$185,000 in Austin against €95,000 in Berlin, line by line

By Skyler Bissell · August 28, 2026 · 11 min read

A $185,000 offer in Austin leaves a single renter $103,602 a year after tax, rent and every other bill. A €95,000 offer in Berlin leaves the same person €31,703, which is $36,736 at the current exchange rate. That is the whole answer for this pair, and the rest of this page is the working, line by line, so you can see which lines did the damage and which ones argued the other way.

The question people type is broader than one pair, and the method is the same for any pair: price both offers as the life they buy, in the currency they are paid in, and compare what survives. The pair chosen here is deliberately the hardest case a European offer can face. Texas levies no state income tax, Austin rents are moderate for a big American city, and the Berlin offer is a respectable mid-to-senior package rather than a lowball. If Berlin cannot win this one on cash, and it cannot, the interesting question becomes what it would take.

The two offers, and what sits under them

One person, no children, renting one bedroom, flying home once a year, with no voluntary retirement contribution on either side so that neither column carries a deferral the other lacks. The Austin offer is $185,000. The Berlin offer is €95,000, which a currency converter turns into $110,081 and which the rest of this page will show is worth rather less than that in Austin terms and rather more than it looks in Berlin terms.

Under the Austin salary sit the 2026 federal income tax schedule, Social Security and Medicare, a health plan whose worker share and out-of-pocket costs the engine prices from KFF survey data, and a one-bedroom at Austin's median asking rent. Under the Berlin salary sit the German income tax tariff, the solidarity surcharge, four branches of social insurance with their contribution ceilings, and a one-bedroom at Berlin's median asking rent. Healthcare in Berlin is inside the payroll deduction, which is why the two tax rates cannot be compared as printed. The ledger puts both on one basis.

Line by line, with the gap in dollars

cityparity engine figures, 2026. One person, no children, renting one bedroom at each city's median asking rent, no voluntary retirement contribution, one trip home a year, no church tax. The last column converts the Berlin figure to dollars at the exchange rate in the current build and subtracts it from the Austin figure, so a positive number on a cost line means Austin pays more for that line. US federal figures rest on the IRS inflation adjustments for tax year 2026; the Texas state line is zero because Texas levies no individual income tax. German figures rest on the tariff in § 32a EStG and the 2026 contribution ceilings from the Bundesregierung.

Three lines carry the story. The first is the tax row, and it is the one everybody reads wrong. Berlin takes 42.5% of the salary and Austin takes 25.5%, a seventeen-point difference in rate, yet the two bills in dollars are $47,256 and $46,790, within $465 of each other. The rate is high in Berlin because the salary is small; the bill is what you pay, and the bills are nearly equal. Anyone who tells you the German tax rate is what makes the Berlin offer worse has the arithmetic backwards. It is the salary.

The second is take-home, where the gap opens: $74,454. The third is everything below take-home, and this is where the cheaper-city argument is supposed to live. It barely does. Rent in Berlin is €15,354 against Austin's $21,384, a difference of $3,593. Healthcare paid out of pocket is €610 in Berlin, because the cover is inside the payroll deduction already counted, against $3,844 in Austin. Food and transit move small amounts in opposite directions. Add up every line below take-home and Berlin claws back $7,587 of a $74,454 take-home gap. A cheaper city cannot close a gap that size with a rent difference that size. Nothing in Berlin's cost of living was ever going to.

The offer that would match

Run the engine the other way and ask what Berlin salary leaves the same $103,602 the Austin offer leaves. The answer is €199,363, or $231,011 in dollars, more than double the offer on the table. That number is not a prediction of what any Berlin employer will pay a single engineer; it is the salary the Austin life costs in Berlin, and the Berlin market for this role tops out far below it.

The more useful direction is the reverse. The Austin salary that leaves exactly what the €95,000 Berlin offer leaves is $88,200. That is the sentence to carry into the decision: €95,000 in Berlin is an $88,200 life in Austin. If you would turn down $88,200 to stay in Texas, you have your answer on cash. If a $88,200 life in a city you want to live in is enough, the salary was never the obstacle. The break-even salary explains why that floor lands where it does, and negotiating a relocation salary covers how to use it without ever mentioning the calculator.

Austin was chosen because it is the hardest US city for a European offer to beat, and the choice matters. The same $185,000 leaves $87,372 in Seattle, $63,346 in San Francisco and $53,159 in New York, where state and city income tax and a $49,465 one-bedroom rent take turns at it. The Berlin offer still trails all four, but against New York the gap is $16,423 against Austin's $66,866, and that is before the leave.

The same two offers, lived by a family of four

Now read the identical pair of offers as a household: one earner, a partner not working, two children aged three and six, and three bedrooms. Every line that was quiet above starts to move.

Same two offers, now for a household of four: one earner, a partner not in work, children aged 3 and 6 in full-time care, three bedrooms at each city's median asking rent, one trip home for the family, no voluntary retirement contribution. Transit, food and everyday spending are priced for the household and omitted from the table for space; they are inside the net cash row. The Austin child benefit is the federal child tax credit; the Berlin figure is Kindergeld at €259 a month per child, per the Familienportal of the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs. Austin childcare prices come from the US Department of Labor Women's Bureau, National Database of Childcare Prices.

The gap falls from $66,866 to $39,921, and every part of that $66,866 to $39,921 move has a name. Berlin's tax bill falls to €31,140 under Ehegattensplitting, which assesses a married couple on half the joint income and doubles it, and the solidarity surcharge vanishes below its threshold. Austin's bill falls too, to $37,162, on the married brackets and the child tax credit, so the tax row does less than a reader would guess. The work is done below it. Two children in full-time care cost $18,300 a year in Austin and €1,200 in Berlin, where the public Kita charges for meals and little else. A family health plan costs the household $12,885 out of pocket in Austin and €1,340 in Berlin. And the German state pays €6,216 of Kindergeld into the account against a $4,400 credit from the IRS.

That is the family swing, and on this pair it is worth $28,242 a year on childcare and healthcare alone. It is also not enough. The Austin household still keeps $39,921 more, because $185,000 against €95,000 is a large enough starting gap that even a safety net working at full stretch only closes part of it. Childcare costs US vs Europe prices the care line for a two-earner household across more cities, and why European salaries are so low is the longer answer to why a Berlin offer arrives at the number it does.

The hidden paycheck the ledger leaves out

Nothing above prices time, and the Berlin contract carries a great deal of it by law. The Bundesurlaubsgesetz sets a floor of 24 Werktage of paid leave, counted on a six-day week, which is 20 days for anyone working five, and at this salary those 20 days are worth €7,308 of gross pay before the employer adds the five to ten extra days that most German contracts do. The Austin contract carries a statutory floor of 0 days, because US federal law sets none.

Parental leave is the larger item. Germany's statutory package runs 67 weeks for a household, paid at 100% of net through the Mutterschutz weeks and then under § 2 BEEG at 65% of prior income up to €1,800 a month for the Elterngeld months, which at a €95,000 salary works out to an effective replacement rate of 39.0% and a value of €47,776. Texas runs no paid family leave programme and federal FMLA is unpaid, so the Austin figure is a truthful zero; is FMLA paid or unpaid sets out which states do better.

Whether that €55,084 counts depends entirely on whether you will use it. For a single renter with no plans, the vacation days are real money and the leave is worth nothing this year. For the family above, expecting a third child, the leave alone is worth $55,360 and covers most of the remaining cash gap on its own. Parental leave by country and vacation days by country put both figures beside every other country the engine covers.

So, for this pair

On cash, no: single or with a family, the Austin offer leaves more, and by an amount no cost-of-living argument can reach. What the Berlin offer is, priced in full, is an $88,200 Austin life with 20 paid days off and a year of paid leave attached, in a city with no state to move out of. Some people would take that at a large discount to $185,000. The point of the ledger is that you now know the size of the discount, which is the one thing the two offer letters never tell you. The general method is set out in equivalent salary abroad, is €100k a good salary in Germany reads a German salary on its own terms across seven cities, and Austin against Berlin runs this corridor for three household shapes on the published scenarios.

FAQ

Would a 401(k) contribution change the result?

Not the direction. Both offers are priced with no voluntary retirement contribution so that neither column carries a deferral the other lacks. A 6% deferral on the Austin side would shelter that slice from federal tax this year and lower the cash figure by the amount put away, and a German employee can deduct pension contributions up to a sourced ceiling in the same way. Either choice moves a few thousand dollars, which is small against a gap measured in tens of thousands. What happens to an existing account when you leave is a different question, and the account stays where it is.

What if my partner would work in Berlin too?

Then the household is a different one and should be priced as such. A second German salary is taxed jointly with the first under Ehegattensplitting and carries its own social insurance up to the ceilings, so it adds less to take-home than its face value suggests, and in the US the second salary sits on top of the first in the married brackets. The direction of the family result on this page does not change unless the second salary is large, because the childcare bill it makes necessary in Austin is far larger than the one it makes necessary in Berlin.

Is €95,000 a good salary in Berlin on its own?

By the German measure, yes. It is well above the national median full-time wage and sits above the median total compensation the engine stores for software engineers in the Berlin region. The comparison on this page is against a specific US offer in the cheapest major US tax environment, which is a much higher bar than the German market sets. A separate walkthrough prices €100,000 in seven German cities and against US and UK equivalents.

What if part of the US offer is stock?

Then the cash gap on this page understates the US offer for as long as the stock vests, and overstates it the moment you resign, because unvested grants do not follow you to a new employer. The engine treats equity as income at the source city and zero at the destination for exactly that reason. Price the move on salary alone, then add the stock back as a separate line with its own vesting date, and decide which of the two numbers you are being paid this year.

Put your own two offers into the offer comparison before you reply to either recruiter. It takes the two salaries, the two cities and your household, and returns the same ledger for your numbers in the time it takes to read this sentence twice.

Sources. US federal income tax schedule: IRS, tax inflation adjustments for tax year 2026. German income tax tariff: § 32a EStG; 2026 contribution ceilings: Bundesregierung, Beitragsbemessungsgrenzen 2026. Statutory leave: § 3 BUrlG; parental benefit: § 2 BEEG. Kindergeld: Familienportal, BMFSFJ. US childcare prices: US Department of Labor Women's Bureau, National Database of Childcare Prices. US healthcare costs: KFF Employer Health Benefits Survey 2025 and the Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker. Housing, transit and food figures are computed by cityparity's per-city engine; per-field provenance is in data/_meta.json.

Equivalent salaries solve for equal net cash after tax, housing, childcare, healthcare and the cash value of statutory benefits, and they are the salary an offer has to clear rather than a salary any employer is obliged to pay. See the methodology.