Prime de Précarité in France: The 10% CDD End of Contract Bonus

A contrat à durée déterminée reaches its term, the last payslip arrives, and a line that should be there is missing. The prime de précarité is the compensation French law attaches to the insecurity of fixed-term work, and it is one of the most commonly underpaid items in a final settlement, partly because the rules that reduce it or remove it are genuinely intricate.

Its real name in the Code du travail is the indemnité de fin de contrat. It is set at 10%, it can drop to 6% only where a specific condition that most summaries omit is met, and there is a list of situations in which it is not owed at all. A salarié who ended a CDD early, or who turned down a contrat à durée indéterminée, often does not realise what that decision cost until the money fails to arrive.

Information last verified on 21 July 2026. This page presents general legal information, not legal advice.

What the prime de précarité is

Article L1243-8 of the Code du travail provides that where a contrat à durée déterminée comes to an end and the working relationship does not continue under a contrat à durée indéterminée, the salarié is entitled, as a complément de salaire, to an indemnité de fin de contrat intended to compensate the precariousness of their situation.

The wording matters. It is a supplement to salary, not a gratuity and not a form of severance. That legal character is why the sum is treated as remuneration for social contributions, and why a dispute about it is a salary claim rather than a claim about the way the contract ended.

The same logic explains why it disappears when the relationship continues as a CDI. Where the fixed-term job becomes a permanent one, the precariousness the indemnité compensates for no longer exists.

How the 10% is calculated and paid

Article L1243-8 sets the indemnité at 10% of the total gross remuneration paid to the salarié. It is added to the total gross remuneration due, it is paid at the end of the contract at the same time as the last salary, and it appears on the corresponding bulletin de salaire.

The base is the whole contract, including any renewal, and it is built on what was actually paid rather than on a theoretical monthly salary. Gross pay, overtime and bonuses paid during the CDD form part of that base, which is why multiplying the monthly salary by the number of months can understate the figure.

The indemnité de fin de contrat is separate from the indemnité compensatrice de congés payés. Both are typically due when a CDD ends, and one does not replace the other. Both should be visible on the final payslip and reflected in the solde de tout compte.

Because it counts as salary, the indemnité is subject to social security contributions and to CSG and CRDS, so the net amount received is lower than the gross figure calculated.

When it can be reduced to 6%

This is the part of the rule that summaries most often get wrong. Article L1243-9 allows an extended branch agreement, or a company or establishment agreement, to limit the indemnité de fin de contrat to 6%. It does not allow that reduction unconditionally.

The article frames the reduction around improving the vocational training of salariés on fixed-term contracts, and it permits 6% only where counterparts are offered to those salariés, in particular in the form of privileged access to vocational training. It adds that the agreement may set the conditions under which those salariés can undertake a bilan de compétences outside effective working time, carried out within the training plan.

So the test has two limbs. There must be a qualifying collective agreement, and there must be a real counterpart for the salariés concerned. An employer paying 6% with no agreement, or under an agreement that promises nothing in return, has not satisfied article L1243-9 and has underpaid.

When the indemnité is not due at all

Article L1243-10 lists the exclusions, and this list is the most useful part of the rule for anyone checking a final payslip.

The indemnité is not due where the contract was concluded under article L1242-2, 3° of the Code du travail, which covers emplois à caractère saisonnier and jobs in sectors where it is settled practice not to use a contrat à durée indéterminée, known as the CDD d'usage. It is likewise excluded for contracts concluded under article L1242-3, which covers contracts entered into under legal provisions designed to promote the hiring of certain categories of people (the contrat unique d'insertion, the parcours emploi compétences and the contrat d'accompagnement dans l'emploi), or where the employer undertakes to provide additional vocational training. More favourable conventional provisions can override this first exclusion.

It is not due where the contract is concluded with a young person for a period falling within their school or university holidays, the familiar student summer contract.

It is not due where the salarié refuses to accept a contrat à durée indéterminée to occupy the same job or a similar job, with at least equivalent remuneration.

And it is not due where the contract is terminated early at the salarié's initiative, for their faute grave, or by force majeure.

Apprentissage and the contrat de professionnalisation sit outside this scheme entirely. They are alternance contracts governed by their own rules and they do not give rise to the indemnité de fin de contrat unless the applicable convention collective provides for it.

Early termination: who loses it and who keeps it

The exclusion for early termination runs one way only. A salarié who initiates the rupture anticipée loses the indemnité, and so does one whose contract ends for faute grave or by force majeure.

The position reverses where the employer breaks the contract early. Article L1243-4 provides that early termination at the employer's initiative, outside cases of faute grave, force majeure or inaptitude established by the médecin du travail, entitles the salarié to damages of at least the remuneration they would have received through to the term of the contract, and it says expressly that this is without prejudice to the indemnité de fin de contrat under article L1243-8.

Ending a période d'essai inside a CDD is a different question again. It is governed by the trial period rules of the Code du travail rather than by article L1243-10, and a salarié whose trial ends should look to those rules rather than to the ordinary préavis on resignation.

The refusal of a CDI, in practice

The refusal exclusion is narrower than employers sometimes suggest. Article L1243-10 removes the indemnité only where the contrat à durée indéterminée offered covers the same job or a similar one and carries at least equivalent remuneration.

An offer of a different role, a lower salary, materially different hours or a different location can fall outside that test, in which case declining it does not cost the indemnité. Keeping the written offer and the written response is the practical step, because the comparison is made on documents rather than on recollection.

Interim work follows a parallel rule

A salarié on a mission d'intérim is not covered by article L1243-8 but by the indemnité de fin de mission of article L1251-32, which is also set at 10 percent of the total gross remuneration and is paid by the entreprise de travail temporaire at the end of the mission. Its exclusions are set out in that article and are not identical to the list in article L1243-10, so a CDD exclusion should not be read across to a mission.

If the indemnité is missing from your final pay

Article L1243-8 requires the indemnité to be paid with the last salary and to appear on the payslip, so an absent line is visible on the face of the documents. The first step is a written request to the employer setting out the calculation, with a copy kept.

Where that does not work, the claim is pursued before the conseil de prud'hommes as a salary claim, which carries a longer limitation period than a challenge to a dismissal. The evidence is straightforward: the contract and any renewal, every payslip for the CDD, the end of contract documents, and any collective agreement relied on to justify a 6% rate.

The indemnité de fin de contrat should not be confused with the indemnité de licenciement, which belongs to the ending of a permanent contract and follows entirely different rules. For the wider set of French employment entitlements, see our France employment law hub.