Every founder asks this and almost nobody answers it properly. Here are the actual third-party costs of forming and running a GmbH or UG, notary, commercial register, trade office, document legalisation and accounting. Nothing from us is in these numbers.
This page estimates the costs you would face with any provider. Our own package price is a separate, fixed figure — and it already includes the German notary, the commercial register, the trade office and the IHK name check. See your price in a few clicks, no email required.
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This is our own calculation, not an official fee schedule. German notary fees are set by law in the GNotKG and follow the declarations actually notarised, so for the standard case modelled here they can be computed rather than guessed. We apply the statutory fee items and have checked the result against four real notary invoices, which it reproduces to the cent. A different structure produces different positions, and fee schedules change. The two lower accounting figures are real quotes from a German tax practice. All figures are net of VAT. A VAT-registered company can normally deduct that input VAT where the statutory conditions are met; court fees carry no VAT.
Not included: anything we charge, salaries, insurance, marketing, travel, and the corporation and trade tax you pay on profit. The address line shows the German market range, not our price. This is an estimate for planning, not an offer, and not tax or legal advice, in Germany only admitted lawyers and tax advisors may give that.
The €25,000 of a GmbH is not a fee and is not deposited with an authority. It goes into your own company's account and stays your company's money, the company may use it for its own purposes, equipment, rent, stock, salaries, subject to the capital maintenance rules that stop it flowing back to the shareholders. The law requires that at least a quarter of each share, and together at least half of the minimum share capital, has actually arrived before the notary files. A UG can start from €1, but the capital must be paid in full and a quarter of each year's profit retained until it reaches €25,000.
The fee value follows the share capital, more capital, higher fees. But the fee rate follows the type of declaration being notarised: a one-person formation is a one-sided declaration at a 1.0 rate (KV 21200), while from two shareholders it is a contract at a 2.0 rate (KV 21100). That single fee doubles; the total bill does not, because the other items are unchanged. The standard protocol affects the value: with it, § 105(6) GNotKG lets the actual share capital apply, which is why a small UG is genuinely cheap at the notary, without it a statutory minimum applies to the relevant declaration.
Two further things stop remote formations more often than cost does: the bank account, and the weeks that document legalisation from abroad takes. Both are worth settling before the notary appointment rather than after.
We compared two actual invoices for forming a GmbH with €25,000 of share capital, both issued in 2025 and 2026. Names removed. The gap is not a discount and not a negotiation, it comes from how each notary structures the appointment.
This notary records the appointment of the managing director as a separate deed at the full 2.0 fee: €250 on top of the €125 for the articles themselves, and adds a supervision fee for monitoring the capital payment.
including VAT
A founder who does not speak German then needs a sworn interpreter at the appointment, €300–600, and a sworn translation of the deed, €250–700.
The appointment is held in English and every document is drawn up in German and English. The foreign-language surcharge is a statutory 30 % on the notarisation fee: €75 in this case.
including VAT
In most cases no interpreter and no translation of the deed. You read what you sign, in English, at the table. The notary decides in each case.
The difference is €705 to €1,455, on one appointment.
Notary fees themselves are not negotiable; they follow the GNotKG. What differs is how many separate fee events a notary creates and whether the appointment needs an interpreter. Ask any notary for a written cost estimate before you book, a Kostenvoranschlag, and compare the fee items, not the headline.