A student without an EU passport faces two limits, and confusing them is expensive. The first is an insurance threshold about twenty hours a week. The second sits in the Residence Act: a study permit allows work within a set number of working days per year. The provision was recently rewritten, so older figures passed around by friends no longer hold.
Non-EU students: the working-day account in your residence permit
Alongside the insurance limit, holders of a study residence permit face a separate immigration limit: 140 working days a year. The two accounts run in parallel and do not replace one another.
✓ Verified: 02/08/2026
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› Details and tips
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Lea recommends:
The most common misconception is treating twenty hours and 140 days as one rule phrased two ways. They are two separate accounts: the first is monitored by your health insurer, the second by the immigration office, and each breach carries its own consequences.
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Max recommends:
I only tracked hours, because that is what everyone talked about. I learned about the working-day account at my extension appointment, when I was asked to show how much I had worked. I then dug out payslips from eighteen months and added the days by hand.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
How many days are allowed and how are they counted? ▾
The provision speaks of employment totalling up to 140 working days per year and calls this the working-day account. A day of up to four hours may count as half a working day, a longer one as a full day. Alternatively, a week with up to twenty hours during lecture periods counts as two and a half working days.
What does not count at all? ▾
Student assistant work at the university. The provision expressly states that such activity is not charged to the working-day account. A post as a research or library assistant at your own university is usually exactly this case, but check the actual contract rather than the job title.
How is the more favourable counting method chosen? ▾
The assessment runs week by week: for each calendar week it is determined separately whether to count by days or as two and a half units, and the variant more favourable to you applies. That is why a weekly record is worth more than a single yearly total.
What happens if the limit is exceeded? ▾
That is a breach of the conditions of your residence permit, not merely a contributions question. The consequences sit in immigration law and can surface when the permit is extended. Precisely for that reason you keep the record yourself instead of reconstructing it later from memory.