Ausbildung salary in MAD: what an apprentice in Germany really earns

How much does an Ausbildung pay, and how do you convert it into dirhams?

An Ausbildung contract sets a monthly wage, paid from the first day of training to the last. The legal minimum for the first training year is €724 per month in 2026; it was €682 in 2025. Note the word “first”: that floor only covers year one, and the wage then rises with every year of training. The figure actually observed across all trades is higher, at around €1,133 gross per month.

These are German amounts, in euros. We deliberately publish no conversion rate into dirhams: a rate moves every day, and a figure frozen into an article turns false without anyone noticing. To convert, take the day's rate from your bank or exchange office, and run the numbers again on the day you transfer.

The amount is not frozen for the whole training: the contract sets a wage for each training year. Before signing, read every line — one per training year, so two on a two-year contract and up to four on a three-and-a-half-year one — not only the first, which is always the lowest.

• Legal minimum, first training year, 2026: €724/month gross (€682 in 2025)
• Observed average across all trades: around €1,133/month gross
• Nursing, first year, with employers covered by the TVAöD-P / TVöD agreements (scale of 01.05.2026): €1,340 to €1,490 gross; outside those agreements the amount depends on the employer
• Threshold above which a Sperrkonto is in principle no longer required: €992 NET per month — the consulate assesses case by case
• Figures as of August 2026, to be re-checked every 1 January

Gross or net: the contract figure is not what lands in your account

The amount written in a German contract is a gross amount (Brutto). Before it reaches your account, social contributions are deducted — health, long-term care, pension and unemployment insurance — plus wage tax (Lohnsteuer), depending on the amount and on your tax class (Steuerklasse).

We will not hand you a ready-made percentage here. It depends on your health insurance fund, your family situation and the exact size of your wage. An invented figure would have you build a false budget, and that is precisely what pages promising “you will be left with X” are doing.

The honest calculation is done on your own contract: a German gross-to-net calculator, or simply your first payslip (Lohnabrechnung). One useful rule: below a certain annual income there is no wage tax at all — but that threshold changes every year, so ask for the current value.

A simple rule to avoid false comparisons: always compare gross with gross, or net with net. Putting a German gross figure next to a Moroccan take-home salary distorts the whole reasoning, and it is the most common mistake in the Facebook groups. It has a costlier variant, covered in the next section: comparing your contract's gross figure with a threshold that is itself a net one.

€992 net a month: the threshold that decides the Sperrkonto

There is one official figure. The German state assesses a foreign student's monthly need at €992, that is €11,904 a year: the sum a student must lock into a blocked account (Sperrkonto) before even filing the visa application. It is also the resource threshold used to assess an Ausbildung candidate's file.

Here is the trap, and it is a big one: those €992 are assessed on NET resources, meaning what is left after contributions — not on the gross figure written into the contract. A contract showing €1,133 gross therefore does not necessarily reach €992 net. No average, and no Facebook thread, can settle that on your behalf.

In practice: when net resources reach the threshold, the blocked account is in principle no longer required, the wage itself serving as proof of means; below it, a top-up is requested, either a Sperrkonto or a formal undertaking (Verpflichtungserklärung) signed by someone in Germany. Do not assume you are exempt because your contract shows a nearby figure: the consulate assesses each file individually, and nobody — neither we nor any agency — can guarantee its decision in advance.

The item that tips an apprentice's budget is rent. The same contract is not lived the same way in a large metropolis and in a mid-sized town. Accommodation offered by the training company changes the equation entirely — a question to raise during the interview, not after signing.

Why this page fixes no euro-dirham rate

A wage is measured where it is spent. €1,133 is not “worth” any amount of Moroccan purchasing power: it pays German rent, German health insurance, German transport. Converting helps you give your family a sense of scale, not build your day-to-day budget over there.

A second, very practical reason: the rate moves, transfer fees take another slice, and two conversions of the same figure always end up contradicting each other from one page to the next. So we publish every amount in its original currency — euros for Germany, dirhams for what is paid in Morocco — and point you to the day's rate.

Finally, an Ausbildung is not a job: it is paid training lasting two to three and a half years which ends, if you pass the final examination before the chamber of crafts or of commerce (HWK / IHK), with a vocational qualification recognised in Germany. The apprentice wage carries you through the training. Once the training is completed and a post follows, you are no longer paid as an apprentice — but neither the qualification nor the hiring is secured in advance.

The budget that really is paid in dirhams

Before the first German transfer arrives, everything is spent in Morocco. That is the budget to cost out seriously, because it falls entirely before any income.

In Morocco, filing the visa application goes through TLScontact in Rabat, with no alternative, and the national D visa fee is paid in euros. Also plan for your first month on site: a German wage is paid at the end of the month worked, whereas rent, deposit and municipal registration (Anmeldung) all land in the first days.

One amount that keeps coming up in discussions has no place in this start-up budget: the €411 for the fast-track skilled worker procedure (§ 81a AufenthG). That procedure is not requested by the candidate; the German company opens it with its own foreigners' authority, so after a contract has been signed. When it does happen, the €411 is owed by the candidate, unless the employer signs a written undertaking to cover it (Kostenübernahmeerklärung). It is a post-contract expense, not a departure cost — and it may never arise at all.

• German courses at the Goethe-Institut: around 3,000 MAD per level
• Goethe exam B1: 2,500 MAD · exam B2: 2,800 MAD
• National D visa: €75
• Filing the visa file: through TLScontact in Rabat, with no alternative
• Sworn translations, photos, travel to Rabat: to be costed against your own file

Before targeting a wage, check the occupation is open to you

A wage only matters if the training that pays it is open to you. In nursing, the full Pflegefachfrau or Pflegefachmann training requires a mittlerer Schulabschluss — the German intermediate school leaving certificate — or a recognised equivalent. It is not the Abitur that is asked for, contrary to what is repeated everywhere. In North Rhine-Westphalia a general administrative decision recognises the Moroccan baccalaureate at that level; in the other federal states it is examined case by case, and that is worth clarifying before applying rather than after.

Without that level, other routes remain legally open with no school diploma requirement at all: nursing assistance (Pflegefachassistenz), MFA and ZFA. Legally open does not mean every employer opens them: several practices and healthcare groups ask for the Mittlere Reife in their adverts even though no law requires it, and entry into the Pflegefachassistenz goes through an Eignungsprognose issued by the school and confirmed by the regional authority — it only becomes a federal entitlement on 1 January 2027.

Language level governs the rest, and two things are constantly confused. B1 is the minimum level required by law for the Ausbildung visa application. B2 in healthcare is not a visa condition: it is a requirement set by the schools and the employers, who impose it almost everywhere. In North Rhine-Westphalia, the only nursing door that opens below B2 is the Pflegefachassistenz, via the Eignungsprognose. If you want to know what your own profile can realistically aim for, the free assessment takes a few minutes.

The most common miscalculations

These mistakes come up in almost every discussion. They are expensive because they lead people to build a budget, and sometimes a whole plan, on a figure that does not exist.

The amounts quoted in this guide are as of August 2026 and are re-checked every 1 January; cross-check them against the official sources: BIBB for apprenticeship pay, the German embassy in Rabat and Make-it-in-Germany for the resource threshold and visa fees, the Goethe-Institut Morocco for exam prices. This guide is maintained by Issam, founder of DeinWeg. We do not promise a contract, a visa or an admission: our commitment is an obligation of means.

• Treating the first-year legal minimum as a forecast for the whole training
• Comparing a German gross figure with a Moroccan take-home salary
• Setting your contract's gross figure against the €992 threshold, which is a NET one
• Applying the nursing range (€1,340 to €1,490) to an employer not covered by TVAöD-P / TVöD
• Believing an advert promising an unusually high apprentice wage — a clear scam signal
• Confusing Ausbildung with skilled work: the EU Blue Card thresholds (€48,300 in 2025, €50,700 in 2026) do not apply to an apprentice