A Werkstudent payslip has exactly one deduction on it. That is not the same as keeping the rest. The gap is the health insurance you pay yourself, about €148 a month for a childless student over 23 at the average Zusatzbeitrag.

Three Werkstudent payslips, and what each one teaches

These are fictional (Erika Mustermann and a made-up employer), but they follow exactly what a German payroll system produces. Every line is a real Lohnart label you will see on your own Abrechnung.

1. A normal Werkstudent month: 18 hours a week at €14.50, in term time

Why there is only one deduction. Health, care and unemployment insurance are all waived by the Werkstudentenprivileg. Pension is not. There is no student exemption anywhere in SGB VI, which is why RAN is the only contribution line on the slip.

And why that one deduction is smaller than 9.3 % of the pay. This wage sits in the Übergangsbereich, the band from €603.01 to €2,000 a month, sometimes called a Midijob. Inside it the contribution is charged on a reduced figure that rises faster than the pay, so it starts near zero at the bottom of the band and catches up with the full rate exactly at €2,000. Here that reduced figure is €762.13 instead of €1,135.35, which turns a €105.59 deduction into €70.88.

At 20 hours a week, every hourly rate from the minimum wage up to €22.98 lands in this band. For a term-time job it is the normal case, not a footnote. This is what it is worth:

Your pension entitlement is not reduced to match. § 70 Abs. 1a SGB VI credits your Entgeltpunkte from your actual pay, not from the reduced figure, so the saving costs you nothing later.

Why the Lohnsteuer is zero. Payroll annualises the month: €1,135.35 × 12 = €13,624.20. Off that come the Arbeitnehmer-Pauschbetrag (€1,230), the Sonderausgaben-Pauschbetrag (€36) and the Vorsorgepauschale of €1,268. That leaves about €11,090, which is under the 2026 Grundfreibetrag of €12,348, so nothing is withheld. Without the Vorsorgepauschale the same wage would land ten euros over the line, so the pension contribution you cannot avoid paying is the thing keeping your tax at zero.

There is a quiet oddity in that figure. The Vorsorgepauschale is 9.3 % of your full wage even though you only paid €850.56 in contributions. The tax office grants the allowance on the unreduced rate regardless of what was really deducted, and says so plainly: it is calculated „unabhängig von der Berechnung der tatsächlich abzuführenden Rentenversicherungsbeiträge“. In the Übergangsbereich the tax side and the insurance side deliberately disagree, in your favour on both counts.

2. A semester-break month: same job, 40 hours a week

The status does not change. A job worked in the vorlesungsfreie Zeit is exempt regardless of hours and regardless of pay. The Rundschreiben says so in as many words. The keys on the slip stay 106 and 0100. The Übergangsbereich reduction is gone, though: at €2,523 you are above the €2,000 ceiling, so the pension contribution is the plain 9.3 % again.

Tax appears, and most of it is not really yours to lose. Payroll assumes twelve months like this one and withholds accordingly. If you only work full hours through one semester break, your annual income stays far below the Grundfreibetrag, and you get the withheld tax back by filing a return. Payroll cannot know that the rest of your year is quieter, so the money only comes back if you file. A voluntary return can be filed up to four years back, so a 2026 one is still possible until the end of 2030.

3. The same 40 hours, but during term

That is the cliff. Same employer, same hourly rate, same hours. The only difference is that one month falls in term time instead of the break. Social insurance goes from €234.64 to €548.75, the Beitragsgruppe flips from 0100 to 1111, and the Personengruppe stops saying Werkstudent. The two months are €242.03 apart, decided by nothing except whether lectures were running. The tax does fall, from €264.08 to €192.00, because those extra contributions enlarge the Vorsorgepauschale. But that offsets only about a quarter of the loss.

The Werkstudent deduction that never appears on your payslip

Look again at the first payslip. There is no health insurance line, and that is not because it is free. It is because a Werkstudent pays it directly to their own Krankenkasse rather than through the employer, so the payroll system has nothing to show. Your net pay is therefore not what you keep.

For 2026 the studentische Krankenversicherung is worked out from a fixed figure, not from your wage. § 236 SGB V sets the basis at the BAföG-Bedarfssatz for a student not living with their parents: €475 plus a €380 housing component, so €855 a month regardless of what you earn.

The Zusatzbeitrag needs care. It is not halved with an employer, because there is no employer in this relationship, so you carry all of it. And it is not the 2.9 % national average either: § 242 Abs. 3 SGB V lists the groups who pay the average, and Werkstudenten are not on it. TK charges 2.69 %, BARMER 3.29 %, and the full range in 2026 runs from 2.18 % to 4.39 %. Pick your Kasse in the calculator and it uses that Kasse’s own rate from the official GKV-Spitzenverband list.

So on the first payslip above, €1,064.47 of net pay is really about €916 once health insurance is paid. That gap is the reason this calculator exists. It appears on no document your employer will ever hand you.

One way to pay nothing at all: stay on a parent’s or spouse’s Familienversicherung. The 2026 limit is €565 a month, but of Gesamteinkommen, and for a job that means your pay minus the €102.50 a month Arbeitnehmer-Pauschbetrag. So a steady Werkstudent job may pay up to €667.50 gross and still keep you family-insured, and a Minijob up to €603. Through a parent the cover ends at 25. Through a spouse there is no age limit.

Over 30, privately insured, or not sure which Kasse to pick

Over 30. Student insurance runs only until the end of the semester in which you turn 30 (§ 5 Abs. 1 Nr. 9 and § 190 Abs. 9 SGB V). If you keep studying, your membership continues on its own as voluntary statutory insurance (§ 188 Abs. 4 SGB V), and the price changes. The Kasse now charges on at least €1,318.33 a month, even if you earn less or nothing at all (§ 240 Abs. 4 SGB V). The rate is 14.0 % plus your Kasse’s full Zusatzbeitrag plus 3.6 % care insurance, or 4.2 % without children. At the 2.9 % average this comes to €278.17 a month for a childless student, almost twice the student rate. DAK-Gesundheit publishes €274.22 to €282.13 for exactly this case at its 3.20 %, and the calculator gives the same two figures. You also pay it alone. § 257 SGB V gives an employer subsidy only to employees who are exempt because they earn above the Jahresarbeitsentgeltgrenze. A Werkstudent is exempt for a different reason, so there is no subsidy.

The income letters. Voluntary contributions follow your income, so the Kasse has to know what you earn. It asks for proof when the voluntary membership starts, for example payslips or a tax assessment. After that it has to check again regularly, normally within 12 months of the last check (GKV-Spitzenverband, Beitragsverfahrensgrundsätze Selbstzahler § 6). The letters are about your health insurance contribution, not about tax. Answer every one of them, even when the honest answer is that you have no income. If you do not send the proof, the Kasse charges as if you earned the Beitragsbemessungsgrenze (§ 240 Abs. 1 SGB V). At the average rate that is about €1,226 a month. Proof sent within 12 months of that bill makes the Kasse recalculate, but until then the bill stands.

Staying or switching. Some students over 30 leave statutory insurance for a private student plan, and the reason is the price. A cheaper plan saves money every month, and the switch is legal if the rules below are met. Statutory insurance has its own advantages, though. It asks no health questions and covers illnesses you already have. A spouse or children can be insured through you for free, and your contribution falls again when your income falls. A private plan may not offer all of this, so read what it excludes before you sign.

Three rules decide whether the switch works. Your Kasse lets you go only once you prove other cover (§ 175 Abs. 4 SGB V). The simplest moment is when student insurance ends, because you can decline the voluntary membership within two weeks of the Kasse’s letter if you show other cover (§ 188 Abs. 4 SGB V). The new plan must also meet the legal minimum in § 193 Abs. 3 VVG: an insurer licensed in Germany, cover for doctors and hospital, and deductibles of at most €5,000 a year. Ask your Kasse before you sign whether it accepts the plan. The last rule is the one that hurts later. Once your last cover was private, the statutory safety net in § 5 Abs. 1 Nr. 13 SGB V no longer catches you. Usually only a job that makes you compulsorily insured brings you back, such as a regular job after your studies. A Werkstudent job does not count, because it is exempt.

Privately insured. A private premium depends on your age, your health and your tariff, so no calculator can look it up. Type in the figure from your contract and the calculator subtracts it.

New to Germany. Two rules matter for students who move here. If you arrive at 30 or older, statutory cover is usually closed to you, because joining voluntarily normally requires earlier membership (§ 9 SGB V). Private cover is then often the only option. And if you rely on an EHIC from another EU country, a job here can bring you under German rules instead, so check with a Krankenkasse before you start.

Which Kasse. Every Krankenkasse charges the same statutory base rate and must provide the same statutory benefits. They differ in the Zusatzbeitrag and in optional extras. For a student each 0.1 percentage point costs about €0.86 a month, so the cheapest and the dearest Kasse on the official list are about €18.90 a month apart. Not every Kasse is open to you: some are regional, some take only one company’s staff. The comparison in the calculator lists the ones you can join in your state, cheapest first. You can switch after 12 months, or sooner if your Kasse raises its Zusatzbeitrag (§ 175 Abs. 4 SGB V).

The calculator also works in German: the EN/DE switch sits at the top right of the widget.

Which kind of student job do you have?

German law has no single student contract. Your deductions follow from the type of job, your pay and your hours. These are the cases that matter for students, and the calculator covers each of them.

A fixed-term contract changes nothing by itself. It matters in two cases: when it is short enough to be a short-term job, and for evening and weekend work over 20 hours, which stays exempt only on a contract of 26 weeks or less. Hiwi and tutor jobs at a university follow the same rules as any other student job. Internships before or after your studies, dual study programmes and freelance work follow other rules and are not covered here.

The Werkstudent 20-hour rule is not written in any law

The 20 hours appear in no statute. § 6 Abs. 1 Nr. 3 SGB V, the provision that exempts Werkstudenten from health insurance, contains no hours figure at all. It says only that students employed during their studies as ordentliche Studierende are versicherungsfrei.

The twenty hours come from a line of Bundessozialgericht judgments going back to 1967, consolidated by the Spitzenorganisationen der Sozialversicherung in their joint Rundschreiben of 23 November 2016. The test the courts apply is the Erscheinungsbild als Student: your studies must remain the main thing and the job the side thing. Twenty hours is the rule of thumb that usually settles it, not the rule itself.

That distinction matters in practice, because it explains the exceptions. Evening, night and weekend work can exceed twenty hours and stay exempt, because those hours bend around your studies rather than competing with them, though only on a job limited to 26 weeks or less. And a job in the semester break is exempt at any number of hours, because during the break there are no lectures to compete with. The amount you earn plays no part. The Rundschreiben says the Höhe des Arbeitsentgelts is „ohne Bedeutung“.

The 26-week rule, which catches Werkstudenten out

If, across the year counted backwards from the end of the job being assessed, you have worked more than 26 weeks (182 calendar days) at more than twenty hours a week, you count as an employee rather than a student, and the privilege goes.

Three things about it are easy to get wrong. It is a rolling year, not a calendar year. It counts every employer and every job, whether or not that job was itself exempt. And it only ever takes an exemption away: it can never grant one, so a long stretch under twenty hours does not buy you anything.

When it trips, insurance liability begins from the start of the job in question, or from the moment the overrun became foreseeable. The months already paid are not reassessed.

Who counts as a student

The exemption is for regular students whose studies take most of their time. Several groups fall outside it, even with a student card. Language courses, the Studienkolleg and other preparatory courses do not count as studying, even with a certificate for the „0. Fachsemester“. This matters for international students who start with one of them. Doctoral candidates do not count either, and neither does part-time study at half of full-time or less. A job during a leave semester normally gets no exemption too, with one exception: a mandatory internship. In all of these cases a job above €603 a month pays all four social insurances.

The exemption also ends on a set date. It stops at the end of the month in which you receive your final result in writing, and there is no exemption in a gap between Bachelor and Master. On the other hand, age is no limit here. Students over 30 keep the exemption for their job, even after their student health insurance has ended. All of this comes from the joint guidance of the social insurers of 23 November 2016.

Tax class and a second job

Most students are in tax class I. Class II is for single parents, and married students are in class III, IV or V. Class VI applies to a second job next to another job that is not a Minijob, and it has no basic tax-free allowance. At €1,135.35 a month, class VI withholds €144.08 in income tax, where class I withholds nothing. The calculator handles all six classes, and its results match the Finance Ministry’s own tax calculator to the cent. Tax withheld in class VI is not lost, though. If your income for the year is low, you get it back with a tax return.

BAföG, Kindergeld and the Minijob line

BAföG. BAföG leaves €389 a month of your income untouched in 2026, and the €389 is not gross pay. § 21 BAföG first takes off €102.50 for work expenses, then a flat 22.3 % for social insurance, then any tax, so a job paying about €603 gross, a full Minijob, still costs you nothing. Above that, each euro of counted income comes off your award, and the calculator shows roughly how much. Two more details: the figure is measured as an average across your whole Bewilligungszeitraum rather than month by month, so one heavy semester-break month need not cost you anything, and the amount in the statute is not the amount in force. § 23 Abs. 1 BAföG still reads €353, which a Bekanntmachung has replaced.

Kindergeld. There is a 20-hour limit here too, but it only bites after a first qualification is complete. A Master’s degree that follows directly on your Bachelor normally counts as part of one single Erstausbildung, so in that case the limit does not apply at all. Where it does: contractual hours count, a monthly figure is divided by 4.35, exactly 20 hours is inside the limit, and a temporary rise lasting at most two months is ignored if the year averages 20 hours or less.

Under €603 a month the job is a Minijob, and different rules take over for a Werkstudent. Your employer reports you under Personengruppe 109 rather than 106, pays a flat health-insurance contribution if you are statutorily insured, and your own pension share drops to 3.6 %, which you can have waived entirely on application. Wages are normally taxed at a flat rate borne by the employer, so no Lohnsteuer comes off your pay at all.

Data sources

Every Werkstudent figure on this page is a 2026 value taken from the law, the Bundesgesetzblatt, the Bundesanzeiger or the Finance Ministry directly, rather than from another calculator:

• Income tax formula (§ 32a EStG 2026): gesetze-im-internet.de, cross-checked against the BMF Programmablaufplan 2026 (BMF-Schreiben v. 12.11.2025)
• Vorsorgepauschale: § 39b Abs. 2 Satz 5 Nr. 3 EStG and BMF-Schreiben v. 14.08.2025 (BStBl I S. 1628), applicable from 1 January 2026
• Werkstudentenprivileg: § 6 Abs. 1 Nr. 3 SGB V, § 27 Abs. 4 Satz 1 Nr. 2 SGB III, and the joint Rundschreiben of the Spitzenorganisationen der Sozialversicherung of 23 November 2016
• Übergangsbereich: § 20 Abs. 2a SGB IV, § 163 Abs. 7 SGB VI, § 168 Abs. 1 Nr. 1d SGB VI; Faktor F 2026 (0.6619) from the BMAS Bekanntmachung of 25 November 2025, BAnz AT 18.12.2025 B5; branch-by-branch rounding and the childless surcharge from the joint Rundschreiben on the Übergangsbereich of 20 December 2022
• Mindestlohn 2026 (€13.90): Fünfte Mindestlohnanpassungsverordnung, BGBl. 2025 I Nr. 268
• Geringfügigkeitsgrenze 2026 (€603): BMAS Bekanntmachung of 7 November 2025, BAnz AT 20.11.2025 B1
• Contribution rates and ceilings 2026: Sozialversicherungsrechengrößen-Verordnung 2026, BGBl. 2025 I Nr. 278; pension rate from BGBl. 2025 I Nr. 291
• Studentische Krankenversicherung: §§ 236, 241, 242, 245, 250 SGB V and § 13 BAföG; Pflegeversicherung rate from the Pflege-Beitragssatz-Anpassungsverordnung 2025
• Familienversicherung: § 10 SGB V and § 16 SGB IV; the Arbeitnehmer-Pauschbetrag deduction from the GKV-Spitzenverband’s Grundsätzliche Hinweise zum Gesamteinkommen of 29 September 2022
• Voluntary statutory insurance after 30: §§ 188, 240, 243, 250 and 257 SGB V and the GKV-Spitzenverband’s Einheitliche Grundsätze zur Beitragsbemessung freiwilliger Mitglieder; cross-checked against DAK-Gesundheit’s published minimum for Werkstudenten over 30
• Zusatzbeitrag of every Krankenkasse: GKV-Spitzenverband Krankenkassenliste, as of 1 October 2026; switching rules from § 175 Abs. 4 SGB V
• Income checks for voluntary members: § 206 and § 240 Abs. 1 SGB V and § 6 of the GKV-Spitzenverband’s Beitragsverfahrensgrundsätze Selbstzahler; leaving for private cover: § 175 Abs. 4 and § 188 Abs. 4 SGB V, § 193 Abs. 3 VVG; the way back: § 5 Abs. 1 Nr. 1 and Nr. 13 and § 6 Abs. 1 Nr. 3 SGB V
• BAföG Freibetrag 2026 (€389): Bekanntmachung of 18 November 2025, BGBl. 2025 I Nr. 279; income counted under § 21 BAföG, with the 22.3 % Sozialpauschale of § 21 Abs. 2
• Kindergeld: § 32 Abs. 4 EStG (including the age limit of 25), BFH VI R 9/15, and the BZSt Dienstanweisung zum Kindergeld (DA-KG) 2026
• Job types: short-term jobs under § 8 Abs. 1 Nr. 2 SGB IV; mandatory internships under § 5 Abs. 3 SGB VI and sections A 3.3 and C 3 of the joint Rundschreiben of 23 November 2016; minimum wage exceptions under § 22 MiLoG; who counts as a student (language courses, Studienkolleg, doctorate, leave semester, part-time study, end of studies) from sections A 1.2.2 to A 1.4 of the same Rundschreiben
• Tax classes I to VI: BMF Programmablaufplan 2026 (Anlage 1 of the BMF-Schreiben of 12 November 2025); results checked case by case against the BMF Lohnsteuerrechner

Rates and thresholds change every January. If you are reading this well into 2027 or later, check the current figures before relying on the result. Whether the Werkstudentenprivileg applies to you is in the end a decision your Krankenkasse makes, not a calculation.