MeanCEO: Tech Startups and Startup Ideas

Startup Costs in 2026: What a Tech Startup Really Pays for Legal, Tools and People in 9 European Countries

TL;DR: Startup costs for a European tech company in 2026 come in three blocks: legal setup, a monthly tool stack and people. I checked the official pages on 3 November 2026: registering the company costs from €50 in Ireland to about €855 for a German GmbH before VAT, and a 3-person SaaS stack costs about €155 a month. The first hire dwarfs both: employers pay between 10.3% (capped) in Malta and 40.8% in France on top of gross salary. Put your own team and salaries into the year-one startup cost comparer below and see which country leaves you the most runway.
Startup costs are the question I get most from technical founders in Europe, right after "which country should I incorporate in?". I have bootstrapped companies in Europe, won EU, Dutch and Maltese grants, and paid for every mistake on this list myself. My conclusion: the registry fee is the cheapest decision you will make. The expensive decisions are who you hire, where you employ them and how long you pay for software nobody opens.
Most guides on business start up costs are written for a US coffee shop. This one is for a tech founder in Europe with a laptop, a cloud account and a plan to hire. Every number below comes from a registry, a ministry, a tax office or a vendor's pricing page that I opened on 3 November 2026. Where an official figure does not exist, I say "not published" instead of guessing.

What counts as startup costs for a tech company?

Start with the vocabulary, because founders mix these up in pitch decks and in their own spreadsheets.
  • Start-up costs are the one-off amounts you pay to exist: company registration, notary, the first laptop, a logo, the shareholders' agreement.
  • Operating costs are what you pay every month to keep going: salaries, software, hosting, accounting.
  • One-off vs recurring: a notary deed is one-off; a €13.60 Workspace seat is recurring, and it multiplies by every person you add.
  • Burn rate is the cash you lose per month after revenue. Runway is cash in the bank divided by burn rate, in months.
  • Share capital is the money founders put into the company in exchange for shares. It stays company money and you can spend it on the business, so I show it separately from costs.
  • Employer social contributions are the pension, health and unemployment payments an employer pays on top of the gross salary. They never appear on the payslip total, and first-time founders forget them every time.
  • VAT registration gives you a VAT number. It costs nothing in fees, but it changes your prices, your invoicing and your bookkeeping workload from day one.
So the cost of starting a business in year one is: setup fees + tools for 12 months + 12 months of people + one-off extras. Share capital comes on top as cash you must have, without being a cost.

How does the year-one startup cost comparer work?

Tick the countries you are choosing between. Enter how many founders work unpaid, how many people you will hire, their gross monthly salary and your tool stack. The comparer fills in each country's official setup fee, its minimum capital and its employer contribution rate, all editable.
Year-one startup cost comparer: legal, tools and people, country by country

Tick the countries you are choosing between, enter your team and salaries, and see what the first year costs in each. Official fees and employer rates are filled in and every number stays editable. Nothing leaves your browser.

Countries to compare
Team and salaries
Tool stack per month (preset from the priced table, edit freely)
One-off extras (example amounts, replace with your quotes)
CountrySetup feeCapital to depositCost per hire, year oneTools, year oneExtrasYear-one cash out
Edit country data (setup fee, capital, employer rate)
CountrySetup fee (€)Capital (€)Employer rate (%)

Setup fee = official registry, filing and published notary fees for the cheapest standard option, before VAT where the source quotes it that way. Netherlands: KVK €85.15 + the low end of KVK's €500 to €1,500 notary range. Germany GmbH: notary about €630 + court about €225; UG with the model protocol: about €105 + €150. France SAS: greffe €22.14 + beneficial owners €16.11 + legal notice €199. Portugal: online with a pre-approved pact. Spain: CIRCE with standard statutes, notary €60 + registry €40. Italy and Malta exclude professional and notary fees, which are not published. Capital is money the company keeps, so it is not in the cash out; Portugal counts €1 per founder. Employer cost = salary × months × (1 + rate), with Italy's ceiling of €120,607 a year, the Netherlands' €79,409 and Malta's cap of €57.61 a week; other ceilings and accident insurance are left out. If your country pays a 13th or 14th month, enter annual gross divided by 12. Sources and date: KVK, GmbHG, Bundesnotarkammer, IHK Koblenz, guichet unique, Légifrance, e-Business Register, CRO, Justiça, Spanish Ministry of Industry, Chambers of Commerce of Turin and Modena, Malta Business Registry, Belastingdienst, Deutsche Rentenversicherung, Federal Ministry of Health, URSSAF, Agirc-Arrco, Estonian Tax and Customs Board, Department of Social Protection (Ireland), Segurança Social, Seguridad Social, OECD Taxing Wages 2026, MTCA; tool prices from Google Workspace, Notion, GitHub, Claude, Hetzner and Moneybird pricing pages; all checked 3 November 2026. USD at the ECB rate of 2 November 2026.

The result is a side-by-side table: setup fee, capital to deposit, the full cost of each hire, tools per year and total year-one cash out. The cheapest country is highlighted in yellow, the most expensive in black. Copy the table as text and paste it into your startup budget or your grant application. The default view includes €3,500 of example extras (laptops, a lawyer, branding), so replace those with your own quotes.

How much does it cost to set up a company in 9 European countries?

The official side of the startup costs looks like this, per country, for the standard private limited company a tech founder picks. UK Ltd is in the last row as a reference.
Country (form)Registry and filing feesNotaryMinimum share capitalSource (checked 3 Nov 2026)
Netherlands (BV)€85.15 KVK feeRequired, €500 to €1,5001 euro centKVK
Germany (GmbH)Court fee about €225About €630 plus VAT and expenses€25,000, half (€12,500) paid in before registrationGmbHG, Bundesnotarkammer, IHK Koblenz
Germany (UG)Court fee about €150 with the model protocolAbout €105 plus VAT and expenses€1, fully paid in cashGmbHG, Bundesnotarkammer, IHK Koblenz
France (SAS)€22.14 greffe + €16.11 beneficial owners + €199 legal notice, all excl. VATNot in the official fee listNo legal minimumguichet unique fee list, Légifrance, Bpifrance Création
Estonia (OÜ)€265 state feeNo notary in the online portal1 euro cente-Business Register
Ireland (LTD)€50 online (Form A1)No notary in the CRO processNo minimumCRO
Portugal (Lda)€220 online with a pre-approved pact, €360 own pact or Empresa na HoraNo notary in either official option€1 per quotaJustiça portal, Código das Sociedades Comerciais
Spain (SL)€40 registry with standard statutes via CIRCE€60 with standard statutes and capital up to €3,100 (both plus VAT)€1Ministry of Industry DUE guide
Italy (SRL)€90 Chamber of Commerce + €65 stamp dutyRequired; fee not published (no notary fee for the SRLS)€10,000 with 25% paid in, or €1 to €9,999 fully paidChambers of Commerce of Turin and Modena
Malta (Ltd)€100 for authorised capital up to €1,500Not published€1,164.69 authorised, 20% (€232.94) paid upMalta Business Registry, Companies Act
UK (Ltd, reference)£100 online, about €120No notaryNo minimum; a share can have any valueGOV.UK
A few things this table hides, from my own files:
  • Netherlands: the KVK fee is trivial, the notary is the bill. KVK itself quotes €500 to €1,500, and the deed is also where you set share classes you will regret later. Read our legal checklist for startups by country before the notary drafts anything.
  • Germany: a GmbH needs €12,500 in the bank before registration. A UG starts from €1 but must park a quarter of its annual profit in a reserve, which banks and enterprise clients read as "small".
  • France: the legal notice costs more than the registry itself. €199 for an SAS, €142 for a single-shareholder SASU, before VAT.
  • Estonia and Ireland are the cheapest in fees and fully online. Ireland needs a company secretary when you have one director, and Irish payroll is where it gets interesting (see below).
  • Italy and Malta: the official fees look low because the professional fee is missing. Ask for a written quote before you compare.
For the long version of living and bootstrapping in four of these countries, I wrote a separate country-by-country bootstrapping cost analysis for the Netherlands, Estonia, Portugal and France. This page stays on the company and its first hire.

Which tools does a 1 to 3 person SaaS pay for every month?

A tech startup runs on a short list of subscriptions. This is what I would budget, priced on each vendor's page on 3 November 2026. US dollar prices are converted at the European Central Bank reference rate of 2 November 2026 (1 euro = 1.1216 dollars).
LinePlan and price as publishedPerBilling and VAT as shownSource and date
Email, docs, calendarGoogle Workspace Business Standard, €13.60User per monthOne-year commitment, billed monthlyGoogle Workspace pricing, 3 Nov 2026
Wiki and specsNotion Plus, €9.50 (Business €19.50)Seat per monthMonthly or yearly offeredNotion pricing, 3 Nov 2026
Issue tracking (alternative)Linear, $10 (about €8.92) on the cheapest paid planUser per monthBilled yearlyLinear pricing, 3 Nov 2026
Code hostingGitHub Team, $4 (about €3.57)User per monthPer monthGitHub pricing, 3 Nov 2026
AI assistantClaude Pro, $20 monthly (about €17.83); Team seat $20 annual or $25 monthlyUser per monthExcludes taxClaude pricing, 3 Nov 2026
Cloud serverHetzner Cloud shared vCPU, from €6.49MonthExcludes VATHetzner Cloud, 3 Nov 2026
Accounting softwareMoneybird Start, €15 (Compact €3, Groei €29)MonthMonthly billing; yearly at least 16% offMoneybird pricing, 3 Nov 2026
That gives €44.50 per person per month (Workspace, Notion, GitHub and an AI seat) plus €21.49 per company for the server and the books. Three people: €154.99 a month, €1,859.88 a year. These are the comparer's presets, and you can edit both totals.
My blunt take on tools: they are the smallest block of your startup costs and the one founders argue about most. The danger is the AI line. Seats are cheap; API usage is where bills grow, and our piece on why AI token costs rise even as per-token prices fall shows how fast that line can grow. For the full stack logic, see our startup tool stack for operations and the back office stack for bootstrapped founders.

How much does an employee really cost on top of salary?

This is the part of start-up costs that decides your runway. The gross salary is what you agree with the candidate. The employer cost is gross salary plus everything the state collects from you on top. Here are the official 2026 rates I could verify.
CountryEmployer contributions on top of gross salaryWhat is insideSource
Malta10% + 0.3% maternity fund, capped at €57.61 a weekClass 1 social security, Category C/DMalta Tax and Customs Administration, 2026 table
Ireland11.40% from 1 October 2026 (11.25% before); 9.15% on weekly pay up to €552Class A employer PRSIDepartment of Social Protection advance notice
Netherlands16.67% to 17.81% (small employer, permanent written contract)Zvw 6.10%, WW low 2.74%, Aof low 6.27%, Wko 0.50%, Ufo 0.68%, Whk 0.38% to 1.52%Belastingdienst, Staatscourant
Germany21.15%Pension 9.3%, unemployment 1.3%, health 7.3% + half of the 2.9% average top-up, long-term care 1.8%Deutsche Rentenversicherung, Federal Ministry of Health
Portugal23.75%Taxa social única, employer shareSegurança Social
Spain30.65% + accident tariffCommon contingencies 23.60%, unemployment 5.50%, FOGASA 0.20%, training 0.60%, MEI 0.75%Seguridad Social, Orden PJC/297/2026
Italy31.58% up to €120,607 a yearEmployer social security, accident insurance separateOECD Taxing Wages 2026 (2025 rules)
Estonia33.8%Social tax 33% + unemployment insurance 0.8%Estonian Tax and Customs Board
France33.0% to 40.8% (reduced or full health and family rates)Health, pension, family, unemployment, AGS, training, apprenticeship tax, Agirc-ArrcoURSSAF, Agirc-Arrco
UK (reference)15% above £5,000 a yearEmployer Class 1 National InsuranceGOV.UK, 2026 to 2027
The Dutch WW rate jumps from 2.74% to 7.74% for temporary or on-call contracts, so a Dutch "let's try three months first" contract costs you five points more. France, Germany and Spain add accident insurance at a rate set per employer, and every country has ceilings above which contributions stop growing. The comparer uses a flat rate on salary; edit it if your accountant gives you a precise one.

Why does the first hire change your startup budget more than anything else?

Let's break it down with one hire at €4,000 gross a month, two unpaid founders and the three-seat stack from the table above. Same person, same salary, same software. Only the country changes.
CountrySetup feesEmployer contributions per yearTotal cost of the hireYear-one cash out
Malta€100€2,996 (cap)€50,996€52,956
Ireland€50€5,472€53,472€55,382
Netherlands€585€8,549€56,549€58,994
Germany (GmbH)€855€10,152€58,152€60,867
Portugal€220€11,400€59,400€61,480
Spain€100€14,712€62,712€64,672
Italy€155€15,158€63,158€65,173
Estonia€265€16,224€64,224€66,349
France (SAS)€237€19,584€67,584€69,681
Amounts rounded to whole euros. The Netherlands includes the low end of KVK's notary range; Italy excludes the unpublished notary fee. Extras such as laptops are left out here.
The spread between Malta and France is €16,588 for one employee in one year. That is more than every registry fee in the first table added together, many times over. Estonia, the darling of company formation lists because of its €265 online setup, comes out as one of the most expensive places to employ someone, because of its 33% social tax.
Two more traps. If your country pays a 13th or 14th month, enter the annual gross divided by 12 into the comparer. And if your hire lives in a different country from your company, check which country's contributions apply before you compare. Read our employment law basics by European country and the contractor vs employee classification guide before you sign anyone.

What would I skip, and where would I never cut corners?

My opinion, as someone who has overspent and underspent on all of these.
Skip or delay:
  • A big brand package. A clean wordmark and one colour carry you to your first 50 customers.
  • An office. Pay for a co-working day when you meet clients.
  • The second and third SaaS tool that does the same job. One wiki, one tracker, one chat. Audit every quarter.
  • A full-time receptionist or support hire. Our case for AI voice agents before a receptionist shows what one founder can cover.
  • A first full-time hire before your processes are written down. Write them first with our guide to documenting processes before your first hire, then hire.
Never skimp on:
Why this matters: CB Insights' March 2026 analysis of 431 VC-backed shutdowns found that 70% ran out of capital, which it calls the final cause, rarely the root one. Cash runs out because founders hire before revenue, and that is a budgeting decision you control.

How do grants and non-dilutive money offset early start-up costs?

I have funded large parts of my companies' first years with grants. Non-dilutive funding means money you do not pay for with shares: grants, subsidies, prizes, tax credits and revenue from pre-sales. In Europe this is the most underused way to cover start-up costs, and it fits the exact lines in this article: a salary subsidy pays for part of that first hire, a voucher pays for the lawyer, a research grant pays for the cloud bill.
My rules:
  1. Apply for money that pays for work you were going to do anyway. A grant that forces a new project is a cost.
  2. Budget for the reporting. Grants pay late and ask for timesheets. Your accountant needs to know from day one.
  3. Stack carefully. Combine a national scheme with a regional voucher only when the rules allow it, and write that check into your budget.
  4. Pre-sell. Customer money is the cleanest non-dilutive money there is, as our guide on customer-funded growth through pre-selling shows.
Read how European bootstrapped startups use grants for growth, how European grants fund bootstrapped marketing, and the wider European startup funding options beyond VC. If you are weighing a round instead, our bootstrapping vs VC decision framework puts both side by side.
Find the money before you spend your own. The free mean.ceo non-dilutive funding finder lists grants, competitions and programmes your startup qualifies for. Run it before you sign your first employment contract, then put the grant amount into your startup budget as income, with the month it arrives.

How do you build a startup budget for year one in 7 steps?

  1. Pick two or three candidate countries. Base the choice on where your team lives and where your customers sign contracts. Tax holidays come last.
  2. Get the official setup fees from the table above and ask one notary or lawyer per country for a written quote.
  3. Decide the share capital and keep it separate in your plan. It is cash the company keeps, and in Germany or Italy it is a real number.
  4. List your tool stack per person and per company, using annual plans only for tools you will still use in 12 months.
  5. Price every hire at full employer cost, using the comparer, and add the month each person starts.
  6. Add one-off extras: laptops, the shareholders' agreement, a trademark filing, a website.
  7. Divide your cash by the monthly burn rate. If the runway is below 12 months, delay the hire or find non-dilutive money first. Our cash flow guide for first-year bootstrapped founders shows how to track it monthly.
Copy this startup budget line list into your spreadsheet:
  • One-off: registry fee, notary or legal notice, shareholders' agreement, trademark, laptops, logo and website.
  • Capital: minimum share capital to deposit, plus your own buffer.
  • Monthly per person: email and docs, wiki or tracker, code hosting, AI seat.
  • Monthly per company: cloud hosting, accounting software, accountant, bank fees, insurance.
  • People: gross salary, employer contributions, holiday pay or 13th month, pension top-ups, equipment.
  • Income: pre-sales, grants (with arrival month), subsidies.
Quote request to send a notary or accountant:
  • "We are two founders setting up a [BV/GmbH/SL] for a software company in [city], with [amount] share capital and standard articles. Please send a fixed-fee quote, including VAT and expenses, for the deed and registration, plus your monthly fee for bookkeeping, payroll for one employee and VAT returns. We plan to start in [month]."

What should your startup costs look like after reading this?

The summary I give every founder who asks: setup fees are a rounding error, from €50 in Ireland to about €855 for a German GmbH with its notary. Tools are a few hundred euros a month at most for a small team. People make up more than 90% of year-one startup costs in my worked example, and the employer contribution rate swings that number by more than €16,000 per hire between Malta and France.
So choose the country by where you will employ people, price every hire at full employer cost, write the budget down before you incorporate, and chase non-dilutive money before you spend savings. Then run the comparer again every time someone asks "should we hire now?".

FAQ: start up costs

How much does it cost to start a tech startup in Europe?

Official setup fees range from €50 (Ireland) to about €855 (German GmbH, before VAT). A 3-person tool stack costs about €155 a month. One hire at €4,000 gross a month costs €51,000 to €67,600 a year with employer contributions.

What are typical start-up costs for a SaaS company?

Company setup, a shareholders' agreement, laptops, a domain and website, then recurring software, hosting and accounting. Salaries dominate everything else once you hire.

Which European country is cheapest to set up a company in?

Ireland, at €50 online through the CRO. Malta (€100 registry fee) and Spain (€60 notary plus €40 registry with standard statutes, before VAT) follow.

Which European country is cheapest to employ someone in?

Among these nine, Malta: the employer pays 10% plus 0.3%, capped at €57.61 a week. Ireland follows with 11.40% employer PRSI from October 2026.

Do I need share capital to start a company?

In most of these countries almost none: 1 euro cent in the Netherlands and Estonia, €1 in Spain and Portugal. Germany's GmbH needs €25,000, with at least half paid in before registration, Italy's SRL €10,000 or a fully paid lower amount, and Malta €1,164.69 authorised.

Is share capital a startup cost?

No. It stays company money and you can spend it on the business. Treat it as cash you must hold at the start.

How much does a notary cost to set up a BV?

KVK quotes €500 to €1,500 in notary fees, plus the €85.15 KVK registration fee.

Are start-up costs tax deductible?

In most countries, yes, as business expenses. KVK states its registration fee is tax-deductible for entrepreneurs. Ask your accountant how your country treats costs paid before incorporation.

About the Author

Violetta Bonenkamp, also known as MeanCEO, is an experienced startup founder with an impressive educational background including an MBA and four other higher education degrees. She has over 20 years of work experience across multiple countries, including 5 years as a solopreneur and serial entrepreneur. Throughout her startup experience she has applied for multiple startup grants at the EU level, in the Netherlands and Malta, and her startups received quite a few of those. She’s been living, studying and working in many countries around the globe and her extensive multicultural experience has influenced her immensely.
2026-11-03 08:55 Guides