anabin and your Moroccan degree in Germany: what is free, and what the 208 euro step really is

anabin is a free lookup, not an application

anabin is a public database run by the Zentralstelle für ausländisches Bildungswesen (ZAB), the office of the German Kultusministerkonferenz responsible for foreign qualifications. Consulting it is free, with no account and no documents to send. You go there to read information: you file nothing, and nobody replies to you.

That is the first misunderstanding to clear. anabin issues no document at all: no certificate, no case number, nothing bearing your name. The phrase I got my anabin has no administrative meaning, and anyone charging you to do your anabin is selling access to a public page you can open yourself in three minutes.

The same body, the ZAB, does issue real documents, paid for and clearly separate: the Zeugnisbewertung for a higher education degree, and the DAB for a vocational qualification. These are two distinct procedures with their own fees and their own processing times, and neither of them is called anabin.

• Institutionen: the institutions, with their recognition status
• Hochschulabschlüsse: higher education qualifications
• Berufliche Qualifikationen: vocational qualifications
• Schulabschlüsse mit / ohne Hochschulzugang: school leaving certificates
• Bildungswesen: a description of each country education system

Two searches, not one: the institution, then the degree

The Hinweise zu ANABIN pages published by German missions abroad are explicit: the query must always cover both the degree and the institution. That second check is the one almost everybody forgets, and it is often what stalls a file that has already reached the counter.

On the institution side, anabin shows a status. H+ means the institution is recognised by its own state and considered comparable to a German Hochschule. H+/- is a conditional recognition: the institution awards some equivalent qualifications and some that are not, and anabin notes that further criteria then have to be met for recognition in Germany. H- marks an institution that is not recognised.

So H+/- is not a rejection. It is an invitation to open the institution record and check your exact programme, your graduation year and sometimes your campus. Two graduates of the same university can end up on opposite sides of that line, and it is the record that says so, not the status shown in the results list.

On the degree side, the wording you are looking for is entspricht, meaning corresponds, or gleichwertig, meaning equivalent, together with the German reference qualification. A degree can appear in the database without carrying any assessment: that is incomplete information, not a negative verdict.

Baccalauréat, DEUG, Licence, Master, OFPPT: where your Moroccan qualifications sit

The Moroccan baccalauréat is a school leaving certificate. It falls outside the remit of the ZAB, which assesses higher education only: foreign school qualifications are handled by the Länder, each under its own rules. Nobody will therefore issue a Zeugnisbewertung for your baccalauréat, and that is not a judgement on its value, simply a different remit.

For access to German universities, what the KMK assessment recommendations published inside anabin consistently report is this: the Moroccan baccalauréat on its own does not open direct access, it goes through a Studienkolleg and then the Feststellungsprüfung. With at least one successfully completed year of study at a recognised Moroccan university, access becomes direct but fachgebunden, that is, limited to your own field and related subjects. Reopen the Bildungswesen record for Morocco on the day you build your file: the number of years required is confirmed there, not in a Facebook group.

The DEUG is a first university cycle. It is not a Bachelor, and writing it as Bachelor on a CV or in a visa file is a false statement that turns against you before the employer and before the Ausländerbehörde alike. Call it what it is: a diploma of general university studies, first cycle.

A completed Licence or Master, by contrast, are genuine higher education qualifications and do fall within the scope of a Zeugnisbewertung. A DTS, a BTS or a specialised technician diploma from OFPPT or ISTA belong, as a general rule, to the vocational side, where the matching document is not the Zeugnisbewertung but the DAB.

Your institution is missing from anabin: that is not a rejection

anabin says so itself: the database makes no claim to completeness. It grows with the cases the ZAB processes for German authorities, so its coverage varies a great deal from country to country and is often thin for younger private institutions.

The German Federal Foreign Office puts the same point differently: if your degree or your institution is not listed in anabin, this does not mean your degree is not comparable. The route provided is the Zeugnisbewertung, which has your documents examined one by one rather than through a database entry.

Before concluding that something is missing, exhaust the spelling variants. A Moroccan university often carries three names, the Arabic one, the French one and a transliteration; some have been renamed; and schools are frequently registered under their parent body rather than their trading name.

• Try the French name, the Arabic transliteration and the acronym
• Test the former name if the institution has been renamed
• Search by city when the exact name returns nothing
• Open the record even when the institution is H+: the programme matters

Zeugnisbewertung at 208 euro, DAB at 150 euro: two documents, two scopes

The Zeugnisbewertung is the official assessment of a foreign higher education degree. The ZAB fee page states 208 euro; a duplicate of an assessment already issued costs 104 euro. The fee is set by the Land of Berlin and was last updated in June 2024. Payment must be made within three weeks, and processing starts only once the amount has been received in full; if you withdraw, up to 50 % of the fee may be retained.

The ZAB quotes around three months of processing in the standard procedure, two months when the assessment forms part of the accelerated skilled worker procedure, and two weeks when it is required for an EU Blue Card. Those times run from a complete file and a received payment, not from the date you sent it: that nuance is exactly what makes people miss an intake.

Its scope is narrow: completed higher education qualifications only. The ZAB assesses neither school certificates nor non academic vocational training, and it turns down programmes that were not completed. A baccalauréat therefore cannot be the subject of a Zeugnisbewertung. For a DTS, a BTS or an OFPPT diploma, the general rule is that they belong to the vocational side, and therefore to the DAB, but the right route is confirmed on the anabin record for your own qualification, which you should open before paying for anything.

For precisely those qualifications, on 19 June 2024 the ZAB opened the DAB, the Digitale Auskunft zur Berufsqualifikation, priced at 150 euro, a single price whether the outcome is positive or negative, with a payment deadline of three weeks, extendable on written request. It certifies three things: that the training was completed, that it is recognised in the country where it was taken, and that it corresponds to full time training of at least two years. It is open to third country nationals, so Moroccans can use it. And the ZAB writes plainly that it is not a recognition procedure: it supports a residence permit application and opens no profession.

Assessing a degree and having a profession recognised are two different things

For regulated professions, healthcare and teaching among them but far from alone, since crafts subject to the master craftsman requirement and the legal professions are covered too, professional recognition is a separate and mandatory procedure. The ZAB states it bluntly: for regulated professions you always need professional recognition of your qualification. A Zeugnisbewertung gives no access there, whatever its outcome.

The competent authority depends on the profession and on the Land where you intend to work: depending on the case a Bezirksregierung in North Rhine-Westphalia, a Regierungspräsidium, a Landesprüfungsamt or a Land health administration. The only reliable way to find it is the official portal anerkennung-in-deutschland.de, which you query with your profession and your Land. The procedure may impose a compensation measure: an adaptation period, an aptitude test or a knowledge examination. In other words, two people holding the same degree can be treated differently depending on whether they aim for Bavaria or the Rhineland.

If you are heading for an Ausbildung, the order of priorities shifts entirely. Your file rests first on the training contract and on a language certificate: B1 as a minimum, issued by a provider accepted for the visa (Goethe-Institut, telc, ÖSD, TestDaF, ECL; a certificate from a local private school counts for nothing) and less than twelve months old on the day you file. Proof of your means of subsistence is examined on top of that. And since the ZAB assesses neither school nor vocational qualifications, a Zeugnisbewertung simply cannot cover your baccalauréat. That is not an assurance that nobody will ever ask you for anything: the checklist in force on the day you file is what counts, and those lists change.

One last word on the APS, which keeps coming up in the groups: no Akademische Prüfstelle covers qualifications obtained in Morocco. The APS are services of the German embassies, run together with the DAAD, and they exist only for China, India and Vietnam; Mongolian applicants go through the APS in Beijing. The trigger is the country where the degree was obtained, not your nationality: a Moroccan who graduated in India or China is very much concerned.

On the Moroccan side: the apostille is worthless here, legalisation stays mandatory

Morocco has acceded to the Hague Apostille Convention. The German Federal Foreign Office makes clear, however, that Germany lodged an objection against the accession of several states, Morocco among them, with Tunisia and Algeria on the same list, so the convention does not apply between Germany and those countries. Your apostille remains valid elsewhere; towards Germany it produces no effect.

What remains required is classic legalisation: as a general rule two pre certifications by Moroccan authorities, the second one affixed by a branch of the Moroccan foreign ministry, in Rabat at 5 rue Tamsloht, or in Tangier, Nador, Agadir and Beni Mellal, then final legalisation by the consular section of the German embassy in Rabat. Which body issues the first pre certification depends on the type of document, and some papers, such as the electronic criminal record extract from the DGSN, do not need it at all. The embassy notice sets out the route for civil status records, court rulings and criminal record extracts; for an academic certificate, have the exact pre certifications confirmed by the consular section before you start queuing.

German legalisation costs 36 euro per document since 1 July 2025. Submission has been outsourced to TLScontact in Rabat since 1 January 2021, with a service fee on top and a mandatory appointment; documents are usually returned the next working day. The fee is set in euro but collected in dirhams at the official rate applied on the day of payment, with the TLScontact service fee on top. Ask for the exact amount in dirhams when you book your appointment.

One trap and one clarification to finish. A document created electronically, without an original signature and seal, cannot be legalised; a transcript simply downloaded and printed will be refused. As for the translation, the embassy advises ordering it after the Moroccan pre certifications; the German authority that will receive the document, however, will require one in any case, so having it drawn up beforehand can be useful. It is presented separately from the original, or bound by the translator stamp to a copy, and it must confirm that it was produced from the original.