Costs in Berlin
What a room in Berlin actually costs
German listings quote the Kaltmiete, the cold rent, which is the room and nothing else. Heating, water, electricity, internet and the broadcasting fee come on top, and moving in costs a deposit of up to three months plus furniture, because German flats are usually rented empty. Compare offers on one line: everything you pay in twelve months, divided by twelve.
The vocabulary you need before you read a single listing
Kaltmiete is the cold rent, the price of the space alone. Nebenkosten are the running costs of the building, heating, water, waste, caretaker, charged as a monthly advance. Kaltmiete plus Nebenkosten is the Warmmiete, and that is the number most people mean when they say rent.
Two things are missing even from the Warmmiete. Electricity is a contract you sign yourself with a provider of your choice, and internet is another, usually with a 24-month term and a one-off connection charge. On top of that comes the Rundfunkbeitrag, the public broadcasting fee of €18.36 a month as of 2026. It is charged once per flat rather than per person, so a shared flat splits it.
Once a year the landlord settles the actual building costs against the advances you paid. That settlement, the Nebenkostenabrechnung, can pay you back or ask for more, and the second happens often when the advance was set low. Budget for one expensive month a year.
Moving in is the expensive part
The deposit is capped at three cold rents by law (§ 551 BGB) and you have the right to pay it in three monthly instalments, whatever the contract says. You get it back when you leave, but it sits with the landlord until then, so you need the cash upfront.
An empty German flat is genuinely empty. Kitchens are frequently not included, which surprises almost everyone who moves here, and lamps and sometimes even floors can be missing. Furnishing a room from nothing is a real line in the budget, and so is the move itself.
One thing that is not a cost: since 2015 the agent's commission on a rental is paid by whoever hired the agent. If the landlord hired them, the landlord pays. Nobody may charge you a commission for a flat you found in a listing the landlord's agent placed.
The twelve-month comparison
Put both options in the same table and bring everything to a monthly figure.
- Cold rent, twelve times
- Nebenkosten advance, plus a realistic allowance for the annual settlement
- Electricity, your own contract
- Internet, your own contract, plus the connection fee spread over the term
- Rundfunkbeitrag, €18.36 a month, once per flat
- Furniture and the move, one-off but real
- Deposit: not a cost, but money you must have
What the numbers do not show
The second comparison is time. In Berlin the gap between signing next week and searching for three months is the gap between one move and two, and the interim sublet in between usually costs more per month than either option you were comparing.
The other hidden factor is what you have to produce. A landlord on the open market will ask for a Schufa credit report, payslips and sometimes a guarantor. If you have just arrived in Germany you have none of those, which is a separate problem with its own answers.