Not a job. Not a scholarship. A Berufsausbildungsvertrag — a registered training contract, three or four days a week at a company and one or two at a state Berufsschule, ending in an Abschlussprüfung. Here’s what it pays, what the visa actually requires, and where the free official channels stop and the agents selling “guaranteed placement” begin.
Germany runs about 300 recognised dual-training occupations — electrician, nurse, industrial mechanic, hotel specialist, IT systems integrator, and plenty you won’t find named anywhere else. “Dual” means two places, not two tracks: most of the week you’re on the floor of a real company, paid, doing the job under supervision; one or two days you’re in a classroom with a teacher, sitting exams, in German. The training runs two to three and a half years depending on the trade.
People coming from outside Germany tend to picture one of two wrong things: either a full-time paid job with no school attached, or an internship with no pay at all. It’s neither. It’s closer to a part-time apprenticeship with homework, and the homework is in German.
Two numbers matter here, and most advice online quotes only one of them. There’s the legal floor — the Mindestausbildungsvergütung every employer must pay by law — and there’s what most trainees actually get, which runs well above it. Figures below are gross, before tax and social insurance, from the Bundesinstitut für Berufsbildung (BIBB)’s 2025/2026 surveys.
| Training year | Legal minimum (2026) | Tariflich average (2025) |
|---|---|---|
| Year 1 | €724 / month | €1,117 / month |
| Year 2 | €854 / month | — |
| Year 3 | — (≈ +40% of Y1 floor) | — |
| Year 4 | — | €1,339 / month |
Since 2020, only 3–4% of new contracts actually pay just the legal minimum — most employers pay above it, especially in the public sector (€1,329/month average) and nursing, where first-year pay regularly clears €1,400. The lowest-paying trade BIBB tracks is hairdressing, at €727/month. If an agent quotes you a number nowhere near this table, ask them where it’s from.
Most guides wave at “you’ll need a visa” and move on. There are two different legal instruments here, and which one applies to you depends on whether you already have a signed training contract.
This is the one almost every first-time applicant actually needs. It lets you enter Germany to look for a training place in person — interviews, trial days, the works — without a contract in hand yet. The statute is specific about who qualifies:
It’s valid up to nine months, lets you work up to 20 hours a week while you search, and the visa fee itself is €75. Once you land a contract, you convert to the training residence permit in-country for a further fee of up to €100. That’s the entire official cost of the visa process — under €200, from a government you can verify.
This is the actual training residence permit, and the law leans in your favour here — it says the permit soll erteilt werden (“shall generally be granted”) once the Bundesagentur für Arbeit has signed off. Side work unrelated to your training is capped at 20 hours a week. And if your training company folds through no fault of yours, you get up to six months to find a new one before your status is at risk — that protection is written into the law, not left to goodwill.
Here’s the short version: the official German government does not charge you to find an Ausbildung. Three channels, all free, all run by the state:
The federal government’s own portal. Its own brochure states plainly: all services are free of charge.
Part of the Bundesagentur für Arbeit. Free placement for training-seekers abroad, and runs the mandatory work-permit check for non-EU applicants.
Qualification recognition — needed for regulated trades like nursing. Flat fee, published upfront: €100–600, not a mystery sum.
Add it up: visa €75, residence permit up to €100, optional recognition €100–600. Realistic total for the entire official pathway sits somewhere under €850 — and every figure in it is published by a government body you can look up yourself.
If someone is asking for a few thousand dollars or a “guaranteed placement package,” they are not one of the three channels above. The German Consulate in Mumbai has its own fraud-warning page about exactly this: impostors who “pretend to represent the German Consulate” and sell visas for inflated sums. Visas are issued at German missions only. No agent can speed one up, and no agent can sell you one.
If you’re coming for Pflege (nursing), there’s a named, government-run programme worth knowing about: Triple Win, run jointly by the Bundesagentur für Arbeit and GIZ, which has placed over 8,000 nurses and trainees in Germany since 2013. India’s intake runs through Kerala and Telangana, with selection in Kerala handled by Norka Roots — a Kerala state government company, not a private agency. The Philippines is also a partner country.
Nursing also tends to carry a higher language bar than the B1 floor — B2 is required for professional recognition as a nurse in most federal states, since patient documentation and safety depend on it.
One real warning: fake “Triple Win” job offers have circulated — the Department of Migrant Workers has shut down at least one agency illegally recruiting for Germany under this banner. Check any Triple Win offer directly against triple-win-programm.de before paying anyone or signing anything.
Most training places start 1 August or 1 September. The bigger the employer, the earlier they recruit. Banks, insurers and public-sector employers routinely fill their intake 12 to 18 months out — the City of Regensburg’s own public-sector dual-study programme, as one concrete example, ran its application window for a September 2027 start from 28 November 2026 to 4 January 2027. Small craft businesses hire much closer to the start date, sometimes after a single trial day.
Layer the visa process on top — B1 certification, school-certificate recognition, booking a visa appointment, the up-to-nine-month search window — and a realistic total runway from “I’ve decided to do this” to “first day of training” is 12 to 18 months, sometimes longer. Plan from the German language, not from the visa. B1 is the one part of this entire process you have complete control over, and it’s also the one part most applicants leave until last.
Everything else — the visa queue, the employer’s hiring calendar — runs on its own clock. Your German doesn’t have to.
Hiring for IT, metalwork or healthcare specifically? See the skilled-worker exam track →
Pay, demand and entry requirements differ a lot by occupation. Here’s the breakdown for the 12 trades international applicants ask about most.
Pay, demand and entry requirements for this trade specifically.
Pay, demand and entry requirements for this trade specifically.
Pay, demand and entry requirements for this trade specifically.
Pay, demand and entry requirements for this trade specifically.
Pay, demand and entry requirements for this trade specifically.
Pay, demand and entry requirements for this trade specifically.
Pay, demand and entry requirements for this trade specifically.
Pay, demand and entry requirements for this trade specifically.
Pay, demand and entry requirements for this trade specifically.
Pay, demand and entry requirements for this trade specifically.
Pay, demand and entry requirements for this trade specifically.
Pay, demand and entry requirements for this trade specifically.
Why Lehre and Berufslehre aren’t open the same way — and the one narrow exception.
Vocational levels 1–4, Dutch-only teaching, and the diploma recognition most people underestimate.
The Bewerbungsmappe, the documents, the order to do things in.
What’s legally required to cost nothing — and how to check an agency before you pay one.