You can get German pension contributions back only in some cases. The usual route for someone leaving is this: you aren't a German, EU, EEA, Swiss or British citizen, you live outside the EU and the UK, you can't pay into the German system voluntarily from where you now live, and 24 months have passed since your last compulsory contribution. Then the Deutsche Rentenversicherung refunds the share you paid yourself, usually half of the total, and every claim from those years ends. Germans and EU, EEA, Swiss and British citizens get no refund for leaving; for them it opens only at pension age, with less than five years in the system.
1. The rule in outline
The refund (Beitragserstattung) is set out in § 210 SGB VI. For someone who has left Germany, the route that matters is the first one in the law: contributions are refunded on application to an insured person who is no longer compulsorily insured and has no right to insure voluntarily. Both halves count. Leaving your job and the country ends the compulsory insurance; whether you may still pay in voluntarily depends on your citizenship and where you now live (section 2).
A second route is open to everyone, Germans included: a person who reaches the regular pension age without the five years of contributions and credits a pension needs (§ 50 SGB VI) can ask for a refund then. There are also routes for civil servants and members of professional pension schemes, and for widows, widowers and orphans when the person who died hadn't reached five years. This guide is about the first two.
The refund covers the state pension (gesetzliche Rentenversicherung) only. A workplace pension (betriebliche Altersversorgung) and a private contract, such as a Riester pension, follow their own rules and are not part of it.
2. Who can ask: citizenship and where you live
Anyone living in Germany who isn't compulsorily insured may pay in voluntarily, and Germans may do so wherever they live (§ 7 SGB VI). That right is what rules a refund out, so where you are and which passport you hold decide the question. The Deutsche Rentenversicherung describes it this way in its own leaflets:
- Germans. No refund on leaving, because a German can always pay in voluntarily. Only the pension-age route is open. Holding German citizenship next to another one counts as German.
- EU, EEA, Swiss and British citizens. Only at pension age, and only with fewer than 60 months of contributions, with periods in the other member states counted in (DRV, Arbeit und Rente in Europa). Your German years stay in your account and count towards a pension instead.
- Everyone else, moving to an EU country or the UK. Generally no refund while you live there; the same leaflet limits it to citizens of other countries living outside the EU and the UK.
- Everyone else, moving anywhere else. A refund is possible after the 24 months, unless a social security agreement between Germany and your country gives you the right to pay in voluntarily. The German–US agreement is an example: a US citizen living in the US may pay voluntary contributions once they have 60 months of German contributions, so a refund is possible below 60 months and not above (DRV, Arbeit und Rente in Deutschland und in den USA). Each agreement says something different. Turkish citizens have their own application form.
Because the rules turn on the agreement with one country and on your own dates, ask the Deutsche Rentenversicherung before you count on a refund. Its advice is free, and it will say whether one is possible in your case.
3. The 24 months, and what else blocks a refund
A refund is paid only once 24 calendar months have passed since your compulsory insurance ended, and only if you haven't become compulsorily insured again in the meantime (§ 210(2) SGB VI). If you left a job in Germany at the end of March 2027, the earliest month for a refund is April 2029. Taking a job in an EU country or in a country with a social security agreement can count like German insurance here, and then there is no refund either.
Other things stop or shrink it:
- A benefit already paid. If the pension insurance has paid you something, such as medical rehabilitation, only the contributions paid after it can be refunded (§ 210(5) SGB VI).
- A foreign pension that counts your German years. If another country already pays you a pension only because your German periods were added to reach its minimum, the German contributions can't be refunded.
- All or nothing. The application covers every refundable contribution in the account; you can't pick some years and keep others (§ 210(6) SGB VI).
- Five years already reached, for some. The pension-age route is closed once you have five years, and years raising a child count towards them (§ 56 SGB VI). For a citizen of a country outside the EU living outside the EU and the UK, without a right to pay in, the refund on leaving stays possible even with five years or more.
4. What you get back
Contributions are refunded in the amount you carried yourself (§ 210(3) SGB VI):
- As an employee, your half. The contribution is 18.6 % of gross pay in 2026, split equally with your employer, so you get back 9.3 % of the pay it was charged on. The employer's half stays in the system.
- As a self-employed person, or for voluntary contributions, half of what you paid, even though you paid all of it.
- Nothing for periods others paid for, such as months on unemployment benefit or the credits for raising a child.
- The euros paid in, with nothing added for interest or inflation.
In Germany the refund is free of income tax (§ 3 no. 3(b) EStG). The country you live in by then may see it differently; its own rules decide.
With the refund, your insurance relationship ends. Every claim from the time before it is gone, the credits you never paid for too, and they don't come back if you later return to Germany and start paying in again (§ 210(6) SGB VI).
5. A refund now or a pension later
Where a refund is open to you, it is a real choice, and each side has something going for it.
- The refund puts a known sum in your hands now, free of German tax, with nothing left to manage across borders. It ends every claim for good, survivors' pensions included.
- Leaving the years in keeps a lifelong pension from pension age, which rises with the yearly pension adjustments and can pass to a surviving spouse. A German pension is paid abroad too (§ 110 SGB VI), though for a citizen of a country outside the EU living outside the EU and the agreement countries, it is worked out from the contribution years, with credited periods counted only in part (§§ 113, 114 SGB VI). It needs five years; periods in the EU and in agreement countries can be added to reach them.
- Under five years, with no agreement to add years from elsewhere, there is no pension to keep unless you come back and pay in again. The choice is then mostly one of timing: the same refund now, or at pension age.
A worked example, in round numbers. Someone earned €4,000 a month gross for six years in Germany. Their half of the contribution was 9.3 %, €372 a month, so a refund comes to about €26,800. A year's pay of €48,000 against the 2026 average of €51,944 (§ 3 SVBezGrV 2026) earns about 0.92 pension points, so six years earn about 5.5. At today's value of €42.52 a point (from 1 July 2026), that is about €235 a month from pension age, before tax and health insurance. The refund equals roughly nine and a half years of that pension, before any yearly rises. Treat this only as the method: real pay changes year to year, the point value moves every July, and how the pension is taxed abroad depends on where you live. The Deutsche Rentenversicherung will run a test calculation (Probeberechnung) on your own account if you ask.
6. Applying
There is no deadline, but the 24 months have to have passed first. From abroad, use form V0901, the bilingual application for people living outside Germany (in German and English, or German and French), from the Deutsche Rentenversicherung's refund forms; form V0900 is for someone still living in Germany. Have ready:
- Your pension insurance number (Rentenversicherungsnummer), from any payslip or letter from the Deutsche Rentenversicherung;
- officially certified proof of your citizenship, or a confirmation of it from an authority abroad, as the form asks;
- the payment declaration in the form, with the account abroad the refund should go to;
- your work history in other countries, since periods abroad can change the answer.
Send it to the pension insurance body that keeps your account (its name is on its letters). The Deutsche Rentenversicherung's leaflet for the US also names German embassies and consulates as a place to hand it in. Before you send it, look over your account statement, so that every year you worked is on it.
7. When a financial planner can help
Whether to take the refund is rarely a question on its own. It sits next to a workplace pension that may move with you or stay behind, savings and investments that are taxed differently once you leave, and a plan for retirement in another country. A financial planner who works in English can set the options side by side with your own numbers and the rules of the country you're moving to. They agree their fee with you before they start. Ask for a financial planner who works in English. If you're staying after all, our pension gap guide shows what the German years add up to.
Primary sources checked on 6 November 2026: the statutes and official pages linked above.