Overtime in Germany: What rights do expat employees have?

Overtime in Germany can be confusing when your contract says 40 hours but long days appear normal in your team. German labour law separates three questions:

1. How long may you work?

2. Was your employer entitled to require extra work?

3. Must those hours be paid or balanced with time off?

This guide explains the rules in plan English and shows you how to document your time and raise concerns without having to master German legal vocabulary first.

You will encounter terms such as Überstunden (hours above your contractual working time), Mehrarbeit (a term whose meaning depends on the specific rule), Freizeitausgleich (compensatory time off) and Vertrauensarbeitszeit (trust-based working time).

The label used by your company is less important than the actual hours, the applicable agreement and the statutory safety limits.

What counts as overtime in Germany?

In everyday employment practice, overtime usually means work above the hours you agreed in your employment contract. If your contract specifies 40 hours per week, work above that level may be overtime even though the statutory working-time ceiling has not yet been exceeded.

This distinction matters because two employees in the same office can reach “overtime” at different points.

One may have a 40-hour full-time contract, while another has agreed 32 hours. Both remain protected by the statutory ceiling, but their contractual overtime starts at different thresholds. Your contract may also distribute hours by day, week or another reference period.

Read the working-time clause together with any flexitime or time-account rules instead of looking only at the monthly salary. The fact that a time-account balance is still within a technical limit does not, by itself, answer whether the hours were properly required or how they must eventually be settled.

What maximum working-time limits apply in Germany?

The statutory baseline is eight hours per working day, with an extension to ten hours permitted only if the average is reduced again within the required period. The average of eight hours per working day must be restored within six calendar months or 24 weeks.

Recorded Breaks and Actual Working Time

A break is not just an automatic deduction in a time-tracking tool.

The statutory rest breaks must be determined in advance, and you must genuinely be able to stop working.

If you remain responsible for a hotline, must monitor incoming messages or are repeatedly called back to your desk, the recorded break may not reflect what happened.

The same practical point applies after the working day: late calls and required evening messages can interfere with the eleven-hour rest period.

Record the actual interruption and tell your employer when the official entry does not match reality. Do not simply delete working time to make the system appear compliant.

Can your employer require you to work overtime?

Your employer normally needs a valid basis for requiring overtime, such as your employment contract, a collective agreement or a works agreement. The general right to give instructions is not an unlimited power to extend your agreed working hours.

A duty to help may arise in a genuine and unforeseeable emergency. A foreseeable staff shortage or repeatedly unrealistic project planning is not automatically such an emergency. Even a contractually valid overtime instruction must respect the statutory maximum working time, breaks and rest periods.

Extra work performed without an express instruction is not automatically unpaid. The issue may be whether a manager approved it, knowingly tolerated further overtime or assigned work that could not objectively be completed within normal hours.

By contrast, staying late solely because you personally prefer to refine work or get ahead is harder to attribute to the employer.

Presence in the office, being logged into a laptop or appearing online in a collaboration tool does not alone establish that every minute was required work. Focus your record on assigned tasks and management knowledge. That context is often more valuable than a long list containing only arrival and departure times.

When does overtime have to be paid?

Overtime must be compensated where a valid payment basis exists and the additional work can be attributed to the employer. An express term in an employment or collective agreement is the clearest case. Without one, section 612(1) BGB may apply if payment could objectively be expected in the circumstances.

An objective expectation of extra pay does not exist in every role. The assessment can differ for highly paid employees performing services of a particularly senior nature. The pension-insurance contribution ceiling has been used as one indicator in this pay analysis, but it is not an exemption from the Working Hours Act.

Is an “all overtime is included” clause legally valid?

An unlimited all-inclusive clause in standard employment terms may be invalid if you cannot tell how many extra hours the salary is supposed to cover. A clause that clearly states a limited number of included hours is not invalid merely because it covers overtime.

How should you document overtime?

For each working day, record your start time, end time, actual breaks, work location and the reason extra work was necessary. Also note who ordered, approved or knowingly accepted the overtime and when that happened.

Do not move confidential business, client or employee data into a private system. A factual time log is usually more appropriate than copying detailed project content. Company data must not be exported without authorisation.

Use the employer's official system consistently, but review the entries while events are still fresh.

If a tool automatically inserts breaks, rounds times or prevents entries beyond a certain limit, make a contemporaneous note and report the discrepancy through the available process. Do not wait until months of records have accumulated.

A short monthly check of your target hours, actual hours, approved overtime and time-off balance can reveal errors early.

When you correct an entry, keep the reason factual: for example, “client call from 18:10 to 18:35 requested by the project lead.” This connects the time to work without copying confidential content.

Which special rules apply at night, on Sundays and to protected groups?

Night work, Sunday and public-holiday work, and work by specially protected employees are subject to additional rules. These rules may supplement the ArbZG or replace parts of its general framework.

What should you do if overtime remains unpaid?

Secure your records, identify the applicable rules and then assert the specific hours and requested compensation in a verifiable form. Asking for clarity about your contractual time is not unprofessional; it is a normal way to protect your rights.

If you first want to discuss the issue rather than send a formal claim, prepare a short overview: the period concerned, the total balance, two or three representative examples and the solution you are requesting.

Avoid framing the conversation as a debate about who works hardest.

A useful opening is: “My contract provides for 40 hours per week, and my records show an additional 27 hours over the last two months. I would like to agree how these hours will be recorded and settled going forward.”

After the meeting, send a calm summary by email. This gives everyone a shared reference point and helps prevent misunderstandings caused by language or different workplace expectations.

Key takeaway

Overtime in Germany becomes easier to manage when you separate working-time protection, the power to order overtime and the right to compensation.

Eight hours per working day is the statutory baseline, while longer days require averaging. Payment or time off depends on the applicable legal basis and whether the work can be attributed to the employer. Consistent records and an early check of exclusion periods preserve your options.