Same position, different country
A higher gross in a higher-tax country can still leave you better off, and often does. But comparing the same converted salary in two countries compares exchange rates as much as tax systems, and the answer moves with the rate. So this page compares the thing that holds still: the same position in each country’s own wage distribution.
Somebody on the average wage there, against somebody on the average wage here. Two thirds of it, or one and two thirds of it, if that is closer to where you sit. Every figure below is in its own currency and no exchange rate touches any of them, which means none of them inherits the error in one.
United Kingdom
Computed here from the published schedule, and checked against the rates actually taken.
United Kingdom in fullFrance
Computed here from the published schedule, and checked against the rates actually taken.
France in fullSomebody at this position keeps 4.8 percentage points more in the United Kingdom.
That is a share of each country’s own wage at that position, not the same salary converted into two currencies. United Kingdom is £55,983 against France at €45,964, and no exchange rate was applied to either.
All 38, ranked at this position
the average wage, in each country’s own currency. The two you picked are highlighted. Ranking by share kept rather than by amount is what lets a Colombian salary and a Swiss one sit in the same column at all.
Rows for Australia, Colombia, Denmark and New Zealand exclude employee social security, which is a real deduction and has not been read to the standard everything else here is held to. They sit higher in this ranking than they should, and they are shown rather than hidden because removing them would quietly change what the ranking is a ranking of.
Why this page will not convert your salary
The obvious way to build this page is a box for a salary, a currency dropdown, and two net figures in the same currency. That was built first. The problem is that the number it produces is mostly a statement about the exchange rate on the day you loaded the page, and it changes when the rate changes even though no tax law moved. A reader cannot tell which part of the difference is tax and which part is the currency.
There is a second problem underneath it, and it is worse. Converting a British salary into Hungarian forint gives a figure that almost nobody in Hungary earns, at a position in the Hungarian wage distribution that has no equivalent in the United Kingdom. The tax computed on it is arithmetically correct and practically meaningless: it answers a question about a person who does not exist.
Comparing positions instead removes both problems at once and needs no rate at all. Somebody on the Hungarian average wage against somebody on the British average wage is a comparison of two real people in two real labour markets, and the answer does not move because a central bank did something. The cost is that the answer is a share rather than a sum, which is less satisfying and more true.
Where a converted figure genuinely is required elsewhere on this site, the rate is the European Central Bank’s daily reference rate and the page prints the date it was published beside the converted figure. That rate is published for information: no bank will give it to you, which is another reason a converted comparison overstates its own precision.
What a tax comparison does not capture
Four things move the answer more than the tax difference does. None of them is on this page, and a comparison that presented itself as complete without them would be the more dishonest design.
What the deduction buys
A country taking a third of a salary and providing healthcare, childcare and a pension out of it is not comparable to one taking a quarter and providing none of them. This page measures what is taken, which is the smaller half of the question.
What things cost
Rent, transport and childcare move a real budget further than a few percentage points of tax do, and they vary more within a country than the tax rate varies between countries. No cost index is used here, because none has been sourced to the standard everything else is held to.
Who you are
Every figure assumes a single person on employment income with no dependants and no reliefs. Dependants, joint filing and pension arrangements change the answer in different directions in different systems, and they change it by more than the gap between two countries usually is.
Whether you can go
A comparison is not an immigration decision. The right to work somewhere, what it does to a career, and what it costs to move are the parts that actually decide it, and none of them is a tax question.
Freedom day, and what it is not
The day of the year at which your earnings have covered your tax and social contributions for that year. It is our own arithmetic from the effective rate, the rate multiplied by 365 and rounded to a day, and not an official statistic that anybody publishes. It is a way of feeling the number rather than a measure you could cite.
It is also, deliberately, the least rigorous thing on this site, and it is labelled as such rather than dressed up. Real tax is not paid in one block at the start of a year, the effective rate it derives from assumes a single person with no reliefs, and the whole idea flatters countries whose deduction buys less. Read it as a picture, and read the share above it as the figure.
The three positions, and why those three
67% of the average wage, the average wage, 167% of the average wage. They are not chosen for elegance. They are the positions the OECD publishes average rates at for a single person with no children, so a comparison at any one of them is a comparison of two published outcomes rather than of two interpolations. Asking for a fourth position would mean inventing the wage at it, and inventing a wage to compute a tax on is the shape of answer this site exists to avoid.
Each country’s own average wage is the anchor, which is why no exchange rate appears anywhere on this page. Somebody at the average wage in one country and somebody at the average wage in another occupy the same place in two different labour markets, and that is a real comparison. The same converted salary in both is usually not: it is a normal wage in one and an unusual one in the other, and the tax it attracts says more about that mismatch than about either tax system.
Every figure on this page is for the 2025 tax year, the most recent year that can be stated for every jurisdiction at once. Comparing a country’s newest schedule against another country’s older one would move the answer by more than most of the gaps on this page are worth, so the comparison waits for the slowest publisher rather than mixing years.
Which of these this site computes, and which it reports
11 of the 38 are computed here: the statutory schedule is read from the authority that publishes it, the arithmetic is run band by band, and the result is checked against the rates actually taken before the jurisdiction appears at all. A jurisdiction that misses that check by more than half a percentage point at any of the three positions does not get a calculator, however carefully its rules were transcribed.
The other 27 are reported rather than computed. For those, what you see is the published outcome itself, cited to the row it came from, with the statutory schedule alongside it where the schedule can be read as a ladder. Both kinds are honest and they are not the same claim, so each panel says which one it is making rather than presenting a computed figure and a reported one in the same typeface and hoping.
That distinction is the reason this page can rank 38 jurisdictions at all. A site that computed only what it could compute would show a shorter list and imply the rest were missing; a site that computed everything regardless would show the same list and be wrong about part of it. Reporting what somebody else published, and saying so, is the only way to be complete and accurate at once.
Questions about comparing
Why does this page not let me enter a salary?
Because converting one salary into two currencies compares exchange rates as much as tax systems, and the answer moves when the rate moves even though no tax law changed. Worse, the converted figure often lands at a position in the other country’s wage distribution that nobody there occupies, so the tax computed on it is arithmetically correct and practically meaningless. Comparing positions needs no rate and asks about two people who exist.
What does "the average wage" mean here?
The average wage the OECD publishes for that country, for a single person with no children. The three positions are two thirds of it, all of it, and one and two thirds of it, which is the same set of positions the published rates are given at, so nothing has to be interpolated.
Is the share kept the same as take-home pay?
Only where employee social security is inside the figures, and the ranking says which jurisdictions those are. Where it is not, the share kept is what stays after income tax alone and your real net is lower. The label on the number is the claim, so those rows are marked rather than quietly averaged in.
Why can a country with higher tax leave me better off?
Because the gross differs too. A higher gross in a higher-tax country can still leave more in your account than a lower gross in a lower-tax one, which is exactly why a comparison of rates alone is not a comparison of outcomes. The gross at each position is printed beside the share for that reason.
Do these figures include employer contributions?
No, and deliberately. Employer contributions never appear in your gross pay, so including them would move a country up or down for a reason that has nothing to do with what reaches your account. If you want the full cost of employing somebody, this is not the figure to use.
Where do the figures come from?
Every one of them is a rule in a store carrying the document it was read from, the clause inside it and the day it was read. Where this site computes a jurisdiction itself, the calculation is checked against the rates actually taken before the jurisdiction is published at all.
Every pair on this page also has a page of its own, 703 of them, each one going through all 3 positions rather than the one you picked here. How a figure gets from a government document into any of them is on methodology, every document read is on the source of record, and every jurisdiction has its own page.