We publish a data profile for every German district (Kreis), plus rankings and state guides built from them. Every number comes from official German statistics, not estimates or scraped listings. This page explains exactly where the data comes from, how each figure is calculated, and what the numbers do and do not tell you.
Where the data comes from
All figures are drawn from official German statistical sources and reproduced without modelling or interpolation. The primary sources are:
- Regionaldatenbank Deutschland (regionalstatistik.de) and the Statistical Offices of the Federation and the Länder: population, jobs, unemployment, businesses, income, building activity and land prices.
- Zensus 2022 (zensus2022.de): housing, rents, ownership, dwelling sizes, household composition, education and migration history.
- Breitbandatlas (© BMDV, bmdv.bund.de): fixed and mobile broadband coverage by household.
- Polizeiliche Kriminalstatistik (BKA, bka.de): recorded offences per 100,000 residents (Häufigkeitszahl).
- Bundesagentur für Arbeit (statistik.arbeitsagentur.de): median full-time gross wages.
Vintages by field: population 2024; jobs and unemployment 2025; income 2023; businesses, building activity and land prices 2024; naturalisations 2024; childcare 2025; recorded crime 2025; median wage 2024; rent, ownership, dwelling size, households, education and migration from the 2022 census; broadband end of 2025.
How the figures are calculated
We add no opinion to the data; every derived number is a transparent calculation on the official figures:
- Benchmark percentiles rank a district against all 400 German Kreise on each measure (building-land prices are recorded for 394). The bar fills to the percentile; the tooltip shows the raw figure.
- In-state ranks place a district among the others in its own Bundesland on the same measures.
- Affordability is shown two ways, with no assumptions about household size or behaviour: the cold rent on a 70 m² flat (net rent per m² × 70), and a relative rank on the rent-to-income ratio within the state. We do not state rent as a percentage of income.
- District archetypes (big city, commuter belt, university town, and so on) are assigned from the data itself (density, age structure, jobs per resident and education), not chosen by hand.
- ‘Best for X’ rankings each rank on a single official metric (lowest rent, lowest recorded crime, highest childcare availability). We never blend measures into a weighted score; any extra columns are context, not part of the ranking.
What the numbers do and do not tell you
- Recorded crime is offences registered by the police, not convictions, and is inflated wherever offenders and victims are not residents: city centres, big stations, motorways and airports. Read it as recorded activity in an area, not how dangerous a place is for the people who live there.
- Rent is the 2022 census net cold rent (Nettokaltmiete) for tenants already in place; a fresh lease on the open market usually costs more.
- Income is nominal disposable income per resident; it is not adjusted for what rent and daily life cost locally.
- Protection-status residents is the combined asylum, refugee and humanitarian total, with Ukrainians counted since 2022, not asylum applicants alone.
Updates
Each field carries the year of its source. We refresh a field when the relevant office publishes a newer release, and note the vintage on every page so you always know how current a figure is.
Source: Regionaldatenbank Deutschland (regionalstatistik.de), Statistische Ämter des Bundes und der Länder; supplementary data via Destatis GENESIS-Online. Housing, household, education and migration figures from the Zensus 2022. Broadband coverage from the Breitbandatlas (© MIG, BMDV). Recorded crime from the Polizeiliche Kriminalstatistik (BKA, 2025). Median full-time gross wages from the Bundesagentur für Arbeit (2024).