Net Salary Calculator Germany 2026 (Gross to Net)

This net salary calculator Germany tool converts your gross salary (Brutto) into take-home pay (Netto) for 2026. Enter your gross pay, tax class, federal state, church membership, children and health insurance type, and you get a monthly and annual breakdown of income tax, solidarity surcharge, church tax and the four social insurance contributions. The page below the tool explains each deduction, shows worked examples at €45,000, €60,000, €80,000 and €100,000, and covers how private health insurance changes net pay.

Net salary calculator Germany 2026: gross to net (Brutto Netto Rechner)

Estimate only. This tool approximates payroll withholding (Lohnsteuerabzug) with 2026 values. It is not tax advice and not a payslip. It does not cover mini jobs, midi jobs, civil servants, apprenticeships, bonuses, tax-free allowances stored by your tax office or the Faktorverfahren. Your final income tax is set when the tax office assesses your tax return.

Quick answer: how much is net from gross in Germany?

The table below shows the 2026 contribution rates behind those numbers. Employer and employee each pay half of most contributions, and the employee share is the part that comes out of your gross salary.

Income tax comes on top of these contributions. If you are new to the German system, read our guide to taxes in Germany first, and use the salary in Germany guide to check whether your gross pay is realistic for your industry and city.

How the net salary calculation works

German payroll turns gross into net in a fixed order. This calculator follows the same order as the official 2026 payroll tax program of the Federal Ministry of Finance (BMF):

1. Start with annual gross pay. A monthly salary is multiplied by 12.
2. Calculate the social contributions. Pension and unemployment insurance are charged on gross pay up to €101,400. Health and care insurance are charged on gross pay up to €69,750.
3. Find the taxable income. Gross pay is reduced by the employee lump sum for work-related costs (€1,230), the special expenses lump sum (€36) and the pension, health and care contributions that payroll recognises as precautionary expenses (the Vorsorgepauschale). In tax class II, the relief for single parents (€4,260) is also deducted.
4. Apply the income tax tariff. The result of the §32a EStG formula is your Lohnsteuer for the year.
5. Add the surcharges. Solidarity surcharge applies only above an allowance. Church tax is 8% or 9% of the income tax if you are a member.
6. Subtract everything from gross. What is left is your net salary.

Because the process is rule-based, two people with the same inputs get the same withholding. The difference between estimates and payslips comes from inputs a calculator cannot see, which the section on payslip differences lists.

Every deduction explained

Pension insurance (Rentenversicherung): 9.3%

The general pension insurance rate is 18.6% in 2026, split equally between you and your employer, so you pay 9.3% of your gross pay. It applies up to the contribution ceiling of €101,400 per year (€8,450 per month). On a €100,000 salary you pay 9.3% of the whole amount, which is €9,300 per year; above the ceiling, nothing more is added. These payments build your statutory pension entitlement, and they also reduce your taxable income because payroll recognises the pension contribution as a precautionary expense.

Unemployment insurance (Arbeitslosenversicherung): 1.3%

The rate is 2.6% and is also shared equally, so you pay 1.3% up to the same €101,400 ceiling. It entitles you to unemployment benefit (ALG I) if you lose your job. If you move to Germany for work, you generally start paying from your first payslip. Read more in our guide to finding a job in Germany.

Health insurance (Krankenversicherung): about 8.75%

In public health insurance, the general rate is 14.6% and each fund adds its own additional contribution. The average additional contribution set for 2026 is 2.9%. The general rate is split equally and the additional contribution is also shared equally, so the average employee pays 7.3% plus 1.45%, or 8.75%. The calculation stops at the ceiling of €69,750 per year (€5,812.50 per month), so the most an employee pays at the average rate is about €6,103 per year. Details of how the public system works are in our public health insurance guide.

Long-term care insurance (Pflegeversicherung): 1.8% to 2.4%

The care insurance rate is 3.6%. You pay half, 1.8%. If you are 23 or older and have no children, you pay an extra 0.6 percentage points alone, which brings your share to 2.4%. From the second child up to the fifth, the rate falls by 0.25 percentage points per child under 25. With five or more children under 25 an employee in a typical state pays 0.8%. In Saxony the employee carries one additional percentage point of the total rate, which lifts the employee share to 2.3% for a parent with one child and 2.9% for a childless person. The care insurance ceiling is the same €69,750 as for health insurance.

Income tax (Lohnsteuer)

Income tax is the largest single deduction at most salaries. It follows a progressive tariff described in the next section. Your employer withholds it every month and pays it to the tax office.

Solidarity surcharge (Solidaritätszuschlag)

The solidarity surcharge is 5.5% of your income tax, but only above an allowance: income tax up to €20,350 per year (€40,700 for spouses taxed jointly, which payroll applies in tax class III) is exempt. Above the allowance, a phase-in rule caps the surcharge at 11.9% of the amount that exceeds it, so it grows gradually. A single employee in tax class I with €100,000 gross pays about €345 per year; at €80,000 gross there is no surcharge.

Church tax (Kirchensteuer)

If you are a member of a church that collects tax through the state, you pay a surcharge on your income tax. It is 8% in Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg and 9% in the other states. It is based on the income tax after child allowances, not on your gross salary. You can avoid it by declaring that you have no religion when you register at the town hall, or by formally leaving. Our Anmeldung guide explains the registration form.

Income tax in 2026: the tariff behind your Lohnsteuer

The income tax tariff in §32a of the Income Tax Act (EStG) has five zones for 2026. The numbers below are taxable income, which is lower than gross pay after the deductions described above.

Inside the two progressive zones, the tax is a curved formula, not a flat percentage per bracket, which is why the effective rate rises smoothly. The calculator uses the official coefficients. Married couples in tax class III use the splitting method, which applies the tariff to half of the taxable income and doubles the result. Tax classes V and VI use a separate formula that withholds more, and class VI applies no allowances at all.

A useful way to read the tariff is through the marginal rate: at €60,000 gross for a childless single employee in class I, taxable income is about €46,600, so the last euros are taxed at roughly 34%. The effective income tax rate on the full €60,000 is only about 15.6%. That gap between marginal and effective rates explains why a raise feels smaller than the headline number.

Tax classes and what they do to net pay

Tax classes only decide how much income tax is withheld each month. They do not change the tax you owe for the year, which the tax office settles when it assesses your return. The classes are defined in §38b of the Income Tax Act.

*Public health insurance, average 2.9% surcharge, no church tax, 2026. Class II shown with one child, so the care insurance surcharge for childless people does not apply and the single-parent relief does. Classes III to VI are shown as the payroll formula withholds them; the true tax for a couple is settled in the annual return.

For couples, III and V or IV and IV produce a similar yearly total, but III gives the higher earner much more cash each month while class V withholds a lot from the partner, and a III and V combination requires a tax return. Your tax advisor can model which combination fits your couple. In a second job, class VI applies automatically and it withholds without allowances, so a side income can look heavily taxed on the payslip even though the annual return corrects it.

Worked examples: €45,000, €60,000, €80,000 and €100,000 gross

These examples use the same formula as the calculator: tax class I, no children, age 23 or older, public health insurance with the 2.9% average additional contribution, no church tax, annual figures in euros and rounded.

What the examples show. Between €45,000 and €60,000 the net grows by about €660 per month, which is roughly 53% of the extra €15,000 gross spread over twelve months. From €80,000 to €100,000, net grows by about €832 per month for an extra €20,000 gross. At €80,000 the health and care contributions stop growing, because both are capped at €69,750, so each additional euro faces income tax and pension and unemployment contributions up to €101,400, plus the solidarity surcharge once your income tax passes €20,350. Above €101,400, even pension and unemployment contributions stop and only tax remains.

Variations that move the result. For the €80,000 case, a church member in Bavaria pays about €1,256 of church tax per year, which lowers net pay from €4,004 to €3,899 per month. A parent of two in class I pays a lower care insurance rate of 1.55% instead of 2.4%, so the contributions fall by about €590 per year, although the lower contribution also gives less deduction from the taxable income, so income tax rises slightly: net is about €4,034 per month. Try your own combination in the calculator.

How private health insurance changes your net pay

With private health insurance, the percentage-based health and care contributions disappear from your payslip. You pay a fixed premium to your insurer instead, and your employer pays a subsidy: half of the premium, capped at what the employer would pay for a publicly insured employee. For 2026 the cap is about €508.59 per month for health cover (half of 14.6% plus half of the 2.9% average surcharge on €69,750) and €104.63 for long-term care (half of 3.6%), so €613.22 in total, or €75.56 for care in Saxony. The calculator uses these caps when you choose private cover.

The subsidy comes from the legal rules for private cover in §257 SGB V and §61 SGB XI. The rest of the premium is yours: the calculator subtracts it from net pay each month.

The €650 premium is a made-up illustration, not a quote and not a typical price. Your premium depends on your age, health, deductible and plan.

In this illustration the privately insured employee has about €180 more net pay per month. The advantage comes from two things: a premium that is lower than the maximum public contribution, and the fact that private premiums do not rise with salary. At €80,000 (below the 2027 threshold, so shown for the arithmetic only) the same €650 premium would lift net pay from €4,004 to €4,203 per month. But net pay is only one side of the comparison. Premiums are priced by age and health at entry and normally rise as you age. Every family member needs their own contract, while public insurance covers a spouse with no or low income and children for free under the Familienversicherung rules. And you can only choose private cover as an employee above the €84,150 yearly threshold for 2027 (€77,400 in 2026), so it does not apply to the €45,000 or €60,000 examples.

For the real numbers, read our guides on private health insurance costs, who qualifies and public versus private. If your gross is above the threshold, independent consultants at MyHealthcareBroker can compare tariffs from the whole market for you, free of charge, and show how each option changes your net pay and your long-term costs.

Why your payslip may differ from the calculator

• Your fund's real additional contribution. Funds set their own rates. The calculator starts at the 2026 average of 2.9% and lets you change it. A fund with 3.5% instead of 2.9% costs a €60,000 earner about €180 more per year, because the employee carries half of the 0.6 percentage point difference.
• Allowances in your tax data. The tax office can store tax-free allowances (Freibeträge), for example for high commuting costs, which lower the withholding.
• One-off payments. Bonuses and holiday pay are taxed using a separate method. The tool treats your input as regular annual salary. Enter your total annual gross if you get a 13th or 14th salary.
• Company benefits. Company pensions, vouchers, a company car and a Deutschlandticket job ticket change taxable pay.
• Different insurance situations. Mini jobs, midi jobs, apprenticeships, working students, civil servants and the self-employed follow other rules.
• Rounding and timing. Payroll software rounds each month, and a changed tax class mid-year changes the figures.

Remember that withholding is only a prepayment. After the year ends, the tax office assesses your actual income tax, and many employees get a refund. Our taxes guide explains deadlines, deductions and how to claim it. If you also want to see what your net pay buys, compare it with the numbers in the cost of living guide and the bank account guide for opening the account that your salary will land in.

FAQ: net salary in Germany

Sources

Figures checked on 15 October 2026 against the official texts below. The calculator output was compared with the BMF Lohnsteuer calculator for 2026.

• Income tax tariff and basic allowance 2026: §32a EStG
• Payroll tax withholding steps and tax class formulas: §39b EStG; tax classes: §38b EStG
• Lump sums: §9a EStG (€1,230), §10c EStG (€36), single-parent relief §24b EStG (€4,260), child allowances §32 EStG
• Solidarity surcharge: §3 SolzG (allowance) and §4 SolzG (5.5% and 11.9% rule)
• Church tax base: §51a EStG; the 8% and 9% rates are applied by the BMF Lohnsteuer calculator 2026
• Contribution ceilings and threshold 2026: Deutsche Rentenversicherung, Sozialversicherungs-Rechengrößen 2026 and Bundesregierung, Beitragsbemessungsgrenzen 2026
• Pension insurance rate 18.6%: RVBeitrSBek 2026; split in half: §168 SGB VI
• Unemployment insurance 2.6%: §341 SGB III; split in half: §346 SGB III
• Health insurance 14.6%: §241 SGB V; split: §249 SGB V; average additional contribution 2.9%: Bundesministerium für Gesundheit, Beiträge
• Long-term care insurance: §55 SGB XI (childless surcharge and child discounts), Pflege-Beitragssatz-Anpassungsverordnung 2025 (3.6%), §58 SGB XI (who bears the contribution)
• Employer subsidy for private cover: §257 SGB V and §61 SGB XI
• Reference calculator used for testing: Bundesministerium der Finanzen, Lohn- und Einkommensteuerrechner 2026

Disclaimer: the calculator and the examples are estimates for general information. They are not tax, legal or financial advice. Rules, rates and ceilings change every year. Ask your payroll department, your tax office or a tax advisor for binding figures.