Maternity Pay in Germany With Private Health Insurance

How much maternity pay do you get in Germany if you are privately insured?

€210 in total, once, for the entire protection period. It comes from the Bundesamt für Soziale Sicherung, the federal social insurance office, under § 19 Abs. 2 MuSchG. A woman insured in the statutory system receives up to €13 per calendar day under § 24i SGB V, which is €1,274 across a standard 14-week period.

The single most common misreading is treating the €210 as a monthly figure. It is not, and it is worth being clear about because the mistake makes private cover look far worse than it is. Spread across the 98 calendar days of a standard protection period it works out at about €2.14 per day.

This page assumes you are already in the private system, or close to deciding. If you are still weighing the two in general, the PKV decision guide covers the wider comparison, and the complete guide to health insurance in Germany is the starting point if the whole system is new to you.

That €1,274-versus-€210 headline is the number most pages stop at, and on its own it makes private cover look far worse than it works out in practice. Two things close most of the gap, and both come later on this page: your employer pays the same top-up either way, and Krankentagegeld covers much of what is left. Hold the headline figure loosely until you have both.

Worth knowing, because it is often presented the other way round: the €210 has been unchanged since 1 January 2002, and the statutory €13 per day was fixed at the same time. Both are frozen in nominal terms, so the gap between them is stable rather than growing. What has grown over the years is the employer's share, because wages rose while the €13 reference figure did not.

How long does Mutterschutz last, and when does it start?

Mutterschutz (maternity protection) runs for six weeks before the due date and eight weeks after the birth, so fourteen weeks in total (§ 3 Abs. 1 and 2 MuSchG). It extends to twelve weeks after the birth for a premature birth, a multiple birth, or where a disability is medically diagnosed within eight weeks of the birth.

The pre-birth period is an employment ban, but you may waive it by express consent if you want to keep working. The post-birth period cannot be waived.

Births rarely land on the due date, so the statute has a shift rule. If the baby arrives late, only the post-birth period moves; the extra days before the birth do not shorten anything. If the baby arrives early, the days you lost from the pre-birth period are added to the post-birth period, so the total stays intact.

Since 1 June 2025 there are also staggered protection periods after a miscarriage, running from the thirteenth week of pregnancy onward (§ 3 Abs. 5 MuSchG).

What does your employer pay on top, and does private insurance change it?

Your employer pays the difference between €13 per day and your average daily net pay from the last three settled calendar months (§ 20 Abs. 1 MuSchG). It is calculated against that fixed €13 reference figure rather than against the €210 you actually receive, so a privately insured woman gets exactly the same top-up as a colleague on the same salary in the statutory system.

This is the part that surprises people, and it is worth stating plainly because the worry is real: your employer does not carry this cost. Statutory health insurers reimburse employers in full through the U2-Umlage, a levy system that applies to companies of every size (§ 1 AAG). Taking maternity leave on private cover is not more expensive for the employer than any other maternity leave.

Since the top-up is identical either way, it cancels out of the comparison. The actual difference between the two systems is the maternity pay alone:

• Standard 14-week period: €1,274 versus €210, a gap of €1,064
• Extended 18-week period: €1,638 versus €210, a gap of €1,428

Note which direction that runs. The statutory daily rate scales with the number of days, while the private lump sum is a fixed ceiling that does not grow. The longer the protection period, the wider the gap, which means a premature or multiple birth is exactly where the shortfall is largest.

Do you still pay your PKV premium during Mutterschutz?

Yes, in full. And the employer subsidy stops, because no contribution-liable wage is flowing during the protection period and the § 20 MuSchG top-up does not count as wages for this purpose (§ 257 SGB V). Members of the statutory system pay nothing at all while drawing maternity pay (§ 224 SGB V).

In euros, this is often the larger of the two items. The subsidy is worth up to €613.22 per month outside Sachsen in 2026 (€584.15 in Sachsen), and a standard protection period runs about 3.2 months. Losing it while the premium continues can outweigh the €1,064 maternity-pay gap on its own.

There is one lever worth checking. If your partner is also privately insured and employed, their subsidy under § 257 Abs. 2 SGB V is calculated on the total they pay for health insurance, including co-insured family members. If their own premium does not use up their allowance, the unused headroom can carry part of your premium, and later the child's. It is tied to their contract rather than transferable in the abstract, so it only works where the family is insured on that basis. A partner in the statutory system generates no such headroom at all.

How does Krankentagegeld fill the income gap during Mutterschutz?

Krankentagegeld, a daily sickness allowance you agree with your insurer, is the instrument built for exactly this. Under § 192 Abs. 5 VVG the insurer must replace the loss of earnings arising during the protection period and on the day of the birth. No doctor's sick note is required; the protection period itself is the trigger.

Three details decide what it is actually worth to you.

1. It tops you up, it does not pay on top. Maternity pay, the employer top-up and Elterngeld are all set off against the daily allowance (§ 1a Abs. 2 MB/KT), and the combined total cannot exceed your net income from work, converted to a daily figure (§ 1a Abs. 3 MB/KT). Several German comparison sites imply it stacks. It does not.
2. The daily amount is yours to choose, within what your income supports. This is the genuine advantage over the statutory route: the €13 per day there is a hard ceiling that cannot be topped up by anything, while a private daily allowance can be sized to your actual net pay.
3. There is an eight-month qualifying period, and this is the one that catches people out.

That last point deserves the arithmetic, because it is the most useful thing on this page. German uses two words that both become "waiting period" in English, and they mean different things. The Wartezeit is the initial qualifying period after a contract starts, before any benefit exists at all: eight months from the start of the contract for the maternity benefit (§ 1a Abs. 5 MB/KT). The Karenzzeit is something else entirely, the number of days of incapacity you carry yourself before the allowance begins paying, commonly 42 days for employees whose employer continues their salary for the first six weeks.

Now the timing. A protection period starts six weeks before the due date, which is roughly 7.4 months after conception. The qualifying period is eight months. So a contract signed on the day of conception finishes qualifying about three weeks after the protection period has already begun, and those weeks are not covered.

Two footnotes for people arriving from elsewhere. A qualifying period can be waived against a medical certificate where the tariff allows it, and previous uninterrupted cover, whether statutory sick pay or a private daily allowance, is credited if the new contract is applied for within two months of the old one ending (§ 3 Abs. 4 and 5 MB/KT).

Then the Karenzzeit bites a second time, and this is the part that surprises people who thought they had the gap covered. A standard 42-day Karenzzeit runs for exactly as long as the pre-birth protection period, so in practice the daily allowance only starts paying around the birth itself. Netted out over a standard 14-week period, that leaves a smaller gap than the headline suggests:

Those figures assume a Krankentagegeld contract that is adequately sized and past its eight-month qualifying period. Without one, the gap is the full €1,064. With one, roughly €456 is the realistic shortfall, not the €1,064 the headline comparison implies. The employer top-up is identical in both systems and cancels out of all of this.

There is movement on this point worth knowing about. Several first-instance courts have held that an agreed Karenzzeit may not be applied during the statutory protection period, on the reasoning that § 192 Abs. 5 VVG is mandatory law and requires the loss of earnings to be compensated from day one. The clearest is Landgericht Ravensburg (24 February 2022, 1 S 117/21), which awarded a self-employed claimant the 21 waiting days her insurer had withheld, worth €3,150. These remain individual decisions rather than settled law, there is no Federal Court of Justice ruling, and insurers do not all handle it the same way. Worth raising with your insurer in writing rather than assuming either outcome.

What if you are self-employed and privately insured?

Nothing arrives from the state. The €210 under § 19 Abs. 2 MuSchG requires an employment relationship, and the Bundesamt für Soziale Sicherung states plainly that self-employment does not count as one. There is no employer, so there is no top-up either. Elterngeld still applies, calculated on the profit of your last completed tax year.

That leaves Krankentagegeld as the only income replacement in the picture, which makes the eight-month timing above decisive rather than merely useful. If you are self-employed and planning a family, this is the whole plan.

One honest caveat on the entitlement itself. The Mutterschutzgesetz does not apply to self-employed women at all, so on a strict reading there is an argument that no protection period exists for you. § 192 Abs. 5 VVG, though, ties the insurer's obligation to the periods under § 3 MuSchG rather than to who you work for, and courts have read it that way for self-employed claimants: the Ravensburg decision above involved exactly such a claimant.

It is still not settled law. There is no Federal Court of Justice ruling, and insurers do not all handle it the same way. Get it confirmed by your insurer in writing before you rely on it, and do that when you take out the contract rather than when you need to claim. One thing worth asking about specifically: whether the tariff pays a daily allowance when you are unable to work because of the pregnancy alone, rather than only for an unrelated illness. For an employed woman a doctor's individual employment ban covers that situation; a self-employed woman has no such thing, so the tariff wording is all she has.

How does Elterngeld work, and does private insurance change it?

It does not change it at all. Elterngeld (parental allowance) is paid by your federal state's Elterngeldstelle under the BEEG, not by your health insurer, and the amount is identical whichever system you are in: 65 to 67 % of your average net pay before the birth, with a minimum of €300 and a maximum of €1,800 per month.

Basiselterngeld runs for 12 months, or 14 if both parents take some of it. ElterngeldPlus runs twice as long at roughly half the monthly amount, which suits a part-time return.

Two rules cause most of the trouble:

The income ceiling is a cliff, not a slope. For births from 1 April 2025 there is no entitlement at all above €175,000 of taxable income (§ 1 Abs. 8 BEEG). One euro over and the entitlement is gone completely; there is no sliding scale and no hardship provision. The basis differs by status: for married couples and registered partners it is the combined taxable income, while unmarried partners and single parents are each assessed on their own. The reference year is the calendar year before the month of the birth.

The three-month rule is not a filing deadline. § 7 BEEG limits how far back Elterngeld can be paid, to at most the three months before the application arrives. You can apply later than that; you simply lose the earlier months. It is worth applying promptly, but a missed date does not forfeit the entitlement.

One consequence worth planning around: maternity pay and the employer top-up are set off against Elterngeld in full from the date of the birth (§ 3 BEEG). Because the eight-week post-birth protection period overlaps the first Elterngeld months, an employed woman should not expect much extra money in that stretch.

What happens to your PKV contract during Elternzeit, and when you go back part-time?

Elternzeit (parental leave) gives you up to three years of unpaid leave per child, of which up to 24 months can be moved to any point before the child turns eight. Your cover continues throughout, and there are three things worth doing with it.

1. Check whether your tariff offers Beitragsbefreiung (premium suspension) while you draw Elterngeld, commonly up to six months. This is a tariff feature rather than a statutory right, so it either exists in your contract or it does not.
2. Switch Krankentagegeld to dormant cover for the duration. There is no entitlement to a daily sickness allowance while you are not working, so paying the full rate for it buys nothing. An Anwartschaft, as dormant cover is called, holds your entry age and accepted health status for a small monthly fee.
3. Apply for the § 8 SGB V exemption if you return part-time. Part-time earnings below the 2026 JAEG of €77,400 would normally pull you back into compulsory statutory membership. Two provisions prevent that: § 8 Abs. 1 Nr. 2 SGB V for part-time work during Elternzeit, and § 8 Abs. 1 Nr. 3 SGB V for part-time work after it. Both must be actively applied for within the statutory window. They are not automatic, and missing them is the classic avoidable mistake at the end of parental leave.

Put in order, the whole thing is a short list with one item that has a deadline attached:

1. Before conception: arrange Krankentagegeld, sized against your net income, and confirm what your tariff covers on pregnancy care. This is the only step that cannot be taken later.
2. On confirmation of the pregnancy: check your tariff for a Beitragsbefreiung option and for an Entbindungspauschale (a childbirth lump sum, typically paid on a home birth or as a multiple of the daily allowance). Confirm what your partner's subsidy headroom looks like.
3. At the start of the protection period: apply to the Bundesamt für Soziale Sicherung for the €210, and notify your insurer so the daily allowance runs.
4. Within two months of the birth: enrol the baby under Kindernachversicherung, which admits a newborn with no health questions, no risk surcharges and no exclusions (§ 198 VVG). What that costs per child, and how it compares with free family cover in the statutory system, is worked through in family health insurance in Germany.
5. At the start of Elternzeit: switch the daily allowance to dormant cover, and activate any premium suspension your tariff offers.
6. Before returning part-time: file the § 8 SGB V exemption.

None of this is an argument against private cover. It is a planning problem with a known solution and a known deadline. The daily allowance you can arrange has no statutory ceiling, unlike the €13 per day in the statutory system that cannot be topped up by anything, and comprehensive tariffs typically cover more of the pregnancy itself than the statutory catalogue does. What the private route asks of you is that you handle one decision early rather than late.

Planning a family and not sure what your contract actually covers? Check where you stand in a free 30-minute call. We go through your tariff, the timing, and what your partner's subsidy allowance can absorb.