The freelance visa lets you live in Germany on your own clients instead of an employer. We classify your profession, build the client evidence and the financing plan, and a licensed German immigration lawyer signs the file.
Every other German work permit starts with a company vouching for you. The freelance visa does not, which is what makes it the route for designers, developers, writers, translators, consultants and artists — and what makes it harder. You are the case. The office is deciding whether your profession counts as self-employment, whether real clients want your work, and whether the money holds until the invoices do. All three are questions of evidence, and evidence is something you can prepare.
Product designer in São Paulo, five clients, none of them German. Classified as a liberal profession, which she had not realised, and refused nothing — she simply needed two German letters of intent and a financing plan that matched them. Six weeks of preparation, then a file a lawyer signed.
German law tests the liberal professions more lightly than trades and companies. Which side of that line your work falls on decides the evidence you need, the tax you pay and, often, whether the permit is granted at all. For modern digital work the answer is rarely obvious from the job title.
The office is asking one question: does anyone actually want to pay you? Letters of intent naming the work and the fee are how that is answered. A spread of credible clients, with German ones among them, carries a file. Two warm letters from friends does not.
You have to show the work and the savings that will carry you until the invoices land, without recourse to public funds. Both the plan and the bank evidence are read together, and the plan has to match the letters rather than contradict them.
Cover valid in Germany for the whole permit, on terms the office accepts. Freelancers choose between statutory and private cover and the choice is difficult to undo later, so it is worth making deliberately rather than at the counter.
From the mid-forties the office additionally wants to see adequate provision for old age — a pension, assets, or an equivalent arrangement. This requirement surprises more applicants than any other on the list, and it cannot be assembled the week before an appointment.
Doctors, lawyers, architects, tax advisers and other regulated professions need their German authorisation or chamber admission before the permit, not after it. If you are in one of these fields, that approval is the long pole in your timeline.
The first permit is granted for a limited period tied to your plan, then extended when the activity has actually happened. Build the first file as though the renewal is already being read, because it will be.
Freelance applications are assessed locally, not nationally. The rows above are the framework every office works from; how strictly each one is applied, and what your particular office wants to see, are confirmed by the licensed German lawyer who reviews and signs your application. We tell you where your file stands before you pay anything, including when the honest answer is that your client evidence is not there yet.
We take what you actually do — not your job title — and work out whether it is a liberal profession or a trade, where the line is contested, and how to present it. This is the single highest-leverage decision in a freelance application, and it is made before anything else is drafted.
We tell you how many letters you need, who they should come from, and what each one has to say about scope and fee. Where your list is thin, we say so early enough for you to fix it, rather than letting the office be the one to point it out.
Projected income built from the letters, costs, savings and the runway between them, in the format German offices expect to read. The plan and the evidence behind it have to agree with each other; most refused files fail exactly here.
Registration of your address, the tax number from the Finanzamt, health insurance, pension provision where it applies, translations and certifications. Each depends on the one before it, and we sequence them so no appointment is wasted.
A licensed German lawyer reviews and signs every step. You only open the case.
Tell us what you do, who your clients are and where you are applying from. Our AI classifies your profession, tests your evidence against what the office looks for, and a lawyer confirms your route — including whether you can apply from inside Germany.
AI drafts the financing plan, the profile of your activity, the client letter templates and the document set in days. A licensed German lawyer reviews each page and signs the file.
You submit a complete dossier with a tracked timeline. We tell you what to keep from year one — invoices, contracts, contributions — so the extension, and later the permanent residence application, are collection rather than reconstruction.
You know what you need before you pay.
Lawyers work on prepared cases, not messy ones.
For a freelance visa that means your clients, your fees and your financing plan are already evidence by the time a lawyer looks at them, not a folder to be sorted.
Case is a case-preparation service, not a law firm. Our AI drafts and checks your documents, which is why we are fast. A licensed German immigration lawyer reviews and signs everything, which is why it holds. Nothing is filed without a lawyer's approval.
It is a residence permit for self-employed work, granted under the self-employment section of the German residence act. Instead of an employer sponsoring you, you sponsor yourself: your profession, your clients and your finances are what the office assesses. Freelancers in the liberal professions are judged on a lighter test than people setting up a trade or a company, which is why getting classified correctly matters more than anything else on this page.
In substance: a profession the office accepts as self-employed work, evidence that clients actually want you, financing that covers you until the work pays, health insurance, and provision for retirement if you are over forty-five. In practice the application is won or lost on the quality of the evidence rather than on the list itself — the same freelancer can be refused with thin documents and approved with a properly assembled file.
Yes, and this is where most applications are thin. The office wants letters of intent from real clients saying what they would commission from you and roughly what they would pay. Two vague letters from friends do not carry a file; a spread of credible clients, ideally including German ones, does. We tell you what your letters are worth before you submit them, and what is missing.
German law splits self-employment in two. The liberal professions — writers, designers, developers in many cases, translators, doctors, engineers, teachers, lawyers and similar — are Freiberufler, and they skip trade registration. Everything else is a Gewerbe, which registers as a trade, pays trade tax and faces a heavier test of economic interest. The line between them is not obvious for modern digital work, and being on the wrong side of it changes both your application and your tax position.
Sometimes, depending on your nationality and the status you already hold. Nationals of certain countries may enter visa-free and apply at the local foreigners' office; most others need the national visa from a German mission before travelling. Getting this wrong is expensive, because a wrong entry can force you to leave and start again. It is the first question we settle in your case.
Yes. Self-employed people have their own route to permanent residence, and it is shorter than the standard one when the business has genuinely worked out and your provision for retirement is in order. What decides it is whether the activity you were granted the permit for actually happened, which is why we build the first application so that the renewals and the settlement application after it are straightforward.
No. Case prepares the case file. A licensed German immigration lawyer reviews it and provides the legal advice. Nothing is filed without a lawyer's approval.
Tell us what you do, who your clients are and where you are applying from. Within one working day you get your classification, your route and a fixed price. No obligation.
Last reviewed 22 August 2026. German immigration rules, salary thresholds and fees change, sometimes in the middle of a year, and local offices apply them differently from city to city. Anything below that date may have moved since.
This page is general information about German immigration law. It is not legal advice, it is not a substitute for advice on your own situation, and reading it does not create a lawyer–client relationship. The figures and deadlines on it have not been checked by a lawyer against your case.
Case is a case-preparation service, not a law firm, and does not give legal advice. Legal advice is given by independent licensed German immigration lawyers, who review and sign every file before it is submitted.
Found something out of date or wrong? Tell us and we will correct it: permanaharianja@gmail.com.