Guide: a foreign entrepreneur in France

If you hold citizenship of an EU country, the EEA (plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway) or Switzerland, freedom of movement removes almost the whole question: a micro-entreprise is registered the same way as for a French citizen, with no residence permit and no separate procedure at the préfecture. You need an ordinary ID document and proof of a French address less than three months old (or a contract with a domiciliation company). Registration goes through the INPI guichet unique at formalites.entreprises.gouv.fr, the same route covered in the guide to a micro-entrepreneur’s website.

If you are an EU citizen, the next section, on non-EU countries, does not apply to you — skip straight to the part on trust and the site’s language.

It is tempting to simplify this to “you need a special entrepreneur visa” — and that is not accurate. What matters is the specific wording printed on your current residence permit: whether it authorises independent (self-employed) activity. The phrase usually reads something like “toutes activités professionnelles” — “any professional activity”, with no restriction to salaried work.

That wording appears on far more permits than people assume: the ten-year “résident” card, “vie privée et familiale”, “conjoint de français” (spouse of a French citizen), “parent d’enfant français”, refugee status, and subsidiary protection status — all of these generally carry the right to independent activity on the same footing as salaried work, with no separate “entrepreneur” visa needed. If you hold one of these permits, the next two paragraphs about specific visas do not apply to you — skip straight to the section on trust and the site’s language.

How this is actually checked: when you register through the INPI guichet unique, you attach a copy of your permit as a required document. If the wording does not authorise the activity, the application is either refused at that point or a further document is requested — in other words, the check happens against the document itself, not against a separate list of “approved” visas. That removes some of the guesswork: there is no need to classify your own status by name, only to read the wording on the card or check with the préfecture.

If your permit carries no such wording — for instance if you arrived on a student or salaried visa with no right to independent activity — there are two routes built specifically for starting a business.

The “entrepreneur / profession libérale” residence card. The direct path for someone already in France or applying specifically for this. Three conditions: the activity has to be your main occupation, not a side job; the project must be economically viable, meaning it provides income at least equal to the minimum wage (checked as of August 2026 — around €1,867 gross a month, a figure that moves with the SMIC); and your experience or qualifications have to match the declared activity.

The talent passport — business creation. A more prestigious route: granted outright for four years. The condition is a diploma at master’s level or above, OR an investment in the project of at least €30,000 (not necessarily in cash — a personal contribution, a loan, contributions from partners). An alternative to the investment threshold: recognition of the project by an accredited incubator, Bpifrance or French Tech. It does not suit everyone — for a simple local service such as consulting, repairs or personal care, it is usually overkill, but it is worth knowing it exists if the project is scalable or innovative. One warning: do not confuse this category with the “talent passport — economic investor”, which has different, higher thresholds and is not interchangeable with it.

For a micro-entreprise, registration itself at URSSAF through the guichet unique is enough — no separate licensing of the activity is required on top. But without a current residence status that authorises this activity, the registration will either fail, or create a problem at the next permit renewal.

And status is not the only hurdle. Beyond it, registration also needs: a numéro fiscal (a tax number, obtained on first contact with the French tax office), a French bank account for the RIB (often possible to open before you hold the final permit — banks are used to working with newcomers), and an address — your own, or one through a domiciliation company if you have not found housing yet. All three can be sorted in parallel with the status, not after it, and doing so saves weeks of waiting.

The commonest mistake is registering a micro-entreprise on a student residence permit. The “étudiant” permit only allows salaried work, and even then within roughly 964 hours a year (60% of annual working time). Independent commercial, craft or professional activity is not authorised on it at all. Registering a micro-entreprise under this status directly risks the permit not being renewed at the next préfecture visit, up to and including the residence right itself being called into question.

If you are a student and want to start your own business, there is one path: change your status to “entrepreneur / profession libérale” before registering, not after. The risk is not abstract — beyond a refused renewal, it can escalate to an OQTF (an order to leave French territory) and complicate any future regularisation. This is a case where even a modest consultation with a lawyer costs far less than the consequences.

The same caution applies to other statuses: the “salarié”, “vie privée et familiale” and similar permits each have their own conditions for combining with an independent activity, and depending on the case it is allowed or it is not. There is no universal answer here — it depends on your specific permit.

Covered separately, because the question comes up often. Temporary protection, which France grants to Ukrainian nationals, has been extended at EU level until 4 March 2027. The provisional residence authorisation (APS) issued under it has, since April 2022, counted as a work authorisation on its own, and covers any professional activity — salaried or independent, including micro-entrepreneur status. No separate work permit from an employer is needed.

That does not remove the general rule: registering the micro-entreprise goes through the same guichet unique, and the income and activity-type conditions are the same ones everyone faces. And the temporary protection scheme is reviewed periodically at EU level, so it is worth checking the current dates at the préfecture or on service-public.fr rather than relying on the date in this guide.

French has to be the main language of the public site: it is the language of the market, and a client searching for a service in France searches for it in French. Russian, Ukrainian or English are worth adding as languages of trust for your own audience — the people specifically looking for a Russian- or Ukrainian-speaking professional — but not instead of French, and not as empty placeholder pages nobody filled in.

If your French is not yet confident, that is not a problem as long as the text stays simple and clear, without overcomplicated constructions you do not fully control. Short sentences are safer than long ones: less chance of accidentally saying something different from what you meant.

A business’s foreign origin is not something to hide, but it is not something to build your entire positioning on either. The balance that works: the town or region you work in, stated plainly (without geography, local search will not show you), current French realities — public holidays, opening hours, local specifics of the service — and the status of the business (micro-entrepreneur, SIRET), which the client can check for themselves.

The required pages, cookies and analytics for your site are no different from what any micro-entrepreneur in France needs — that is covered in the website guide, and the listing in search and on Maps in the Google Business Profile guide. We do not repeat it here.

The legal and tax questions themselves can and should be explained in plain language, but they need to rest on primary sources, not on compatriots’ forum posts with outdated stories.

The general reference on residence statuses and entrepreneurship: service-public.fr. Registering the business: formalites.entreprises.gouv.fr (the INPI guichet unique). On your specific permit and its conditions: your préfecture, and in tricky cases an avocat en droit des étrangers — working through your actual situation costs one consultation and saves months of uncertainty. Other verified addresses are collected on the France resources page.