Rent Cap Berlin: How to Use the Mietpreisbremse Calculator (2026)

Berlin has been a designated rent-cap area, known in German as the Mietpreisbremse, since 2015. The federal extension passed in early 2025 keeps it in force until 31 December 2029. If your base rent sits above the legal limit, you can claim back the overcharge from the moment you challenge it. The first step is knowing what the limit actually is, and the free miete.berlin calculator will tell you in under a minute.

This guide covers how the cap is calculated, when it does not apply, what changed for tenants in 2025 and 2026, and how to read the calculator's output without getting lost in the legal text.

Wie hoch ist die Mietpreisbremse in Berlin?

In a designated rent-cap area, the maximum starting rent for a new lease is the local comparable rent plus 10%, fixed by section 556d of the German Civil Code. The comparable rent is not a single number for the whole city. It comes from the bracket in Berlin's official rent index (the Mietspiegel) that matches your apartment's location, size, construction period, and equipment. The current document is the 2025 edition, which stays in force until the next update, currently expected in 2027.

The calculation is simpler than the legal language suggests. You find the matching bracket, take the mid-value (not the upper bound, which the landlord cannot reach for free), and multiply by 1.10. The result is the legal cap on the base rent for that apartment. Anything above it is overcharge that the tenant can demand back going forward.

If you would rather skip the manual lookup, the calculator on miete.berlin picks the right bracket automatically and walks you through address, size, era, and equipment in four short steps.

mmiete.berlin·Free toolCheck your Berlin rent against the capMietspiegel and rent-cap lookup in four steps. Anonymous, no signup, under a minute.Am I overpaying?→

Wann greift die Mietpreisbremse nicht?

There are four narrowly defined exceptions, set by sections 556e and 556f of the Civil Code. The first is new construction. The cap never applies to the first lease of an apartment first occupied after 1 October 2014, regardless of how much the rent has risen since then. The second is comprehensive modernization, where the renovation costs roughly one third of the equivalent new-build cost. Standard cosmetic renovations do not qualify, no matter how new the kitchen looks. The third is a higher predecessor rent: if the previous tenant already paid more than cap plus 10%, the landlord may continue charging that figure. The fourth is the furnished short-term lease, which may add a separately itemised furniture surcharge on top of a base rent that itself respects the cap.

Anything outside this list is not an exemption. A corner location, a refurbished bath, a balcony, or a working lift might shift you to a slightly higher bracket in the rent index, but they do not switch off the cap. The bracket logic already accounts for those features.

Was ändert sich ab Januar 2026 für Mieter?

Two things matter here, one about the cap and one about how it is enforced. First, the cap stays. The early-2025 extension keeps Berlin's rent cap in force, unchanged, through 31 December 2029, with no grace period or transition phase. Anyone signing a lease today in Berlin is signing under exactly the regime that will still apply next year and the year after.

Second, the disclosure rules tightened in 2025. The reformed section 556g paragraph 1a came into effect on 1 April 2025, and it shifts more of the burden of proof onto landlords. Before signing the lease, the landlord must now disclose in writing which exemption, if any, they are relying on, what the previous tenant paid, and how the requested rent fits the standard cap. If the disclosure is missing, vague, or arrives only after signing, the landlord cannot fall back on the exemption later. The standard cap then applies retroactively from the start of the lease. In practice, asking for the disclosure in writing is no longer optional, and an evasive answer is itself useful evidence.

Kann die Miete auf einmal um 20 % erhöht werden?

Not in an existing Berlin lease. Two limits apply at the same time, and a one-shot 20% raise breaks both. The in-tenancy ceiling caps increases at 15% over any three-year window. The federal default is 20%, but Berlin opted into the stricter 15% ceiling. Even under that ceiling, the new rent cannot exceed the local comparable rent.

A landlord demanding a single 20% jump is acting illegally. The tenant can refuse, ask for the legal calculation in writing, and, if the landlord insists, escalate through a local renters' association. Different rules apply to modernization-based increases and to index or staircase leases, which run on their own arithmetic. The 15% cap is not a loophole around those, and they are not a loophole around it.

How to use the miete.berlin calculator in 60 seconds

The flow has three steps and no signup. You enter the address, where street and number is enough for the calculator to map you to the right rent-index district. You add the apartment size in square metres, your current base rent, and the building's construction period. You then select the equipment features that apply: floor heating, lift, balcony, modern bath, fitted kitchen. Each feature shifts you between brackets in the rent index and adjusts the cap accordingly.

The output is your legal base-rent cap and the gap, if any, between that cap and what you currently pay. Run the numbers before signing a new lease, before responding to an asking price you suspect is too high, or before sending a formal complaint to your landlord. Open the calculator on miete.berlin.

FAQ

Wie hoch ist die Mietpreisbremse in Berlin? Local comparable rent (the mid-value of the matching bracket in the Berlin rent index) plus 10%, per section 556d of the German Civil Code. Active in Berlin until 31 December 2029.

Wann greift die Mietpreisbremse nicht? Four narrow exceptions: new builds first leased after 1 October 2014, first rental after substantial (about one third of new-build cost) modernization, higher predecessor rent, and furnished short-term leases with a separately itemised furniture surcharge.

Was ändert sich ab Januar 2026 für Mieter? The cap itself stays unchanged through end of 2029. The bigger practical shift was 1 April 2025: section 556g paragraph 1a now requires landlords to disclose any exemption in writing before the lease is signed.

Kann die Miete auf einmal um 20 % erhöht werden? No. Berlin's in-tenancy ceiling caps increases at 15% over three years, never above the comparable rent. Index and modernization increases follow separate rules.

Ready to check your own rent? Run it through miete.berlin.