$225,000 in San Francisco ≈ €181,806 in Berlin
Software engineer pay: San Francisco vs Berlin
Equivalence is solved so household net cash matches across both cities, with taxes, housing, childcare, healthcare, food, and travel all included.
What changes: San Francisco → Berlin
- ▴ 5 more vacation days per year in Berlin (statutory)
- ▴ 28 more paid parental-leave weeks (40 vs 12)
- ▴ Universal healthcare in Berlin (no premium / minimal OOP)
The headline math
| San Francisco household gross | $225,000 |
| San Francisco taxes (29.0%) | −$65,353 |
| San Francisco living costs | −$72,671 |
| San Francisco net cash | $86,976 |
| ≈ | |
| Berlin household gross needed | €181,806 |
| Berlin taxes (38.5%) | −€69,996 |
| Berlin living costs | −€31,792 |
| Berlin net cash | €80,018 |
Computed at the city-median tech-worker salary, San Francisco (a senior software engineer) · effective tax rates: 29.0% vs 38.5%
These numbers use one scenario's assumptions. Plug in your own salary, family size, and lifestyle.
Open the interactive calculator to run your own →Moving from San Francisco to Berlin for a software engineer
$225,000 in San Francisco requires €181,806 in Berlin to match on household net cash. The gap is real, but it is smaller than the nominal numbers suggest once taxes run their course. Progressive brackets compress the after-tax difference faster than a compensation benchmarking site would lead you to believe, because those sites show gross and stop there.
The effective tax rate goes from 29.0% in San Francisco to 38.5% in Berlin. That 9.5-point jump is what the equivalence solver is working against when it finds the matching gross salary.
Unvested equity changes this calculation entirely. RSU value is not modeled in the defaults above, but if you are mid-cycle at your current employer, leaving means forfeiting grants you have already been working toward, and that difference can be larger than the annual take-home delta that drove the comparison in the first place. The Advanced section's "RSU / stock annual value" field is where you plug that number in. Equity-heavy comp favors lower-tax cities at vesting; the after-tax discount gets larger the bigger the grant.
Healthcare in Berlin is universal. San Francisco households pay $3,680 in premiums and out-of-pocket costs per year. That spending disappears in Berlin. It won't appear in a take-home comparison, but it is real money.
Berlin engineers get 20 vacation days per year. San Francisco averages 15. That 5-day gap is real money at a senior IC's daily rate, and it does not show up on the offer letter.
No kids, employer healthcare, and a single high-bracket income: this is the configuration that makes San Francisco look best in a head-to-head comparison. It is also the configuration most likely to change. The family scenario page (linked below) models what shifts once childcare and a second earner enter the picture.
Common questions
How much do you need to earn in Berlin to match a $225,000 salary in San Francisco?
About €181,806. cityparity solves for the Berlin gross salary whose net cash (after taxes, housing, childcare, healthcare, and the rest) equals what you keep in San Francisco. It's an equivalence, not a raw conversion.
Is healthcare free in Berlin?
Berlin has universal healthcare, so there are no US-style premiums or large deductibles. cityparity counts that as real money you don't spend, which is part of why the equivalent salary is lower than the raw number suggests.
How much vacation and parental leave do you get in Berlin?
Berlin has about 30 paid days off a year (vacation plus public holidays) and 61 weeks of parental leave. cityparity surfaces these as deltas rather than dollars, because time off is part of the real comparison.
Run your own numbers in the interactive calculator →