Tuition at most German public universities is free. Rent is not, and unlike tuition it is the thing that can actually stop you going. It is also the part of the move Indian students start thinking about last, usually after the visa, which is several months too late.
How halls actually work
Student halls — Wohnheime — are mostly run by the Studentenwerk, the student services organisation for a city or region. They are not run by the university, and they are the cheapest reliable housing you will find.
The allocation rule is the whole story: places are given out by waiting list, in order of when your application was received.
From the halls' own listings: in Göttingen, rooms are allocated in accordance with the waiting list, and applying earlier to the Studentenwerk raises your chance of a room. In Halle, applications are registered on a waiting list according to the date of receipt. Not by merit, not by need, not by how good your offer is. By date.
Which means the single most useful thing in this article is this: get on the list as early as the Studentenwerk will let you. In many cities you can apply before you have a visa, and in some before you have a final admission. Joining in March for an October start is a completely different position from joining in August.
Three things that catch people out
- You can be removed from the list for not replying. Kassel emails applicants every four weeks to confirm they still want a place, and removes those who do not respond. If you are mid-visa, mid-exams, or using an email address you do not check, you can lose a queue position you waited months for. Set a reminder.
- Not every hall uses a waiting list. Bochum's Markstraße hall posts vacancies instead, and they have to be claimed quickly. Different city, different mechanism — read the specific hall's page rather than assuming.
- Exchange and Erasmus quotas are a separate queue. Several halls reserve places for exchange students, and those applications go through the university's International Office, not the Studentenwerk. If you are a degree student, that quota is not yours; if you are an exchange student, the Studentenwerk queue may not be the right one.
Munich says it plainly, and you should believe it
The most popular German city for Indian students is also the hardest to house in, and Munich's International Office does not pretend otherwise: it states that it cannot guarantee a room in a student residence.
Take that at face value. If your shortlist is Munich-heavy, plan for private housing as the likely outcome and treat a hall place as a bonus. Or look seriously at cities where the housing market is not the binding constraint — a point worth weighing alongside tuition when you build a shortlist, because the tuition picture differs by state too.
The deposit, which is real money up front
Halls take a deposit, and it is not trivial. The examples differ by city and that is the point:
- Dessau — three months' rent, capped at €350 in total.
- Kassel — €400.
- Munich — three times the monthly basic rent, with no cap mentioned.
It is refundable at the end if the room is in order, but you need it on arrival, on top of the first month's rent and on top of whatever the blocked account releases to you monthly. That monthly release is capped, so a large deposit in an expensive city has to be planned for separately rather than assumed to come out of it.
We are deliberately not printing monthly rents. They vary by city far more than any national average would suggest, and a figure in an article is exactly what a family then budgets against.
Eligibility rules you would not guess
Halls set their own criteria and some are restrictive in ways that surprise international applicants. Halle gives lower priority to applicants aged 30 or over. Leipzig gives preference to students at Leipzig institutions. Many halls only house students enrolled at the universities their Studentenwerk serves.
None of this is hidden — it is on the hall's own page — but it is not what anyone expects to find, and it is worth reading before you count on a place.
If you do not get a hall
The common alternative is a WG — a Wohngemeinschaft, a shared flat where tenants each rent a room. It is the normal way German students live, it is usually dearer than a hall and cheaper than a studio, and it is arranged privately.
One warning that matters more than any price. Never transfer money for a room you have not seen, to a landlord you have not verified, before you arrive. Advance-payment scams targeting arriving international students are common enough that university international offices warn about them routinely. A deposit request over chat, for a flat you have only seen photographs of, from someone who cannot meet you or video-call from inside it, is the shape of the standard fraud.
What to do, in order
- Find the Studentenwerk for your city and read its application rules — they differ.
- Apply the moment it allows you to, which is often before the visa and sometimes before final admission.
- Diarise the confirmation emails so you are not removed for silence.
- Budget the deposit separately from your monthly funds.
- Start a WG search in parallel if your city is Munich, or any city where the hall queue is long.
The allocation rules, the confirmation-email practice, the exchange quotas, the Munich statement and the three deposit figures above are from DAAD's dormitory listings for those halls, read on 16 October 2026. Each Studentenwerk sets its own terms and changes them — check the hall's own page before relying on any of it.
If you want help working out which of your shortlisted cities will actually house you, ask us. It is a question almost nobody asks before accepting an offer, and it is free to ask.