Punch
Get started
All posts

Germany Overtime Rules: The 8-Hour Day, No Statutory Premium, and the Time-Recording Duty (2026)

13 min read

Germany Overtime Rules: The 8-Hour Day, No Statutory Premium, and the Time-Recording Duty (2026)

The short answer: German law limits working time, not overtime pay. The Arbeitszeitgesetz caps the working day at 8 hours, lets it stretch to 10 as long as the average over six months comes back to 8, requires a 30-minute break after 6 hours and 11 hours of rest between shifts, and keeps Sundays free with at least 15 work-free Sundays a year. It sets no overtime premium at all. Whether an extra hour earns a 25% supplement, plain hourly pay, or time off is decided by the collective agreement or the employment contract, and in a dispute the employee has to show the overtime was worked and that the employer ordered, approved, tolerated or needed it. Every hour has to clear the €13.90 minimum wage. And since the Federal Labour Court's 2022 decision, every employer, with no small-business exception, must record the start, end and length of every employee's working time. Punch builds that record one punch at a time.

Readers of our guides to France's 35-hour week, the UK's 48-hour average and Ireland's contract-based overtime will find Germany closest to Ireland on pay and strictest of the four on hours. Here is how it works for a small crew.

The 8-Hour Day, the 10-Hour Ceiling, and the Six-Month Average

Section 3 of the Arbeitszeitgesetz sets the working day at 8 hours. A "working day" in German law is Monday through Saturday, so the ordinary week is 48 hours, not 40. The 40-hour week most German employees actually work comes from their collective agreement or contract, not from the statute.

The day can be extended to 10 hours, and no further, on one condition: within six calendar months or 24 weeks, the average must not exceed 8 hours a working day. A roofing crew that runs 10-hour days through a dry September has to be back under 8 on average by March. The law does not say whether the balance is paid out or taken as time off. It says only that the average has to land.

Three things follow for a small employer:

  • The 10-hour line is absolute. A collective agreement under section 7 can allow more in defined cases. A plain employment contract cannot.
  • The average is a running figure, per person. It can only be checked against a day-by-day record of each employee's hours.
  • Hours past 8 in a day must be written down (more on that below). An unrecorded 9-hour day is itself a violation, before anyone asks about the pay.

A draft reform from the Federal Ministry of Labour, circulating since June 2026, would replace the daily cap with a 48-hour weekly ceiling and write electronic time recording into the Act. As of this writing it has not been passed. The 8-hour day with the 10-hour ceiling is the law.

No Statutory Premium: Overtime Pay Comes From the Agreement

This is the part that surprises owners who have read our Australia or Mexico guides. German law contains no overtime rate. The Arbeitszeitgesetz regulates maximum hours, breaks and rest. It says nothing about money.

What an extra hour is worth comes from three places, in order:

  1. The collective agreement (Tarifvertrag), if one applies. Most agreements in construction, metalworking, cleaning and hospitality set a supplement, often 25% for the first hours and more beyond, and define when overtime starts.
  2. The employment contract, which can set a rate, promise time off instead, or fold a stated number of overtime hours into the salary. A clause that folds in an unlimited or unstated number of hours is void, and the Federal Labour Court has said so repeatedly.
  3. Section 612 of the Civil Code, the fallback. Where nothing is agreed and the work is of the kind that is normally paid, each extra hour is owed at the ordinary hourly rate. No premium, but never free.

The one hard floor under all of this is the minimum wage. Pay for the month divided by hours worked in the month, overtime included, must not fall below €13.90 an hour, the statutory minimum since 1 January 2026. It rises to €14.60 on 1 January 2027. A worker on a flat €2,600 for a contracted 40-hour week is above the line. The same €2,600 for weeks that actually ran to 48 hours is at €12.50, and the shortfall is owed.

Who Has to Prove the Overtime

In its decision of 4 May 2022 (5 AZR 359/21), the Federal Labour Court held that an employee claiming overtime pay must show two things: that the hours were worked, day by day, and that the employer caused them, by ordering them, approving them, tolerating them, or by assigning work that could not be done in the contracted hours. The European Court of Justice's 2019 ruling on time recording does not shift that burden onto the employer.

So the burden starts with the employee. But once the employee lays out specific days and hours, the employer has to answer in detail: which tasks were assigned, on which days, at what times. An employer who cannot say what a worker was doing on a given Tuesday loses the point. A general denial is treated as an admission.

The practical rule: an owner who holds a punch record for every person, every day, answers any claim with the actual hours. An owner who holds nothing answers with memory, against an employee who kept a notebook. Claims reach back three years under the general limitation period, and the minimum wage portion of a claim can never be cut off by a contract clause.

Breaks, Daily Rest, and Sundays

Three further rules sit under the hours limit, and each one is tested against punch times:

  • Breaks, section 4: at least 30 minutes once the working day passes 6 hours, 45 minutes once it passes 9, fixed in advance, and splittable into blocks of at least 15 minutes. No one may work more than 6 hours straight without a break. A break is unpaid and does not count as working time.
  • Daily rest, section 5: 11 consecutive hours between the end of one working day and the start of the next. A crew member who punched out at 10 p.m. cannot be required back before 9 a.m.
  • Sundays and public holidays, sections 9 to 11: work is banned in principle. Where an exception applies, at least 15 Sundays a year must stay work-free, a Sunday worked earns a substitute rest day within two weeks, and a weekday holiday worked earns one within eight weeks.

The fines for crossing these lines, under section 22, run to €30,000 per offence for exceeding the hours limit, skipping a break or a rest period, or working someone on a Sunday without an exception.

The Time-Recording Duty: Every Employer, Every Employee

Two separate rules apply here, and the second is the one most small employers have not caught up with.

The narrow rule is section 16(2) of the Arbeitszeitgesetz. The employer must record every hour worked beyond 8 in a working day and keep those records for at least two years. Missing or incorrect records are a separate offence, with the same €30,000 ceiling.

The broad rule came from the Federal Labour Court on 13 September 2022 (1 ABR 22/21). Reading the occupational health and safety law in the light of the European Court of Justice's 2019 decision, the court held that every employer must have a system that records the start, end and duration of every employee's working time, not just the hours past 8. There is no exception for small businesses, family businesses or new ones. The form is open for now: paper, a spreadsheet, or an app all satisfy it, as long as the record is actually kept and actually covers everyone.

The ministry's draft reform would make the electronic form mandatory, with the day's hours recorded on the day they are worked. Until that passes, the duty to record is already law. Only the format is still open.

The Tax Side: Which Supplements Are Tax-Free

A plain overtime supplement is taxable wages in Germany, in full. A government plan to exempt overtime supplements from income tax was floated for 2026 and then dropped from the finance ministry's bill; as of October 2026 it is not in force.

What is tax-free, under section 3b of the Income Tax Act, are supplements for night, Sunday and holiday work: up to 25% of the base hourly wage for night work between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m. (40% between midnight and 4 a.m. when the shift began before midnight), up to 50% for Sundays, and up to 125% for public holidays (150% on 1 May and over Christmas). The exemption applies to base pay up to €50 an hour for tax and €25 an hour for social contributions, and only to hours actually worked in those windows. A flat monthly supplement with no record of which hours were night or Sunday hours loses it. The exact start and finish time of every shift is what qualifies it.

Minijobs: Where the Hours Decide the Status

Many small German businesses run part of their crew on Minijobs, the marginal-employment status that is free of income tax and most social contributions for the worker. The line is drawn in euros but it is really drawn in hours: a Minijob may pay at most €603 a month in 2026, about 43 hours a month at the €13.90 minimum wage, and €633 in 2027. A Minijobber who works 48 hours one month has crossed the line, and the job becomes subject to full contributions with back-payments owed. The cause is almost always unrecorded extra hours, which is why the recording duty covers Minijobs exactly as it covers everyone else.

How Punch Handles German Working Time

Punch is built for the record every rule above depends on.

A Germany preset, in euros. Choose Germany at signup and Punch applies its Germany working-time preset, with euros throughout: every hour at the regular rate, because the law sets no premium. If your collective agreement or contract pays a supplement, switch to Custom in Org Settings and enter the threshold and the rate, for example every hour past 40 in a week at 1.25x, or past 8 in a day. Punch applies it to every pay period from then on.

Start, break, and finish on every day. Your team punches in, punches out for the break, punches back in, and punches out from their phone. The 30-minute break, the 6-hour continuous limit, the 11-hour daily rest, the 10-hour ceiling and the Sunday are on the record for every person, every day. That is the record the Federal Labour Court requires, kept by the people doing the work.

The daily hours, every day. Reports roll up per person by day, week and pay period, so the hours past 8 that section 16 requires, the six-month average and the minimum wage floor are a glance, not a reconstruction, and a Minijobber's monthly total is visible before the month closes.

A job-site geofence, not a camera. Punch-in can be limited to a geofence around the site. There is no photo at punch and no facial recognition.

Approvals before payroll. Managers approve hours one by one or bulk approve a whole pay period, then export to QuickBooks Online, Square, or a QuickBooks or Excel CSV for your Steuerberater or payroll provider.

Two years and more, kept. Approved pay periods stay in Punch, per person, with every punch behind them. When the Gewerbeaufsicht, the Zoll or the Arbeitsgericht asks for the hours, it is a report.

No signal, no gap. Punches made in a basement, on a rural site or in a cold store sync when the phone reconnects. A shared iPad in kiosk mode, with a PIN for each worker, covers a workshop or a yard gate.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is there a legal overtime rate in Germany?

No. The Arbeitszeitgesetz limits hours and says nothing about pay. The rate comes from the collective agreement or the employment contract. Where nothing is agreed, each extra hour is owed at the ordinary hourly rate under section 612 of the Civil Code, and every hour must clear the €13.90 minimum wage.

What is the maximum working time in Germany?

8 hours a working day, Monday to Saturday. It can be extended to 10 hours if the average over six months or 24 weeks does not exceed 8. The 10-hour line cannot be crossed by contract.

Does an employer in Germany have to record working hours?

Yes. Section 16(2) of the Arbeitszeitgesetz requires a record of every hour beyond 8 a day, kept for at least two years. Since the Federal Labour Court's decision of 13 September 2022, every employer must also record the start, end and duration of every employee's working time. There is no small-business exception.

Who has to prove overtime in a German dispute?

The employee must show the hours were worked and that the employer ordered, approved, tolerated or needed them. The employer then has to answer in detail with the work that was assigned on those days. An employer with a punch record answers with the record.

What is the minimum wage in Germany in 2026?

€13.90 an hour since 1 January 2026, rising to €14.60 on 1 January 2027. The Minijob earnings limit is €603 a month in 2026 and €633 in 2027.

Keep a German Record That Holds Up

German working time is a set of lines drawn across the hours your crew actually works: 8 a day before the record starts, 10 before the law stops you, 6 months for the average to come back, 30 minutes of break and 11 hours of rest, 15 Sundays a year, €13.90 for every hour, and a recording duty that now covers every employee from the first minute.

Punch records every punch in, punch out and break, applies the Germany preset or your agreement's rates, rolls up the day and the week, and exports approved hours straight to payroll. Pricing is flat per workspace, with no per-user line item, and every plan includes every feature. The 14-day free trial starts on signup, no credit card required.

Start tracking German hours correctly with Punch →

More from the blog