How to differentiate the self-employed from the employed?
Verified 21 November 2025 - Entreprendre Public Service / Legal and Administrative Information Directorate (Prime Minister)
The self-employed and the employed are not subject to the same working conditions or to the same regime. How to distinguish them? The main criterion for differentiating between them is the relationship of legal subordination.
Self-employed
A self-employed person shall carry out his professional activity in a self-contained, without any relationship of subordination to the person for whom he works (even if he may sometimes be economically dependent on it).
A freelancer works for himself, with its own resources and tools and by itself bearing any operating losses.
It defines its own rates, its clientele, its schedules, and has a freedom in the organization of his work and the choice of its conditions of practice.
He is not bound by an employment contract with the company or the person for whom he performs his mission and does not benefit from the protection of labor law.
According to the law, a person who meets one of the following conditions is presumed self-employed :
- Business registration: Trade and business Register (RCS), National company Register (RNE), Trade Agent Register (RSAC)
- Quality of company manager
- Carrying out a commercial activity covered by the micro-social scheme
- Personal determination of his working conditions, unless they are defined by the contract with the client.
FYI
This presumption may be waived if the actual conditions of performance of the work reveal the existence of a subordination link, following a legal action taken by the worker or a review by the administration (Urssaf: titleContent, Labor Inspectorate). The employment relationship can be reclassified as an employment contract by the judge, and the use of “false” self-employed workers constitutes the offense of hidden work.
The concept of self-employed implies the creation of a company. It targets the individual entrepreneur, the micro-entrepreneur and the manager of a business.
For example, a rancher, a farmer, a trader or a craftsman are self-employed.
The self-employed person is personally responsible for the exercise of his activity:
- He must repair any damage he may cause, and can take out professional liability insurance for this
- He is responsible for paying his personal social contributions.
Please note
For his social protection, the self-employed person is attached to the social security scheme for self-employed persons (this concerns, for example, the sole proprietor or the majority manager of a LLC: titleContent). This organization is integrated into the general social security system. Some managers of businesses are “assimilated employees” within the meaning of the Social Security and contribute to the general scheme (president or chief executive officer of SAS for example). Self-employed workers in agricultural professions are covered by the Mutualité sociale agricole (MSA).
Employee
The employee is linked to an employer through a employment contract. He receives, in exchange for his work, a salary or a salary.
Please note
The contract is not necessarily written when it is a DTA: titleContent full-time. But even if the obligation of a written contract exists only for certain types of employment contracts (part-time permanent contract, FIXED-TERM CONTRACT: titleContent), the signing of a contract is always preferable, in order to prevent any conflict or dispute between the employee and the employer.
Within the framework of the employee, employer and employee are subject to the labor law, in particular the Labor Code and the collective agreement applicable to the professional sector concerned.
The employer exercises a subordination link on the employee: it can take directives, control the execution and sanction the employee's failures.
Some specific rights are attached to employee status : right to remuneration at least equal to Smic: titleContent, paid leave, statutory redundancy, unemployment insurance, etc.
Under certain conditions, it is possible to pursue a self-employed activity and an employed activity. This is a multi-activity situation.
See, for example, this fact sheet on the combining the status of employee with that of micro-entrepreneur .
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