Health insuranceWhat your insurancecovers

Germany runs two parallel systems, and which one you are in shapes everything on this page. Statutory insurance (gesetzliche Krankenversicherung, GKV) covers around nine in ten people here, and its maternity benefits are set nationally, so they are the same whichever statutory insurer you are with. Private insurance (private Krankenversicherung, PKV) is a contract, and what it covers depends on the policy you signed.

If you are unsure which you have, look at your insurance card and the name of your insurer. Names like AOK, Barmer, TK, DAK and the various Betriebskrankenkassen are statutory. If you pay a premium that varies with your age and health, and you settle bills yourself before claiming them back, you are almost certainly private.

Your antenatal care follows a national schedule, the maternity guidelines (Mutterschafts-Richtlinien), and everything in that schedule is paid for. You choose who provides it: a midwife (Hebamme) can carry out almost all of the routine checks, a gynaecologist does the scans and the finer diagnostics, and many families divide the appointments between the two. How you split them is your decision, and it costs you nothing either way.

• All routine antenatal check-ups (Vorsorgeuntersuchungen), at the intervals the guidelines set
• Three routine ultrasound scans, roughly one per trimester
• Blood tests and infection screening, and glucose screening in the middle months
• Midwife care throughout pregnancy, including appointments at home
• Extra midwife visits if the pregnancy needs them, for example for sickness, pain, or worries about the baby
• An antenatal class (Geburtsvorbereitungskurs) for the person giving birth
• Care and support if a pregnancy ends, at any stage

Two of those are worth pausing on. Midwife care in pregnancy is fully covered and widely under-used by international families, who often assume a midwife is only for the birth; she is not, and you are entitled to her from the moment you are pregnant. And the antenatal class is covered for you, though a partner's place on it usually is not, which catches people out. Some insurers reimburse a partner's fee as a goodwill benefit, so it is worth one phone call before you book.

All three birth settings are covered for a pregnancy that is eligible for them: a hospital (Krankenhaus), a midwife-led birth house (Geburtshaus), or your own home (Hausgeburt). That breadth is genuinely unusual, and it means the setting you choose is a question of what fits you, your family, and your wishes for this birth, rather than a question of what you can afford.

Covered with it: the midwife who attends you, the medical care around the birth, pain relief including an epidural, a caesarean where one is needed, and your hospital stay afterwards. A law that came into force in 2025 also removed the daily hospital contribution that used to be charged around maternity stays, so the stay itself no longer costs you a daily fee.

There is one recurring exception, and it is the one families most often meet unprepared. If you plan a birth at home or in a birth house, your midwife charges an on-call fee (Rufbereitschaftspauschale) for holding herself available around your due date. Insurers reimburse part of it, and how much varies by insurer, so ask yours what they pay before you book. It is covered further down under what you may pay for.

The postpartum entitlements are the part international families are most often astonished by, because in much of the world they simply do not exist. All of the following is covered.

• Midwife home visits. Daily in the first ten days after birth, with a further run of visits across the first twelve weeks, and additional visits for feeding support beyond that.
• Your six-week check (Nachuntersuchung) with your gynaecologist, which closes the formal medical postpartum.
• A postnatal recovery course (Rückbildungskurs), usually up to ten sessions, starting around six weeks after birth.
• Your baby's check-ups (U-Untersuchungen) with a paediatrician, on a set schedule through the early years.
• Household help (Haushaltshilfe) where you cannot run your household because of the pregnancy or birth, which has its own guide here.
• Breastfeeding and feeding support from your midwife, and lactation consultation in some circumstances.

Household help is the least known of these and often the most useful. It is not automatic, it is applied for, and a refusal can be objected to. The guide above walks through how to ask.

The list of things you pay for yourself is short, but it helps to see it in advance rather than at the till.

Private cover varies enormously between policies. Some match statutory maternity benefits and go beyond them; others carry limits, exclusions, or waiting periods, and most work on reimbursement, meaning you pay the bill and claim it back. None of that is a problem if you know it in advance, and all of it is unpleasant to discover in week thirty-eight.

So make one call, early, and ask about each of these by name: midwife care in pregnancy, at the birth, and at home afterwards; each of the three birth settings; any on-call fee (Rufbereitschaft); additional ultrasounds; the antenatal class; and the postnatal recovery course. Ask what is reimbursed, at what rate, and what you must submit. Then ask for the answer in writing, by email, and keep it.

A second thing to check while you are on the phone: midwives are not obliged to take privately insured clients, and some decline because private billing is more work for them. It is worth mentioning your insurance early in a midwife search so nobody's time is wasted.

Your baby needs their own insurance cover from the day they are born, and it does not appear by itself. On statutory insurance, children are normally covered free through a parent's policy as family insurance (Familienversicherung), but you have to register them, and there is a window for doing it that runs to a couple of months after the birth. Miss it and the cover can start late, so put it on the after-birth list with the registry office and the benefit applications.

You will need the birth certificate to do it, which means the sequence matters: register the birth first, then the insurance, then the benefits. If one parent is statutory and one private, which policy your baby can join follows rules about the parents' incomes, and that is a question to put to both insurers rather than to guess at.

The order of the whole after-birth paperwork run, offices and all, lives in Registering your baby.