Germany Per Diem Rates: the List for Excel

Germany's per diem rates for 2026: the list for expense reports

Domestic business trips in Germany use nine fixed rates: three meal allowances based on how long you're away, two deduction percentages for meals the employer provides, two overnight allowances, and two mileage rates. All nine are listed in the table below and available as a CSV file for Excel, each with its legal basis and validity.

If you're maintaining this list by hand in a spreadsheet, you know the risk: the amounts rarely change, but when they do, most recently in 2020 and 2024, the old number stays in the cell until someone notices. This article shows the current list, where it comes from, and how to keep it current automatically through domestic travel expenses in the Quellenkontor API.

This list covers domestic trips only. Business trips abroad use a separate country-by-country table from Germany's Federal Ministry of Finance, with its own rates per destination, which Quellenkontor doesn't cover yet. More on that below.

All rates at a glance

Source: Values from the API for October 2026, based on § 9(1) and (4a) EStG and § 5 BRKG (Federal Travel Expenses Act), the professional-driver rate last changed by the 2024 Growth Opportunities Act (Wachstumschancengesetz) of March 27, 2024

Full day, travel day, or more than 8 hours: which rate applies

Which rate applies depends on how long you're away on a given calendar day. A full calendar day away from home and your first place of work (erste Tätigkeitsstätte) counts as €28.00. The arrival and departure day of a multi-day trip with an overnight stay each count as €14.00, regardless of the actual number of hours away on those two days. A day without an overnight stay but with more than eight hours away uses the same rate as a travel day: €14.00 (§ 9(4a) sentence 3 EStG).

This only applies for the first three months at the same external workplace (§ 9(4a) sentence 6 EStG). Under administrative guidance, work only counts as longer-term once that same location is visited on at least three days a week. A break of at least four weeks resets the clock (§ 9(4a) sentence 7 EStG).

These rates only apply to business trips, not to the daily commute to your first place of work. That's covered instead by the commuting allowance (Entfernungspauschale), with its own rate per kilometer of one-way distance.

Calculating the deduction for provided meals

If the employer, or someone acting on its behalf, provides a meal on the trip, that day's rate goes down. A provided breakfast reduces it by 20% of the full-day rate, a provided lunch or dinner by 40% each, regardless of which rate actually applies that day. The deduction never exceeds the rate that applies for that day (§ 9(4a) sentence 8 EStG).

If the employee pays something toward the meal, that payment reduces the deduction (§ 9(4a) sentence 10 EStG). In Excel, add the deduction as its own column: the day's rate times the deduction percentage, =B2*20% for a breakfast, =B2*40% for each lunch or dinner.

On a day with breakfast, lunch, and dinner all provided, the percentages would add up to more than 100% on paper. Even then, the deduction stops at that day's full rate, never more.

Overnight stays and mileage: what else belongs in the report

• The no-receipt overnight allowance only applies to tax-free reimbursement by the employer, €20.00 per night. Your own tax return only counts actual, documented costs.
• Professional drivers who sleep in the employer's vehicle get their own rate, €9.00 per calendar day since January 1, 2024, raised retroactively by the Growth Opportunities Act (Wachstumschancengesetz) of March 27, 2024. From 2020 through 2023 it was €8.00.
• Accommodation costs at a workplace that isn't your first one are only deductible or tax-free reimbursable up to €1,000 a month once you pass 48 months there, separate from the no-receipt allowance (§ 9(1) sentence 3 no. 5a sentence 4 EStG).
• Business trips by car use a mileage rate of €0.30, other motor vehicles such as a motorcycle use €0.20, both unchanged since 2015, unlike the meal allowances.
• The mileage rate applies per kilometer actually driven on the business trip, not to the daily commute (§ 9(1) sentence 3 no. 4a EStG).

Why a hand-maintained Excel list eventually breaks

The amounts in this list rarely change, but not never. Since the current structure took effect in 2014, the three meal rates went up once, on January 1, 2020, and the professional-driver rate went up a second time, on January 1, 2024, announced only in March that same year. Once you've typed these numbers into a spreadsheet, you have to notice every change yourself and fix it by hand.

Here's the concrete version: in 2019, the full-day rate was still €24.00; since 2020 it's €28.00. An expense report still using the old number in 2026 shortchanges employees, without anyone in payroll noticing. That's the risk built into every hand-maintained list.

For a small team with only a handful of trips a year, a fixed spreadsheet is often still the most practical option, more on that below. For payroll software, a travel-expense tool used by many people, or a practice serving multiple clients, a self-updating source is worth the switch.

Request with curl: the current list

curl "https://api.quellenkontor.dev/v1/hr/reisekosten-inland?datum=2026-10-01" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $QK_KEY"

Excerpt of the response

{
  "datensatz": "reisekosten-inland",
  "datum": "2026-10-01",
  "werte": {
    "verpflegung_24_stunden": 28,
    "verpflegung_an_abreisetag": 14,
    "verpflegung_ueber_8_stunden": 14,
    "kuerzung_fruehstueck_prozent": 20,
    "kuerzung_mittag_abend_prozent": 40,
    "uebernachtung_pauschale_arbeitgeber": 20,
    "uebernachtung_berufskraftfahrer": 9,
    "kilometer_pkw": 0.3,
    "kilometer_andere_kfz": 0.2
  }
}

Getting the list into Excel automatically: CSV instead of copy-paste

For Excel, you don't need one call per date. The /verlauf endpoint for reisekosten-inland returns every stage of all nine rates since 2015 in a single response, and format=csv turns that into a file you can open directly.

Each row lists the component, name, group, unit, start date, end date, value, legal basis, source, and a note, so you get both the old and the new number for every change. How a CSV response is structured in general is explained under CSV export.

With trennzeichen=semikolon, the file opens correctly in a German-locale Excel with one double-click, instead of dumping every value into a single column. That variant, built specifically for Excel, is explained on the CSV for Excel page.

For a three-day trip with an overnight stay, you'd set up three rows: the arrival day, one or more full days in between, and the departure day. With an arrival and a departure day at €14.00 each and one full day in between at €28.00, you'd total them in Excel with =SUM(B2:B4). We're deliberately not printing a fixed total here, since it depends on the exact number of full days and any deductions.

Downloading the whole list as CSV

curl "https://api.quellenkontor.dev/v1/hr/reisekosten-inland/verlauf?format=csv&trennzeichen=semikolon" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $QK_KEY" \
  -o verpflegungsmehraufwand.csv

Comparing the old and new rate with the Python SDK

import os
from quellenkontor import Quellenkontor

qk = Quellenkontor(api_key=os.environ["QK_KEY"])
for datum in ("2019-12-31", "2026-10-01"):
    r = qk.hr.reisekosten_inland(datum=datum)
    print(datum, r["werte"]["verpflegung_24_stunden"])

# 2019-12-31 24
# 2026-10-01 28

When a spreadsheet is enough, and when the API pays off

If you're a small business with a handful of trips a year, a fixed spreadsheet with the current rates is usually enough. Someone checks once a year whether anything changed and updates the cells, that's a manageable amount of work.

With many travelers, your own payroll or travel-expense software, or a practice serving multiple clients, that same task gets heavier, because it multiplies and is easy to forget. There, a single API call or the CSV import replaces the manual upkeep.

One gap remains: Quellenkontor doesn't currently cover the per diem rates for business trips abroad (Auslandstagegelder), which use their own rates per country; Germany's annual Federal Ministry of Finance table still applies there (§ 9(4a) sentence 5 EStG). For the domestic list, try it yourself with a free key: sign up for free.

Checklist before your next expense report

• Check the trip date against the current list, not a spreadsheet saved from last year.
• On multi-day trips, set the arrival and departure days apart from the full days in between.
• Log provided meals individually and subtract the matching deduction per meal, never more than the day's rate.
• Track the three-month rule at the same external workplace, including any breaks that might reset it.
• For trips abroad, use the separate Federal Ministry of Finance country table instead of the domestic rates.