Part of the topic: 🏠 Home, energy & car
Rent or buy calculator (Germany)
Enter the purchase price, your equity, the loan terms, the rent and your assumptions. The calculator compares the wealth of a buyer and a renter who invests the equity and any monthly difference.
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🔒 Runs entirely in your browser – nothing you enter is uploaded or stored.
How to use it
- Choose the federal state and enter price, purchase costs, equity and loan terms.
- Enter the rent for a comparable home and your assumptions for rent increase, value growth and investment return.
- Compare the wealth of buyer and renter in the table.
Last checked: October 2026 · Based on: 2026 real-estate transfer tax rates of the German states; assumptions shown and editable. Found a mistake? Use the form below – we fix confirmed errors and update the date.
Frequently asked questions
Is it cheaper to rent or to buy in Germany?
It depends on the price-to-rent ratio, interest rates and value growth. As a rule of thumb, buying gets harder to justify when the price exceeds about 25–30 annual net cold rents – check your own numbers.
What purchase costs do I have to pay?
Real-estate transfer tax of 3.5 % (Bavaria) to 6.5 % depending on the state, about 2 % for notary and land registry and possibly up to 3.57 % agent fee.
Why does the renter invest the equity?
For a fair comparison: the buyer ties the equity up in the property, the renter can invest it. Without that, renting would look worse than it is.