Sairauspäiväraha

Sickness daily allowance is governed by the Health Insurance Act (sairausvakuutuslaki 1224/2004). The benefit is part of Finland's national health-insurance scheme and is paid as compensation for lost earnings when you are unable to work because of illness or injury.

Sickness daily allowance is taxable income. It is not a social-assistance grant but compensation for earned income — unlike, for example, basic social assistance, which presupposes that you have no other income. This means sickness daily allowance is counted as income when calculating other Kela benefits such as housing allowance.

The benefit is granted by Kela. Decisions can be appealed to the Social Security Appeal Board and onward to the Insurance Court.

Sickness daily allowance is not paid as soon as the illness begins, but only after the self-liability period. The self-liability period is the day of falling ill plus the next 9 working days (10 days in total). For this period, compensation is paid by the employer as salary under the Employment Contracts Act and the relevant collective agreement.

If you are an unemployed jobseeker and receiving an unemployment benefit, you can however receive sickness daily allowance immediately after the self-liability period — the TE Office will then issue a statement, and Kela switches the unemployment benefit to sickness allowance automatically if illness continues for more than 60 working days.

If you are self-employed, the self-liability period is shorter (only the day of falling ill) and sickness allowance starts the day after. This is one of the most important benefits of YEL insurance.

Sickness daily allowance can be paid for at most 300 working days (about one year on a five-day week) for the same illness. The cap is counted continuously, even if the allowance is interrupted in between, when it is the same illness.

As the 300-day cap approaches, Kela invites the recipient to a health assessment and evaluates whether incapacity for work is continuing. If it is, the recipient is steered onto two alternative paths:

• Rehabilitation — Kela's vocational or medical rehabilitation to restore work ability.
• Disability pension — if recovery is not foreseeable, the recipient is recommended to apply for a disability pension.

If the 300 days run out before a new benefit begins, the situation is often financially difficult — you can then apply for basic social assistance as a bridge.

The amount is calculated from stable employment income. The starting point is usually wage and self-employment income from the previous 12 months, from which an average daily income is computed.

The daily allowance is approximately 70% of the daily income up to a threshold, above which the percentage decreases. The minimum daily allowance in 2026 is about €32/working day (e.g. for students or unemployed people who have not been in work).

Sickness daily allowance is paid 6 days a week — not on Sundays. The monthly minimum is therefore about €832/month, and stable low-to-mid-income employees usually receive €1,500–2,500/month.

Sickness daily allowance requires Medical Certificate B, which is an official form and contains: the start date of incapacity for work, the estimated duration, the diagnosis code (ICD-10), the assessment of unsuitability for work tasks and the signature of the treating doctor.

Medical Certificate B is different from the simple Certificate A that the employer needs for granting short sick leave. The application for sickness daily allowance always requires B.

In practice the certificate is written by an occupational-health doctor, a public-health-centre doctor or a doctor in specialist health care. A dentist can write a B certificate only for a dental cause. A psychiatric B certificate may be issued by a psychiatrist or a specialist in occupational psychiatry.

The application is filed in OmaKela. The application requires Medical Certificate B and the employer's notice if salary is being paid during the sick leave. If you are unemployed, the certificate alone is enough.

Sickness daily allowance can be applied for retroactively for at most 2 months. The application should therefore be made as soon as possible after falling ill, when the employer's salary payments end. The decision usually arrives in 1–3 weeks.

If the illness continues longer than the original Medical Certificate B covers, you must obtain a new B certificate and submit it to Kela. Otherwise the support is interrupted and you have to reapply retroactively. This is a common clawback situation — Kela paid "too much" relative to the certificate that was in force.