Left: variation of mean 24 μm flux within bins of protostellar mass and mass accretion rates 10^-9 ≤ Ṁ_disk< 10^-7M_⊙ yr^-1 (black) and 10^-7 ≤ Ṁ_disk< 10^-5M_⊙ yr^-1 (red) derived from the YSO models of Robitaille et al. (2006) and 3 distances (1 kpc (solid line), 4 kpc (dot-dashed lines) and 20 kpc (dashed lines). Right: distribution of 24 μm fluxes for early stage YSOs linked to ATLASGAL clumps. The upper horizontal dotted line corresponds to the flux level at which the MIPS detectors saturate. The lower horizontal line shows the flux at which MIPSGAL is at least 90% complete for this sample of ATLASGAL clumps.