spares you the entity, and it stops being the cheaper option once you have roughly five to six people in one country. If you are weighing that route, see how much an employer of record costs and whether a contractor or an EOR is the right way to hire abroad.

See your own number

Pick a country, enter the annual gross, and the calculator shows the real cost to employ, the breakdown, and the multiple, using rates reviewed against each country social-security body. For the full Belgian worked example, including what a 13th month adds, read the real employer cost of a 60k euro Belgian hire. These are planning averages, not legal or tax advice, so confirm the live figures with the relevant authority or your accountant before you commit.