SAS or SASU: What Are the Differences in 2026?
Many freelancers hesitate between an SAS and an SASU without realising these are, at their core, the same company. The SASU is simply an SAS with a single shareholder. Understanding what that implies avoids much confusion when creating — or evolving — your structure.
The only real difference: the number of shareholders
The SAS (Simplified Joint-Stock Company) can have two or more shareholders, with no upper limit. The SASU (Single-Shareholder SAS) has only one. Everything else — tax regime, president's status, statutory flexibility — is identical.
In other words, the SASU is the "solo" mode of the SAS. As soon as you bring in a second shareholder, your SASU automatically becomes an SAS, with no change of legal form or creation of a new company: a transfer or issue of shares suffices.
What does not change between the two
| Element | SAS | SASU |
|---|---|---|
| Director's status | Assimilated-employee president | Assimilated-employee president |
| Contributions on salary | ~75-82% | ~75-82% |
| Profit taxation | Corporate tax (15% then 25%) | Corporate tax (15% then 25%) |
| Dividends | Flat tax 30%, no contributions | Flat tax 30%, no contributions |
| Liability | Limited to contributions | Limited to contributions |
| Minimum capital | €1 | €1 |
The president's social and tax operation is therefore exactly the same. For all these mechanisms, our complete SASU guide remains your reference: it applies as-is to the SAS.
What changes: governance with several partners
As soon as there are several shareholders, new questions appear that the SASU ignores:
- The split of capital and voting rights between partners;
- The shareholders' agreement, which organises relations, exit clauses, approval of newcomers;
- Collective decision-making in meetings, with majority rules to define in the articles;
- Dividend distribution, proportional (or not) to holdings.
The SAS's great strength is statutory freedom: unlike the SARL, the law barely frames its organisation. You define almost everything in the articles — an asset for structuring a tailor-made partnership, but one that demands careful drafting.
When to move from SASU to SAS
The move is justified as soon as you want to:
- Take on a partner — a co-founder, an investor or a key employee;
- Bring an investor into the capital (fundraising);
- Set up employee shareholding (stock options, free shares).
The operation is smooth: the SASU welcomes new shareholders and becomes an SAS by law. Conversely, if all but one of an SAS's shareholders leave, it reverts to an SASU. This reversibility is a real comfort for a project that evolves.
SAS/SASU or EURL: the real trade-off
In practice, the most frequent hesitation is not between SAS and SASU (which simply depends on the number of shareholders), but between the SAS/SASU world and the SARL/EURL world. That is where the choice of the director's social regime (assimilated employee versus TNS) and dividend treatment plays out. We settle it in SASU or EURL in 2026.
Before creating, quantify your net remuneration according to the chosen form with the status comparator. The right reflex: first choose between the world of shares (SAS/SASU) and that of company units (SARL/EURL); the number of partners only determines the "single" variant or not.