France guarantees €18,654 of vacation. Unlimited PTO guarantees $0

By Skyler Bissell · August 19, 2026 · 9 min read

A senior software engineer on €194,000 in Paris has 25 vacation days that French law puts beyond an employer's reach, and at that salary they are worth €18,654 of paid time a year. The same engineer on an unlimited-PTO policy in Austin has a guaranteed entitlement of $0, because United States federal law requires no paid vacation at all and an unlimited policy adds no days to a floor of zero.

That is not a rhetorical zero. It is the number our engine returns for every US metro, and it is the reason these two things cannot be compared like for like in an offer spreadsheet. One side of the comparison has a price. The other side, by design, does not have one.

The ledger, with one column empty

Here is what each side guarantees a senior engineer, priced at that city's own salary for the same standard of living. The right-hand column is the annual cash value of the statutory entitlement: guaranteed days multiplied by a day of gross pay.

cityparity engine figures, 2026, on the published senior software engineer scenario. Each city's salary is the local amount funding the same standard of living, so the rows compare one career rather than ten different jobs. Vacation days are STATUTORY MINIMUMS that many employers exceed by contract; the value column prices the legal floor and nothing above it. Public holidays are separate paid days and are not counted here. Every figure in this table is computed on gross salary, so none of it depends on a country's tax model, which is why Copenhagen appears despite Denmark carrying an open item in our tax-accuracy worklist that touches its take-home figures only.

Two rows deserve a second look. Toronto shows that "not American" and "European-style leave" are different claims: Ontario's floor is 10 days at twelve months of service, worth CA$12,038, less than half of Stockholm's. And the US rows are not a total absence of paid time off, because eleven federal holidays are widely observed and our engine counts them; what is absent is any day an employer is required to grant. The country-by-country picture, holidays included, is at vacation days by country.

Why the unlimited column cannot be filled in

The blank is not a gap in our data. It is the accurate answer, and it follows from three properties of the policy.

It grants no days. An unlimited policy replaces a number with a permission. In the United States the number it replaces is already zero: the U.S. Department of Labor confirms the Fair Labor Standards Act requires no payment for time not worked, including vacation. So the floor under an unlimited policy is the same floor as under no policy, and any days you take rest on your manager's approval rather than on a right.

It can be withdrawn. A statutory entitlement changes when a legislature changes it. A policy changes when a company decides to change it, which happens most often in the quarter when it is least convenient for the people relying on it. That asymmetry has no dollar figure attached, and it is why our engine prices the legal floor and refuses to price a market norm, a rule adjudicated across dozens of correction reports about our own vacation figures.

It cannot be negotiated upward. You can ask a Paris employer for 30 days instead of 25 and price the difference at €3,731. There is no equivalent ask under an unlimited policy, because there is no unit to increase. The one thing you can negotiate is a floor, which is covered below.

None of this depends on how many days people take, which is a survey question rather than an engine one. The argument here rests only on what is guaranteed, and the guarantee is the part that survives a bad manager.

The exit payment nobody puts in the offer letter

The sharpest financial difference shows up on your last day rather than during the job. Accrued vacation is a balance, and a balance is money.

In the European Union, Article 7 of Directive 2003/88/EC requires an allowance in lieu of any untaken statutory minimum leave when employment ends. A Paris engineer who leaves in October having taken ten of 25 days walks out with a claim on the rest, priced at their own day rate. On this salary a single unused day is €746, so a fortnight of untaken leave comes to €7,462 that the employer cannot contract out of.

In the United States there is no federal equivalent, but roughly twenty states, California most prominently, treat accrued vacation as earned wages that must be paid at termination. Here is the part that rarely makes the announcement email: an unlimited policy has no accrued balance, so there is nothing for that state law to attach to. Moving a workforce from an accrual plan to unlimited PTO removes a liability from the employer's balance sheet, and the money that liability represented was the employees'. That is the strongest version of the case against the policy, and it does not need a single survey to make it.

The general mechanics of converting a day into cash at exit, in both directions, are on our page about what a vacation day is worth. What is specific to unlimited PTO is that the conversion has no input.

The honest case for unlimited time off

A page that only prosecuted would be a worse page. Three things favour the policy, and two of them matter more than the arithmetic above.

It removes the ceiling as well as the floor. An engineer who needs six weeks for a family illness does not have to spend a balance they may not have, and under a decent manager that flexibility is worth more than €14,923 of German entitlement, because the German entitlement runs out at 20 days.

It also ends the practice of hoarding days for their cash value, which is a bad outcome for everyone: the employee does not rest, and the employer carries a growing liability. And in the United States specifically, the alternative on offer is rarely a European package. It is an accrual plan of ten to fifteen contractual days, so the honest comparison for a US worker is unlimited against a small allotment, and on flexibility the unlimited policy can win that one.

What none of this changes is the guarantee. The villain in the $0 figure is the statute rather than the policy, and a US employer offering unlimited PTO is working inside the same legal vacuum as everyone else in the country.

What to ask for instead

There is one clause that converts the policy back into something you can price: a written minimum. Wording along the lines of "the employee will take no fewer than 25 days of paid leave per year" costs an employer nothing they were not already budgeting, and it hands you an entitlement worth the same 9.6% of salary a Parisian gets by statute. Mandatory-minimum clauses are now common enough at companies running unlimited policies that asking is unremarkable.

Two supporting questions are worth asking in the same conversation. What was the median leave taken across the team last year, which an employer who is proud of the policy will answer. And what happens to leave on termination, which tells you whether any balance exists at all.

When you are weighing the offer against one in another country, the vacation line is one of several that move together. An Austin package against a Paris one changes tax, healthcare, childcare and statutory leave at once, and the Austin vs Paris comparison prices all of them on one salary. If instead the choice is between a bigger salary and more days at the same employer, the break-even pay cut for extra vacation gives you the exchange rate. The wider case for counting time off as compensation at all is how much PTO is worth in your total package.

FAQ

Is unlimited PTO better than 25 days of guaranteed vacation?

On the one axis that can be priced, no. A statutory 25-day entitlement has a computable cash value that survives a change of manager, a reorganisation and the end of the job. An unlimited policy has a guaranteed value of zero by construction, because it grants no days, creates no balance and can be withdrawn by the employer at any time. Whether it is better in practice depends entirely on the culture around it, which is not a term of your contract and cannot be relied on in an offer comparison.

Do you get paid out for unused vacation under unlimited PTO?

No, and that is the clearest financial consequence of the policy. A payout requires an accrued balance to pay out, and unlimited policies are written specifically so that no balance accrues. In the roughly twenty US states that treat accrued vacation as earned wages, California among them, switching a workforce from an accrual plan to unlimited removes the employer's obligation along with the balance. In the EU, Article 7 of the Working Time Directive requires payment in lieu of untaken statutory minimum leave when employment ends, and that right cannot be written away by a policy.

How many vacation days do European countries guarantee by law?

The EU floor is four weeks under the Working Time Directive, and several countries legislate above it. France and Sweden both set 25 working days, Denmark 25, Spain 22 and Germany 20 on a five-day week. These are legal minimums that many employers exceed by contract, and they are the number that survives when a contract or an employer does not. Public holidays are additional paid days on top.

How do I compare an unlimited PTO offer against a European one?

Ask the employer for a written minimum. A clause guaranteeing at least a stated number of days converts an unpriceable policy into an entitlement you can value at your own day rate, and most employers will grant it because it costs them nothing they were not already expecting to give. If no minimum is on offer, price the unlimited side at the statutory floor of the country you would be working in, which in the United States is zero days, and compare from there.

Put a number on the guarantee and the two offers stop being incomparable. Run both cities and your own salary through the engine, and the vacation line comes back priced alongside the tax, the healthcare and the childcare.

Sources. US federal position on paid vacation: U.S. Department of Labor on vacation leave. EU minimum leave and payment in lieu at termination: Directive 2003/88/EC (EUR-Lex), Article 7. French entitlement: Code du travail article L3141-3 on Legifrance. Swedish entitlement: Semesterlagen (1977:480), section 4. German minimum: Bundesurlaubsgesetz section 3. Ontario floor: Ontario Employment Standards Act guide, vacation. Day values are computed by cityparity's per-city engine; per-field provenance is in data/_meta.json.

Entitlement values price statutory minimums on a five-day week at gross salary and exclude contractual leave above the floor. See the methodology.