What is the Monthly Cost of Living in Munich?

Are you thinking about moving to Munich and you want to get an idea about the cost of living here in our beautiful city?

You are definitely right here so let’s check out how much you need to spend each month to survive in Munich.

We decided to compare monthly expenses for students, employees with a monthly salary of around 2.500€ and high-earning employees with +5.000€ of monthly salary.

By the way: we did not consider any car costs in this article, we definitly recommend to use public transport or a car sharing service.

Monthly rent for an apartment

The amount you need to pay for housing per month depends on a) size of the apartment and b) its location.

Of course the cheapest option is renting a room in a shared flat, a so-called Wohngemeinschaft or WG. That’s in fact the easiest way to meet new people and start your social life in Munich from the first day on.

Munich has one of the highest level of rent if not the highest level of rent of Germany.
In Germany we differentiate between „Warmmiete“ (incl. water and heating) and „Kaltmiete“ (rent without any additional costs).

When we speak of rent, we speak about the Warmmiete – electricity is always extra.

A single room in a shared flat costs minimum 400€ and can be as high as 600€ per month so more expensive as you might have expected.

For an apartment with 2 rooms/ca. 60 m² in a good neighborhood (Schwabing, Haidhausen or Lehel for example) you pay minimum 1.000€.

A flat with 3 or 4 rooms and separate kitchen easily costs you 2.000€ or more in a decent neighborhood.

Don’t forget that you have to add ca. 50€ for internet and TV per month.

Continue reading here about how to find a place to live in Munich.

Monthly cost for internet provider

One of the first things to do after you have moved into your new flat is to sign up with an internet provider.

It depends on your online behavior which contract is the most suitable for you.

If you should just visit some websites and you write an email from time to time, then a contract with ca. 10MBit is enough.

o2 Internet offers a tariff with 10MBit for just ca. 15€ per month.

If you are in the online business and working from home, we definitely recommend to chose a tariff with 50Mbits.

1&1 Internet offers the best value option with 50MBits for around 25€/month.

In this contract there are currently 2 SIM cards included for you and a family member.

Insider tip: monthly fee usually goes up after the first 12 months, keep that in mind when you sign up for an internet contract.

Keep reading here about the best internet provider in Munich.

Monthly cost for mobile phone provider

Like the choice of your internet provider depends on your online behavior, the choice of your mobile phone provider and contract depends on your phone behavior.

In Germany the 3 big providers usually offer contracts with a minimum runtime of 2 years.

Once you sign up your contract, we advise you to send the contract notice right away so that you don’t forget about it 2 years later.

They will contact you anyways and try to convince you to pronlog the contract – this often gives you the possibility to bargain for better conditions.

Same idea applies to internet contracts as well by the way.

In case that you are student and looking for a cheap contract without much data volume, we recommend that you check the website Tarifhaus.

It’s a website where different mobile phone tariffs are being compared.

Are you a mobile data heavy user and even streaming videos while you are on the go?

In case that you are, then we strongly recommend a contract with minimum 5GB mobile data volume if not even more.

Right now the best pick is 1&1 Internet.

Like with online contracts, pay attention to possible higher monthly fees after year one.

Continue reading here about the best phone providers in Munich.

Monthly cost for electricity provider

The monthly costs are depending on the power consumption of your electronic devices of course.

Once you have moved into your new flat, make sure that all lamps have LED-bulbs installed and if not then replace them with the cost saving LEDs.

In case that the kitchen is rather old, the fridge and the oven are two other sources of high energy consumption.

You could ask your landlord to replace them or live with it until they break down – then the landlord will have to replace them on his costs anyways as German Rent Act is very “tenant-friendly”.

For a 1 person household calculate with a power consumption of ca. 2.000Kwh per year, for a 2 person household ca. 2.500Kwh/year, for a 3 person household ca. 3.000kWh/year and the power consumption for a 4 person household is in the range of 3.500 and 4.000Kwh/year.

Currently 1 Kwh costs ca. 0,30€. By the way: per head costs get lower the more people are living in the flat as the costs for devices like fridge and TV split on more heads.

Monthly cost for health insurance

These costs depend whether you opt for a private or a statutory health insurance.

A private health insurance is not an option for most employees as you need a minimum yearly gross-income of 62.550€ (status 2020), you are working for the government or you are freelancer.

The monthly cost depends from factors like your age, any previous diseases, being smoker or non-smoker etc.

Calculate with ca. 400€ per month for a proper private health insurance.

If you can’t opt for a private insurance, you must choose between one of the public health insurers (AOK, Techniker Krankenkasse etc.).

Each one of those statutory health ensurers offer different benefits so we would recommend having a closer look what benefits they offer.

Some offer additional examinations during pregnancy or others e.g. subsidize certain dentistry services.

Monthly costs are 14,6% of your gross-income + an additional contribution which differs from insurer to insurer).

50% of these costs are paid by your employer.

One thing to pay attention to: in contrary to the statutory health insurance where your kids are included, a private health insurance often makes you pay extra for your kids.

For students the statutory health insurance is a lot cheaper and should be around 90€/month.

And once you have switched from a statutory health insurance to a private one, it is nearly impossible to switch back and connected with high costs to switch back to the statutory one.

Monthly cost for groceries

Luckily for you that shopping groceries in Germany is fairly cheap – it’s even one of the cheapest countries when you compare its costs to its price level.

The two big discounters ALDI and Lidl have set the price level quite low so Germans are used to buy groceries quite cheap but also expect a certain quality level.

But the attitude of more and more people is changing – local production and bio-certification are becoming more and more important.

In Munich we have seen numerous openings of bio-supermarkets like Basic and Vitalia in the last years just to name two of them.

To give you an idea of prices of a discounter compared to bio-supermarket prices, here some important products (discounter/bio-supermarket)

• 1l milk 0,70€/1,20€
• 250g butter 1,50€/2,80€
• 100g meat – beef filet 2,50€/5.-€
• 500g coffee 5.-€/9.-€
• 10 eggs 2,50€/5.-€

Monthly cost for eating out

The generally high level of cost of living in Munich does not completely reflect in the costs for eating out.

Ok, if you have a look at the Döner Index you get a wrong impression.

Only joking – you might have heard of the Big Mac Index for comparing price levels of countries among each other but indeed comparing the prices of a Döner shows a big difference: in Berlin you can have a good Kebap for 3.-€ or even a little bit less whereas in Munich the price is at round about 5.-€.

The price level of eating out in general is certainly higher than in other cities but there are numerous restaurants where you get very good food for a fair price.

If you have a pizza and a beer you get around with 15.-€ but if you visit the fancy Asian restaurant and have a bottle of wine together then count with 40.-€ per person.

So our estimation for eating out is anywhere between 50€ and 500€ a month depending on how often you go out of course.

Monthly cost for going out at night

The nightlife of Munich certainly doesn’t have the same charme which the nightlife of Hamburg or Berlin has.

Two years ago the infamous Kunstpark Ost was shut down, one of the last places in Munich where you could feel some alternative/undergound vibe.

Nowadays you find expensive office spaces on the area of the old Pfanni factory and the Kunstpark Ost remains nothing but a relict of time when the nightlife of Munich used to have a heart.

Ok, so back to the topic. Costs for going out depends certainly on your party-behaviour – do you start drinking in a friends flat (“Vorglühen”) and then go out already quite sober (idea is clear, drink cheap at home and spend only few €s in bars, student-style 🙂 ) or you do it the civilized way.

If you go for option 2, then you will spend ca. 50.-€ when you go clubbing in one of Munich’s few clubs (Blitz, Harry Klein) or you go to a cocktail bar and have some overprized cocktails.

Monthly cost for public transport

We definitely give you the advice to use public transport instead of using your car.

Traffic in Munich is terrible, so you need very good nerves as traffic jams during rush hour are standard. Besides that fact, using public transport helps to reduce pollution.

There has recently been a reform of the tariffs of the public transport of Munich – the MVG –  which results in slightly lower costs.

Depending on where you areliving, minimum price of a monthly ticket is ca. 55€ (2 zones). For exact details visit the MVG homepage.

The ticket is valid for using all type of transport so Ubahn, autobus, S-Bahn and tram. The semester ticket can be bought via your institute and costs 32.-€ per month.

Insider Tip: sign up for a IsarCard subscription with one year runtime; you receive a 1 year runtime and you only have to pay 10 months.