PRSA vs personal pension

If you are arranging a pension for yourself in Ireland rather than joining an employer’s scheme, two products come up: a PRSA (Personal Retirement Savings Account) and a personal pension (formally a retirement annuity contract, or RAC). They look similar from the outside — you own the contract, you choose the provider, you get tax relief on contributions — but they differ in ways that matter for charges, for employer money, and for what you can do later.

The structural differences

	PRSA	Personal pension (RAC)
Governed by	Pensions (Amendment) Act 2002	Revenue rules for retirement annuity contracts
Charges published publicly	Yes, in the Pensions Authority register	No public register
Statutory charge cap	Yes on standard PRSAs: 5% contribution, 1% AMC	None
Employer can contribute	Yes	No
Transfer between providers	Allowed without a transfer penalty	Depends on contract terms
Who can take one out	Anyone, employed or self-employed	Generally self-employed or those with non-pensionable employment

Charges: the real difference is visibility

The most common question is which product costs less. The honest answer is that the two cannot be compared from public data, because only one of them is public.

Every approved PRSA product has its contribution charge and annual management charge published quarterly by the Pensions Authority. That is the register this site republishes, and you can read the full table of published PRSA charges for every approved product. Personal pension charges have no equivalent register — they are set in the individual contract, and the only way to know them is to ask the provider for the terms.

On top of that visibility, a standard PRSA carries a statutory ceiling: the contribution charge cannot exceed 5% and the annual management charge cannot exceed 1% a year. A non-standard PRSA has no cap, and neither does a personal pension. So a standard PRSA is the only one of the three where a legal maximum applies to what you can be charged.

None of that means a PRSA will cost less than any particular personal pension. It means the PRSA’s cost is knowable in advance from a public source, and in one variant it is bounded. Our guide on standard vs non-standard PRSAs sets out which products fall inside the cap.

Employer contributions

An employer can pay into a PRSA. An employer cannot pay into a personal pension.

Since January 2025, employer contributions to an employee’s PRSA do not trigger a benefit-in-kind charge on the employee, and they do not count against the employee’s own age-related tax relief limits. For anyone whose employer is willing to contribute but has no occupational scheme, this is usually the deciding factor between the two products.

Tax relief works the same way

Both products attract income tax relief on your personal contributions at your marginal rate, subject to the same age-related percentage limits and the same earnings cap. The limits run from 15% of net relevant earnings under age 30 up to 40% at age 60 and over — the detail is in our guide to pension tax relief by age, and the current figures are on the tax relief reference page.

Relief is not a point of difference between the two. It is the same relief on the same terms.

Portability

A PRSA moves with you. You can transfer a PRSA to another PRSA provider without a transfer penalty, and the contract is yours regardless of who you work for. Personal pensions vary by contract, and what a transfer costs depends on the terms you signed.

For anyone expecting to change employer, become self-employed, or move abroad and back, this matters more than a small difference in headline charge.

Which questions actually decide it

The choice usually comes down to a small number of factual questions rather than a general preference:

1. Will an employer contribute? If yes, only a PRSA can receive it.
2. Do you want a published, capped charge structure? A standard PRSA is the only product here with both.
3. Do you need investment options beyond pooled funds? That points to a non-standard PRSA or a personal pension, both without a charge cap.
4. How much do you expect to move between employers? PRSA portability is defined in statute rather than in contract terms.

You can see what a charge difference does over a working life with the fee calculator, and read how the arithmetic works in how pension fees compound.

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This guide is general information, not financial advice or a product recommendation. It describes how the two product types are structured under Irish rules; it does not assess which suits any individual, and charges are only one factor in that assessment. ComparePensions is not regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland — consult a regulated financial advisor before making pension decisions.