Non-EU students can work up to 140 full days or 280 half-days a year — how that limit actually works, what doesn't count toward it, and how it's different for EU/EEA students.
This page is for information purposes only. It is not legal, immigration, tax or financial advice, and StudentHubs does not give individual advice. Rules and processes vary by city and by personal situation, and they change over time. Before you act on anything that affects your residence permit, insurance, money or deadlines, confirm it with the responsible office, for example your Ausländerbehörde, Bürgeramt, Krankenkasse or BAföG office. Translations are AI-generated, and AI can make mistakes in translation. Please be aware of this, and if a detail is unclear or important to you, check it with the responsible office.
If you're a non-EU/EEA student on a student residence permit (§16b AufenthG), you're allowed to work up to 140 full days or 280 half-days per calendar year — you can mix the two as long as the total stays within that budget. A "full day" means a shift longer than 4 hours; a "half-day" means 4 hours or less. This has been the limit since March 1, 2024, when it was raised from the previous 120 full days / 240 half-days.
The calendar year resets the count, not your enrollment date — so it's worth tracking roughly how many days you've used as the year goes on, especially if you're working multiple part-time jobs at once.
There's a second way the limit can be calculated, and which one applies can depend on how your specific case is assessed: during the lecture period, you can work up to 20 hours a week; outside the lecture period (semester break), you can work more flexibly, spread across up to 2.5 days a week.
If you're not sure which calculation method applies to your situation, ask your local Ausländerbehörde or your university's international office directly — this is exactly the kind of detail worth confirming rather than assuming.
Working on campus — as a HiWi (student research assistant), tutor, or in another role at your university or an affiliated academic/research institution — doesn't count toward the 140/280-day limit at all, and doesn't need approval from the Federal Employment Agency.
A mandatory internship that's a required part of your degree program also doesn't count toward the limit. A voluntary internship you choose to do, on the other hand, generally does — so it's worth checking which category yours falls into before assuming it's free.
If you're a citizen of an EU or EEA country, or Switzerland, none of the above applies — you have full, unrestricted access to the German labor market under freedom of movement rules, the same as a German citizen. No work permit, no day limit, no separate approval.
This guide is specifically about the residence-permit-based limit that applies to non-EU/EEA students — if that's not your situation, the only real limit on your work hours is the same general labor law that applies to everyone (rest periods, maximum working time, etc.), not anything student-visa-specific.