Everyone writes that Germany is free. Almost nobody shows you the degrees.
Here is our side of it, counted on 26 October 2026: of the 1,597 programmes in our catalogue where we hold a tuition figure checked against an official source, 726 charge nothing. That is 45 per cent of everything we can price. Every single one of them is in Germany, and every single one is a master's.
The fees come from the DAAD's own programme database, which is the German Academic Exchange Service — a public body, not an agency. They were re-checked on 6 October 2026.
Where the 726 actually are
They sit at 48 institutions, and the distribution is the first useful surprise. These are the universities with the most free master's degrees in our catalogue:
- Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn — 40
- University of Göttingen — 31
- Technische Universität Dresden — 28
- Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg — 27
- Universität Potsdam — 25
- University of Bayreuth — 24
- Universität Bremen — 21
- Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg — 21
Notice who is not on that list. Not Munich, not Heidelberg, not Aachen — the names an Indian student has usually heard of. The universities offering the most free master's degrees are mostly ones nobody mentions, and Bonn, Göttingen and Dresden are serious research institutions with centuries behind them.
By city the concentration runs Bonn 40, Berlin 34, Göttingen 31, Dresden 28, Würzburg 27, then Hamburg and Potsdam at 25 each, Bayreuth 24, and Cologne and Bochum at 21. Berlin is the only one most people could place on a map, and it is second, not first.
It is not only engineering
The other stereotype worth dismantling. The subjects with the most free master's degrees we list:
- Computer Science — 54
- Biology — 34
- Business Administration — 28
- Political Science — 25
- Applied Mathematics — 25
- Economics — 24
- Biochemistry — 21
- Electrical Engineering — 19
- English Studies — 16
- Mathematics — 15
- International Relations — 15
- Astrophysics — 13
Biology outnumbers electrical engineering. There are 16 free master's in English Studies and 13 in Astrophysics. If you have been told Germany is for engineers, the catalogue disagrees — you can browse any of these on our subject pages, which now state outright where a group charges no tuition.
636 of the 726 carry a recorded English requirement, which is how you can tell a programme expects to teach you in English rather than German. That is not the same as every one being English-taught, and it is the single thing most worth checking on the programme's own page before you shortlist it.
What free actually costs
This is where most articles stop and most budgets go wrong. Tuition is the fee the university charges. It is not the cost of the degree.
680 of the 726 run 24 months. Only 14 finish inside a year. So a free German master's is two years of rent, food, transport and insurance — against a UK master's that charges tuition and finishes in twelve. Run that comparison on the total, not the fee, or Germany looks cheaper than it is and the UK looks dearer than it is.
Then the part that catches families out: Germany asks you to evidence money you are not going to spend. The proof-of-funds requirement is roughly EUR 11,904 for twelve months, held in a blocked account that releases about EUR 992 to you each month. You need that sum demonstrably in an account before a visa is issued, whatever the tuition is.
Which inverts the usual question. A family that could pay fees in instalments but cannot assemble a lump sum may find a fee-charging country easier than a free one. Free tuition does not mean low capital — it means the capital goes to the visa officer instead of the university.
There is also a semester contribution, normally EUR 70 to 430, which is not tuition. It covers student services and usually a local transport pass. Small, but not nothing.
Our cost of living page for Germany holds the living side, and the budget planner puts tuition, living costs and the blocked account together, which is the only number that answers the question.
Three things that are not free
The MBA. Every MBA we list at a German public university charges tuition. It is the one qualification where "Germany is free" will cost you money if you believe it. We are re-checking the individual fees against each school’s own page before quoting them here, because the programme databases state MBA costs inconsistently — some give the total, some a per-semester instalment — and the two differ by a factor of four.
Baden-Württemberg. That state charges non-EU students a tuition fee where most others charge none. Bavaria leaves the decision to each institution, so one Munich university charges nothing and another charges thousands. The rule is set per state and sometimes per university, so "Germany" is never the answer and neither is "Bavaria" — our free-eligibility checker answers it for a named university, and says "we will confirm" where the position is genuinely unclear rather than guessing.
Private universities. The free-tuition rule is about public institutions. A private German university charges like a private university anywhere.
How confident we are in this
Every one of the 726 carries a link to the official listing the figure was read from, shown on the programme's own page with the date. They were last re-checked on 6 October 2026, when 880 of 881 zero-fee rows still read "No tuition fee" at source.
Two honest limits. This is our catalogue, not the German market — there are free master's degrees in Germany we do not list, and the 726 is a floor rather than a total. And a count moves: programmes open and close, and a state can change its fee rule between intakes. The number above is what we held on the date at the top.
If your subject is in that list and you want help turning it into a shortlist — with the blocked account and the two-year living cost priced in properly — our counselling is free. The mechanics of the visa, the blocked account and the application route are set out in our guide to studying in Germany for free.