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France Overtime Rules: The 35-Hour Week, the 25% and 50% Premiums, and the 220-Hour Quota (2026)

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France Overtime Rules: The 35-Hour Week, the 25% and 50% Premiums, and the 220-Hour Quota (2026)

The short answer: In France the legal working week is 35 hours. Hours 36 through 43 in a week are paid at a 25% premium, and every hour from the 44th is paid at 50%, unless a collective agreement sets different rates, which can never go below 10%. Overtime is capped by an annual quota of 220 hours per employee, and every hour past the quota earns paid rest on top of the premium. No one may work more than 10 hours in a day or 48 in a week, every hour must clear the €12.02 SMIC, and when employees are not all on one posted schedule the employer must keep a daily record of each person's start and finish times, available to the labour inspector for a year. In a dispute, the employer is the one who has to produce the hours. Punch builds that record one punch at a time.

Readers of our guides to the UK's 48-hour average and Ireland's contract-based overtime will find France is a different animal. The rate is not left to the contract. It is written into the Code du travail, in two tiers, and the thresholds are measured against the hours actually worked in each calendar week. Here is how it works for a small crew.

The 35-Hour Week and the Two Premium Tiers

The legal working time in France is 35 hours a week, or 1,607 hours a year. Any hour worked past 35 in a week is an heure supplémentaire, and the Code du travail pays it in two tiers when no collective agreement says otherwise:

  • Hours 36 to 43 in the same week: base pay plus 25%.
  • The 44th hour and every hour after it: base pay plus 50%.

A branch or company agreement can set its own rates, but each rate must be at least 10%. Most small businesses in trades, food service and cleaning are covered by a branch agreement, so the first thing to check is what your branch says. If it says nothing, the 25% and 50% legal rates apply.

The week is the unit. A carpenter who works 44 hours one week and 30 the next is owed eight hours at 25% and one at 50% for the first week. Nothing from the 30-hour week offsets it. That is why a weekly hours total, per person, is the figure every French payroll runs on.

An agreement can also let you replace part or all of the overtime pay with repos compensateur de remplacement, paid rest of the same value as the premium pay. One hour at 50% becomes an hour and a half of rest. The hour still has to be counted.

The 220-Hour Annual Quota

Overtime in France is not unlimited. Each employee has an annual contingent of overtime hours. If no branch or company agreement sets one, the default is 220 hours a year. Inside the quota, the employer schedules overtime on its own authority, with the works council consulted where one exists.

Past the quota, every additional overtime hour earns the premium and a contrepartie obligatoire en repos: paid rest equal to 50% of the hour in a business with 20 employees or fewer, and 100% in a business with more than 20. A 15-person roofing crew whose foreman hits hour 221 in November owes that foreman the usual premium on the hour and half an hour of paid rest, on top.

The quota is a running total across the year, per person. The owner who knows each person's overtime hours to date in October can plan December. The owner who finds out at year end from the payslips cannot.

Maximum Hours: 10 a Day, 48 a Week, 44 on Average

Premiums pay for long weeks. The maximums forbid them past a point. Three limits apply to every adult employee in the private sector:

  • 10 hours in a day. A collective agreement or the labour inspector can allow up to 12 in defined cases, never more.
  • 48 hours in any single week. The inspector can authorise up to 60 in exceptional circumstances, and only for a limited time.
  • An average of 44 hours a week over 12 consecutive weeks. A collective agreement can raise the average to 46.

A landscaping crew that runs 48-hour weeks through May and June has already spent its 12-week average. Twelve weeks at 44 is 528 hours. Eight weeks at 48 is 384, which leaves 144 hours for the remaining four weeks, an average of 36. Without a per-week record, that arithmetic is a guess, and the Court of Cassation has held that it is the employer who must prove the maximums and rest periods were respected.

Breaks, Daily Rest, and Weekly Rest

Three rest rules sit under the hours limits, and each one is tested against punch times:

  • A 20-minute break once the working day reaches 6 hours. It has to be a single, consecutive 20 minutes, and it is unpaid unless the agreement says otherwise.
  • 11 consecutive hours of rest between two working days. A crew member who punched out at 9 p.m. cannot be required back before 8 a.m.
  • A weekly rest of 24 consecutive hours, which must sit next to a daily rest, for 35 hours in total. In principle that day is Sunday.

A start time, a lunch, and a finish time for every day settle every one of these. A whiteboard does not.

Every Hour Has to Clear the SMIC

The SMIC rose to €12.02 gross an hour on 1 January 2026, which is €1,823.03 a month for a 35-hour week. It rises again automatically in the course of a year whenever inflation since the last increase passes 2%, so check the figure in force before each payroll run.

The test is pay divided by hours worked. A worker on a flat €1,900 a month for a contracted 35-hour week is comfortably above the floor. The same €1,900 for weeks that actually ran to 40 hours is below it once the overtime premium is added in, and the shortfall is owed. Unrecorded extra hours are the most common way a small employer drifts under the SMIC without noticing.

The Tax Side: Why Overtime Hours Have to Be Counted Exactly

France treats overtime pay differently from ordinary wages, which makes an exact hours count worth money to both sides:

  • For the employee, overtime pay is exempt from income tax up to €7,500 of net taxable pay a year, under article 81 quater of the tax code, and carries a reduction in employee social contributions. CSG and CRDS are still due.
  • For the employer, every overtime hour earns a flat deduction from employer contributions: €1.50 an hour in a business with fewer than 20 employees, and €0.50 an hour from 20 up to 249.

Both reliefs attach to hours declared as overtime in the monthly DSN return. An hour that was worked but never recorded as overtime is paid at the wrong rate, misses the relief, and shows up later as a back-pay claim.

The Hours Record, and Who Has to Produce It

This is the rule that turns everything above into a question about your timekeeping. Under article L3171-2 of the Code du travail, when the employees of a workplace are not all on the same posted collective schedule, the employer must count each person's hours. Article D3171-8 spells out the form: a daily record of the start and finish times, or of the hours worked, for every employee, and a weekly recap of the hours each one worked. An electronic punch system satisfies it, provided the system is, in the Court of Cassation's words, reliable and tamper-proof.

Article D3171-16 requires those records to be available to the labour inspector for one year. Wage claims can reach back three years, so the prudent retention period is three.

The burden of proof is where the record matters most. Article L3171-4 says that in a dispute over the hours worked, the employer provides the court with the elements that justify the hours the employee actually worked. Since the Court of Cassation's ruling of 18 March 2020, the employee only has to present elements precise enough for the employer to answer. A handwritten list of weeks and estimated hours is enough. If the employer has no record of its own, the employee's list tends to stand.

How Punch Handles French Overtime

Punch is built for the record every rule above depends on.

A France preset, in euros. Choose France at signup and Punch applies its France overtime preset, with euros throughout: every hour past 35 in a week at 1.25x, and every hour past 43 at 1.5x, split automatically for every pay period. If your branch agreement sets different rates or thresholds, switch to Custom in Org Settings and enter them. Punch applies them to every week from then on.

Start, break, and finish on every day. Your team punches in, punches out for lunch, punches back in, and punches out from their phone. The 20-minute break, the 11-hour daily rest, the 10-hour day and the weekly rest are on the record for every person, every day.

The weekly total, every week. Reports roll up per person by week and by pay period, so the 48-hour ceiling, the 44-hour average and the SMIC floor are a glance, not a reconstruction, and the overtime hours that count toward the 220 are listed week by week.

A job-site geofence, not a camera. Punch-in can be limited to a geofence around the site. There is no photo at punch and no facial recognition.

Approvals before payroll. Managers approve hours one by one or bulk approve a whole pay period, then export to QuickBooks Online, Square, or a QuickBooks or Excel CSV for your payroll provider or accountant.

Three years, kept. Approved pay periods stay in Punch, per person, with every punch behind them. When the inspector or the conseil de prud'hommes asks for the hours, it is a report.

No signal, no gap. Punches made in a basement, on a rural site or in a cold room sync when the phone reconnects. A shared iPad in kiosk mode, with a PIN for each worker, covers a workshop or a yard gate.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the overtime rate in France?

By law, hours 36 to 43 in a week are paid at base rate plus 25%, and the 44th hour onward at base rate plus 50%. A collective agreement can set different rates, but never below a 10% premium.

How many overtime hours can an employee work in France?

The default annual quota is 220 overtime hours per employee. A collective agreement can set a different figure. Hours past the quota earn paid rest on top of the premium: 50% of each hour in a business with 20 employees or fewer, 100% above that.

What is the maximum working time in France?

10 hours in a day, 48 hours in any single week, and an average of 44 hours a week over 12 consecutive weeks. Collective agreements and the labour inspector can allow limited exceptions.

Does an employer in France have to record working hours?

Yes, whenever employees are not all on one posted collective schedule. The employer must keep a daily record of each person's start and finish times and a weekly recap, available to the labour inspector for one year. In a dispute, the employer must produce the elements that justify the hours worked.

What is the SMIC in 2026?

€12.02 gross an hour since 1 January 2026, or €1,823.03 a month for a 35-hour week, with automatic increases when inflation passes 2% since the last rise.

Keep a French Record That Holds Up

French overtime is a set of lines drawn across the hours your crew actually works: 35 a week before the premium starts, 43 before it doubles, 220 a year before paid rest is owed, 10 a day and 48 a week that cannot be crossed, €12.02 for every hour, and a daily record that decides who has to prove what.

Punch records every punch in, punch out and lunch, applies the France preset, rolls up the week, and exports approved hours straight to payroll. Pricing is flat per workspace, with no per-user line item, and every plan includes every feature. The 14-day free trial starts on signup, no credit card required.

Start tracking French hours correctly with Punch →

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