Search for the price of a Goethe-Zertifikat and you will find a dozen different numbers, all of them presented as the price. They are not contradicting each other. The Goethe-Institut's Prüfungsordnung puts the fee in the hands of the place you sit the exam, so the honest answer to "what does it cost" is "open the fee schedule of the centre you will actually book with". This page explains who decides the amount, how the booking works, what you pay to repeat a Modul, and every occasion on which money can come back to you or be charged on top.
The short version
- The fee follows the local fee schedule of the centre, and it is shown on the registration form or in the exam description online. There is no single worldwide price.
- Each Modul is a separate booking, so at B1 and above a retake can mean paying for one skill rather than four.
- You register with an exam centre, not with a head office - by form, online, or in person, depending on what that centre offers.
- Changing your mind gets you nothing back. Illness, documented at once, gets the fee credited to the next date, and the centre decides whether to keep an administrative charge of up to 25 per cent for the rebooking.
- Retakes are unlimited in principle, but the centre may set a waiting period before your next attempt, and you are barred from sitting until it expires.
Nobody publishes one Goethe price
Section 6.1 of the Prüfungsordnung is short and decisive: the fee is based on the applicable local fee schedule and is shown on the registration form or in the exam description on the internet. Everything else follows from that.
It means the amount is a property of the centre, not of the exam. A Goethe-Institut in Germany, a Goethe-Institut in another country, a Goethe-Zentrum and an exam cooperation partner are each working to their own schedule, in their own currency, with their own local costs. The exam, the tasks, the criteria and the pass mark are identical everywhere; the invoice is not. The Goethe-Institut in Germany, for instance, publishes its own schedule of exam fees - that is a local schedule in exactly the sense section 6.1 means, and it does not govern what a centre in Mumbai, Cairo or São Paulo charges you.
So when you compare prices, compare centres, and read the fee against the same level and the same booking. The one number that matters is on the form you are about to sign.
One practical consequence: the exam cannot start if the payment deadlines you agreed were not met. A place that is held but unpaid is not a place.
Why the price of a whole exam and of one Modul differ
From B1 upwards the exam is built from four Module - Lesen, Hören, Schreiben and Sprechen - and the regulations allow them to be taken individually or together. A booking is therefore not automatically a booking of four exams. That is the structural reason a centre's schedule normally shows more than one line for the same level, and the reason a student who failed only Schreiben is not looking at the cost of sitting everything again.
What each of those lines costs is, again, the centre's to publish. Read its schedule for the level you need, and check whether the figure quoted to you covers all four Module or one.
If you are still deciding which level to enter, the Myndaq Goethe-Zertifikat course gives you the four skills under exam conditions before you commit money to a booking.
How registration works
Before you register, the Goethe-Institut undertakes to give you enough opportunity to inform yourself - at the centre or online - about the exam requirements, the Prüfungsordnung, the Durchführungsbestimmungen and how results will reach you. Both documents are published online in their current version, and registering means confirming that you have read and accept them.
The route itself depends on what your centre offers:
- Get the registration form, from the local exam centre or online. Further detail about the registration options sits on the form itself or in the exam description on the website.
- Choose a channel. Where the option exists, the completed form can go back by post, fax or e-mail; registration can also be done online at goethe.de or on the centre's own website, or in person at the centre.
- Minors need consent. For a minor with limited legal capacity, a parent or guardian must agree to the registration.
- Accept the terms. The Goethe-Institut's general terms and conditions govern the booking, and where a cooperation partner handles the registration or the exam, that partner's terms apply as well. Both are pointed out to you at registration.
- Pay to the deadline set out in your booking.
You do not need to have attended a language course, and you do not need the certificate one level down.
Retakes: how often, and what stands in the way
The Prüfungsordnung allows the exams to be repeated as a whole as often as you like, and for the modular exams - B1, B2, C1 and C2 - individual Module may likewise be repeated as often as you like. The B1 regulations add the practical limit: as often as the organisational capacity at the exam centre allows.
There is a second limiting clause worth knowing before you plan a fast second attempt. Anyone who has failed an exam, a part of one or a Modul is barred from taking exams until the deadline the centre has set for a resit date has passed. The centre sets that period, tells you about it when it gives you your result, and you have no legal right to any particular exam date.
The upside of the modular design is that nothing you have already passed is at risk. Certificates for Module you sit later can be combined with the ones you already hold.
When money comes back, and when it does not
- You change your mind. Withdrawal gives you no entitlement to a refund of fees already paid; the general terms and conditions set out the detail.
- You start and stop. An exam abandoned after it has begun counts as failed.
- You are ill. If you do not start, or stop partway, and claim illness, you must prove it immediately with a doctor's note to the responsible exam centre. The centre decides how to proceed after consulting the Goethe-Institut head office. Where an exam counts as not taken for reasons of illness, the fee is credited towards the next exam date, and the centre decides whether to charge an administrative fee of up to 25 per cent of the exam fee for the rebooking - you may show that the actual loss was nil or much smaller.
- You are excluded from the exam. No refund.
- Your appeal succeeds. The exam then counts as not taken and the centre credits or refunds the fee; you may choose instead to resit free of charge.
- Exam papers are lost through manipulation by people involved in running the exam, and there is no sign you were part of it. The centre must offer you a free resit.
The charges that come after the exam
These are the ones students rarely budget for, and each is the centre's decision, not a fixed list price:
- A paper certificate on top of a digital one. Certificates are issued on paper or digitally depending on what the local centre does, and you cannot insist on a particular form. Where a paper copy is issued in addition to the digital one, the centre may charge an administrative fee.
- A replacement for a lost certificate. The centre you registered with can issue one within ten years, and it is chargeable.
- A single certificate covering all four Module. Where the centre can manage it, it may charge up to 25 per cent of the exam fee to issue one.
- A corrected certificate. If your personal details are wrong, tell the centre immediately and hand the faulty paper certificate back; a new one is issued against a valid ID document, and the centre may charge up to 25 per cent of the exam fee for the reissue. Your separate right under the GDPR to have personal data corrected free of charge is unaffected.
Failing is not a dead end on paper either: on request, a centre will confirm your participation in an exam you did not pass, stating the points you scored.
Quick answers
How much does the Goethe-Zertifikat cost?
There is no single answer, and that is the rule rather than a gap in the information. The fee follows the local fee schedule of the centre you book with and appears on the registration form or in that centre's exam description online.
Is one Modul cheaper than the whole exam?
They are separate bookings, and a centre's schedule prices them separately - but the amounts are that centre's to publish, so take them from its own fee page.
Can I get my money back if I cannot attend?
Not for simply withdrawing. With a doctor's note submitted immediately, the fee is credited to the next exam date, and the centre may keep up to 25 per cent as an administrative charge for the rebooking.
How many times can I retake a Modul?
As often as you wish in principle, and as often as the centre can organise in practice. But after a failure you cannot sit again until the resit deadline the centre sets has expired.
Do I have to take a Goethe course before the exam?
No. Participation is tied neither to any particular language course nor to holding a certificate at a lower level, and there is no minimum age requirement.
