Updated on 7 November 2025
Alas, there is no minimum pension in Germany. Germany does provide a so-called Grundsicherung or minimum existence income.
You are only entitled to this benefit if you have no other income and virtually no wealth, that is, if your assets are below 10.000 € in value per person. Therefore, you can count on this as the ultimate safety net, but not for a normal retirement plan. The payments do provide for a sizable basic minimum. For single adults, the amount is currently 563 € per month, and if you are married or live with a partner, it is 506 € per month. In addition, you get free health insurance and a minimum for rent and heating costs reimbursed.
Germany also provides the so-called Grundrente im Alter, which is a pension supplement. You get this supplement if:
Your contribution years (including child care) are over 33.
Your overall income is below a certain standard, and
You have built up less pension entitlement than the average for your contribution years.
The key difference with the Grundsicherung is that there is no wealth test. For example, you can own your own home and get this Grundrente. But you only get the supplement if your income was, on average, less than about 35.000 € if rebased to current standards. Your pension gets then de facto raised to close to this income standard, provided you have contributed enough years. How much is it?
The calculations are complex, but will be done for you.
In essence, the system targets a minimum number of 28 pension points, which at the current value of 40,79 €, implies a minimum pension of about 1142 € per month.
The exact point supplement depends on how many years you contributed and the average pension points you earned during those years, compared to the overall average of about 0.8 points per year. Your points are then augmented by this average. To this, a 12,5% deduction is applied to the supplement. So if you contributed all 35 years but barely built up any points, you get a pension of about 1000€ per month,
Main conditions:
You have reached the official pension age
You have worked for at least 33 years. This includes time spent raising children. It includes time worked in other EU countries, but not, for example, the USA or Turkey. Your overall taxable income does not exceed a certain threshold.
You will receive the full basic pension supplement up to a monthly income (data for 2025) of 1,438 € for single people and 2,243 € for married couples or registered civil partnerships. If the respective allowance is exceeded, 60 percent of the income above this amount will be deducted from the supplement. For incomes above 1,840 € (2,646 € for couples), the portion exceeding this amount will be deducted in full.
The DRV or Deutsche Rentenversicherung has detailed information on its website that outlines all the conditions. Sign up here to access your dashboard. Your Pensionfriend dashboard has detailed retirement income estimations tailored to your situation.
