Sick pay in Poland 2026: what you get for days on sick leave

Ten days of L4 on four salaries

The table assumes the same salary over the last 12 months. "Normal pay for those days" is 1/30 of gross times the number of days, the amount you would have received had you not been ill.

Your take-home loss is smaller than the "gross difference" column suggests, because pension, disability and sickness contributions are not deducted from sick pay. In practice the benefit equals about 69.03 % of gross pay for the same days (80 % of an amount already reduced by 13.71 %), but free of those contributions.

How the base and daily rate are built

The starting point is the average pay for the 12 full calendar months before the month in which incapacity began. The employee's contributions come off that average: pension 9.76 %, disability 1.5 % and sickness 2.45 %, 13.71 % in total. The result is divided by 30, and the daily rate is multiplied by 80 % and by the number of days on leave.

For full-time work the base cannot be lower than the minimum wage minus 13.71 %, which is PLN 4,147.10. If you received bonuses or variable allowances in recent months, part of them enters the average; the calculator cannot reproduce that, since it works from a single gross figure.

33 days from the employer, then ZUS

The Labour Code splits illness within a calendar year into two stages. For the first 33 days (in total, even across several separate sick notes) the employer pays the benefit as sick pay. For an employee aged 50 or over that period is shortened to 14 days. From the following day, ZUS sickness benefit applies. The rate does not change: the Sickness Benefits Act also provides for 80 % of the base, so on PLN 7,000 gross the full 33 employer days come to PLN 5,315 gross, and each later ZUS day is worth the same PLN 161.07.

On a Polish payslip (pasek wypłaty) sick days usually appear as a separate line, "wynagrodzenie chorobowe" or "zasiłek chorobowy", while base salary for that month is reduced for the days of absence. If the total looks too low, compare the daily rate on the payslip with the calculator: a gap usually comes from bonuses or allowances that entered the average of recent months.

When the rate is 100 % of the base

The 80 % rate has exceptions. A full 100 % of the base applies to incapacity during pregnancy and to incapacity caused by an accident on the way to or from work. In the calculator, choose the number of days and multiply the result by 125 % to get the amount for those cases; on PLN 7,000 gross, 30 days give PLN 6,040 instead of PLN 4,832.

What the sick pay calculator does not cover

The tool works out the benefit under an employment contract for a steady salary. It does not cover people on mandate contracts or the self-employed, whose right to benefit depends on a voluntary sickness contribution, nor cases where you have not yet completed 12 full months with your employer. It shows gross, not net, because tax on the benefit is settled together with the whole payslip for that month. Check net pay for a healthy month in the salary calculator, and read how benefits are funded in the guide to ZUS contributions.

Your sickness contribution

Benefits are funded by the 2.45 % sickness contribution, paid entirely by the employee every month. Check how much it is on your salary.