Overtime under the German Working Hours Act - Legal Requirements and Correct Tracking for 2026

What is the difference between overtime and additional work?

Both overtime (Überstunden) and additional work (Mehrarbeit) describe situations in which regular working hours are exceeded. They refer to different reference points, though. Overtime arises when employees work longer each day than their employment contract provides for. This has to be ordered or tolerated by the employer.

With additional work, employees exceed the working hours permitted by law or by collective agreement. Normally these are all hours that go beyond the statutory limit of 10 hours a day or 60 hours a week. In both cases employers have to compensate the extra working time.

How much overtime is allowed?

The German Working Hours Act (Arbeitszeitgesetz, ArbZG) governs the maximum working time permitted per day. This is eight hours, so 48 hours a week based on a six-day week. If your employees only work 40 hours a week, eight hours of overtime are therefore legally possible.

The Act extends this rule further, however. Employees may work 10 hours a day over a limited period if this overtime is balanced out at short notice by shorter working hours. The deadline for that is 6 months or 24 weeks. Put differently: within 24 weeks the average daily working time should be no higher than eight hours, but for a short period employees may work up to 60 hours a week. If your employees work for several employers, their working hours have to be added together.

Collective agreements, works agreements or service agreements can contain different rules.

Which exceptions does the Working Hours Act contain?

The ArbZG does not manage without exceptions. In sectors where work is usually done on weekdays, employment on Sundays and public holidays is only possible in special cases. Separate rules also apply to the following groups of people.

Overtime for pregnant and breastfeeding employees

Pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers may work a maximum of 8.5 hours a day and a maximum of 90 hours within two weeks. They may not do night work between 8 pm and 6 am, nor work on Sundays and public holidays.

Overtime for young people and apprentices

For employees who are minors, daily working time is limited to 8 hours. Per week they work no more than 40 hours. Apprentices who do not fall under youth protection rules may work overtime within the statutory limits just like other employees.

Overtime for people with severe disabilities

People with severe disabilities, or those treated as equivalent, may request to be exempted from additional work.

Employees on the minimum wage

Care is needed with employees on the minimum wage or only slightly above it. If they work unpaid overtime, the average hourly wage quickly falls below the minimum wage. As an employer you should pay particular attention to this.

Part-time employees

Anything that goes beyond the contractual arrangement is overtime – so a part-time employee working fewer than eight hours a day can build up overtime too. This carries a risk, however. If a part-time employee is deployed as a full-time employee over several years without any way of balancing it out, the employment contract can change tacitly. Legally it is then assumed that the additional work has been agreed – part-time turns into full-time.

If at a later point you no longer require as much overtime and want to return to the originally agreed hours, the employee has to consent to that.

Further exceptions

Employees who raise, care for or look after the people entrusted to them at home, as well as employees working in the liturgical sphere of the churches or in religious communities, are also exempt from the ArbZG. Separate rules apply to them.

Overtime in a mini-job

Overtime is, as with part-time work, in principle permitted, as are negative hours. Because the upper limit of €603 a month (as of 2026) is derived from the annual limit of €7,236, a few hours of overtime can be worked without concern. It is just that in this case overtime cannot simply be paid out. It has to be balanced out within the year so that the limit of €7,236 is not exceeded.

You can read more about mini-jobs here.

Overtime and trust-based working hours - how does that work? 

Trust-based working hours rest on mutual trust: traditionally working hours are not recorded and employers trust that employees stick to their contractual working hours. In this case, though, it is also difficult to establish overtime. Even so, employers are legally obliged to document their employees' overtime. So as soon as an employee works more than the contractually agreed hours, the employer has to be informed and the hours documented.

How the overtime is handled - that is, whether it is paid out or balanced out - is set by contract.

May the employer require overtime?

The basic rule is: if the employment contract or collective agreement contains an appropriate clause, you may require overtime. It has to be reasonable for the employees, though. So before ordering overtime you have to take into account

• the employee's personal situation,
• the operational need,
• the general principle of equal treatment.

In addition, the works council has to approve the ordered overtime. If the works council is not involved in the decision, the employee can refuse to work overtime.

In emergencies, where unforeseen events such as a burst water pipe put the business at risk, you can also require overtime without it being set out in the contract. Even in that case you have to observe the maximum working time of ten hours.

From 10 hours of overtime, or 50 hours in the week (with a 40-hour week), employees may refuse further overtime. This must not lead to any disadvantage – which means you cannot dismiss the employee concerned because of their refusal.

Is unpaid overtime permitted?

900,000 employees worked unpaid additional hours in 2021. This is only permitted if the employment contract or collective agreement provides for it – otherwise the overtime has to be balanced out with comp time or with salary.

Lump-sum overtime

In practice, overtime that arises is often covered as a lump sum by the wage or salary. Whether that is legally valid depends on the wording, however. As an employer you may not require unpaid overtime without any time limit. Clauses such as “any over- and additional work that may become necessary is covered by the gross remuneration to be paid” are unlawful, because the employee does not know what they are letting themselves in for. So if you want to cover overtime as a lump sum, you have to describe clearly in the employment contract when how many hours are to be worked. These two options are conceivable:

1. 10 per cent of weekly working time is covered as a lump sum for overtime.
2. A specific number of hours per month is covered as a lump sum for overtime.

In both cases the overtime is retained for a minimum period of three monthsand does not expire.

Services of a higher nature and senior executives

With so-called “services of a higher nature”, unpaid overtime is customary. These are jobs in which there is a special relationship of trust between the person providing the service and the person receiving it. Doctors, tax advisors or lawyers are among them. In these professions paying out overtime is not customary – especially above a certain salary level. Even in these cases, though, something different can be agreed or set out in a collective agreement.

The same applies to senior executives. This covers people who …

• … hold power of procuration.
• … can dismiss or hire other employees themselves.
• … are responsible for the survival and development of the company, and take their decisions largely independently or influence them significantly.

Top earners

Employees who earn significantly more than average and therefore exceed the income threshold for statutory pension insurance contributions do not receive any overtime payment. In 2019 this significantly higher remuneration stood at €80,400 gross annual income in western Germany and €73,800 in eastern Germany. Top earners usually also include the people who provide a service of a higher nature and/or run a company.

How is overtime paid out?

If the exceptions for unpaid overtime do not apply, you have to compensate the extra work. There are two ways of doing this: compensating overtime with pay or with time off.

Compensating overtime with payment

There is no explicit statutory rule on paying out overtime. So here too it is collective agreements or works agreements that determine how overtime is compensated. Common approaches are:

• Overtime premiums (for example 25 per cent on normal working days, 50 per cent on Sundays and public holidays) or a sliding scale based on the number of overtime hours worked
• Covering overtime with the salary

Night work has to be appropriately compensated with days off or with a premium on top of the wage. The premium has to match the greater strain that employees experience through night work. 25 per cent is customary.

Reducing overtime through comp time

Instead of paying out the overtime, you can also let your employees take it off, that is grant them paid days off. That way your employees can recover better, which boosts their productivity and motivation. To be legally valid, comp time also has to be set out in the contract. If such a rule exists but employees will not be able to reduce their overtime through time off within the next six months, they may refuse it.

When may employees take time off?

When overtime builds up, employees may not simply take a day off themselves. Within the statutory deadlines, you as the employer decide when overtime is reduced. In doing so you should take the employee's interests into account. Ultimately the decision rests with the employer – so you can, for example, send your employees home in quiet periods. Some contracts do provide, however, that employees may choose their days off themselves.

With flextime accounts too, it is usually the employees who decide when they want to balance out their overtime. Lifetime working accounts are subject to yet another set of rules. Employees on this working time model pay their overtime into the time account in order to leave working life earlier. They therefore do not have to reduce their overtime within the set period.

How can overtime be recorded?

To compensate overtime with salary or time off, employees have to prove …

• … when and to what extent overtime was worked.
• … that the employer ordered or approved it.

For that, all overtime has to be documented carefully. Employers are obliged to comply with the ArbZG and are liable for breaches of the maximum working time. Even now they have to record working time that goes beyond the number of hours permitted per day. Digital time tracking can help not only to record the overtime, but to capture the entire daily working time precisely. That way the facts are on the table for both sides at all times – including in the event of a court dispute.

When does overtime expire?

In general, overtime becomes time-barred on 31 December of the third year. Shorter arrangements can be included in the employment contract or collective agreement, however. The minimum period is three months.

Overtime also has to be reduced when employment is terminated. Whether it is compensated with salary or time off depends on the contract in question. If that does not provide a specific rule, the parties have to reach agreement.

The benefits of digital overtime tracking

Reliability

Unlike time tracking on timesheets, software records the start and end of daily working time and all breaks to the minute. That makes overtime visible straight away.

Legal compliance

The European Court of Justice ruling on time tracking obliged the member states to pass laws on time tracking for employees. So the obligation to track time is coming soon – and with software you are already prepared for the future.

Transparency

With digital time tracking you can store work schedules and target hours for every employee. The hours actually worked are updated continuously and can be viewed by both sides at any time. All the required data is also always available for inspections by the supervisory authorities.

Relief

Are you already dreading the next time you have to calculate additional work and overtime? Typing it manually into Excel is time-consuming and error-prone. You can connect our digital time tracking system clockin directly to your payroll accounting through integrations and automate the time drains in administration.

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