Germany is usually the first non-English market a SaaS product goes after, and the translation is the easy part. Strings get longer, the product has to choose how formally it talks, numbers and dates flip their separators, and the legal and billing pages need more than a translator. This guide covers what actually changes, with measurements from real open-source apps.
"German is longer" is common knowledge. How much longer is worth measuring, because it decides how much room your buttons need. We compared the English and German UI strings of two widely used open-source apps, Excalidraw and Mastodon, character by character (placeholders and tags removed, untranslated strings skipped):
| Excalidraw | Mastodon | |
|---|---|---|
| Translated strings compared | 566 | 1,574 |
| Total length, German vs English | +28% | +29% |
| Strings that got longer | 81% | 79% |
| Strings at least 1.5x as long | 25% | 30% |
| Short strings (1-10 characters): median growth | +27% | +50% |
| Short strings: 1 in 10 grows by at least | +88% | +183% |
The averages are manageable. The tail is what breaks layouts, and it sits in the shortest strings: the labels on buttons, tabs, and menu items, where you have the least room. Some real pairs from those files:
What to do about it:
/* Works only when the page declares its language: <html lang="de"> */
.card-title,
.table-header {
hyphens: auto;
overflow-wrap: break-word;
}
hyphens: auto uses the browser's German dictionary, so it only works when the document or element has lang="de". That is one more reason to set the lang attribute from the active locale instead of hardcoding en.
German has two forms of "you": informal du and formal Sie. Every sentence that addresses the user commits to one, so the choice affects thousands of strings, and switching later means retranslating all of them.
Developer and consumer tools have moved toward du. In the German files we measured, Excalidraw uses informal forms (du, dein, dich) 60 times and formal Sie zero times; Mastodon uses informal forms 252 times against a handful of formal ones. Products that sell to banks, insurers, law firms, or the public sector usually stay with Sie, because that is how their customers write to each other.
German swaps the roles of the comma and the period, writes the currency symbol after the amount, and puts the day before the month. The browser already knows all of this, as long as you format values with Intl instead of string templates. Every output below was generated by Intl in Node.js:
new Intl.NumberFormat("de-DE").format(1234567.891);
// "1.234.567,891" (en-US: "1,234,567.891")
new Intl.NumberFormat("de-DE", { style: "currency", currency: "EUR" }).format(1299);
// "1.299,00 EUR "
new Intl.NumberFormat("de-DE", { style: "percent", maximumFractionDigits: 1 }).format(0.195);
// "19,5 %" (note the space before %)
const date = new Date("2026-10-13T14:05:00Z");
new Intl.DateTimeFormat("de-DE", { dateStyle: "medium", timeZone: "Europe/Berlin" }).format(date);
// "13.10.2026"
new Intl.ListFormat("de", { type: "conjunction" }).format(["Rechnung", "SEPA-Lastschrift", "PayPal"]);
// "Rechnung, SEPA-Lastschrift und PayPal"
"German" is also more than one locale. Switzerland and Austria format differently, so do not let de-DE stand in for every German speaker:
new Intl.NumberFormat("de-CH", { style: "currency", currency: "CHF" }).format(1299.5);
// "CHF 1'299.50"
new Intl.NumberFormat("de-AT", { style: "currency", currency: "EUR" }).format(1299.5);
// "EUR 1.299,50"
Two more details: German uses the 24-hour clock in UI text, and the week starts on Monday, which matters for calendars, date pickers, and weekly reports. Our Intl API guide covers the formatting APIs in depth, and the locale codes guide explains when to use de versus de-DE, de-AT, or de-CH.
text-transform: capitalize on English-style title case will mangle German. Let the translation decide capitalization.Some German requirements have no English equivalent, so translating your existing legal pages will not cover them. The usual list for a SaaS product with German customers looks like this; have a German lawyer review it, because this is a summary, not legal advice:
Intl. Translating hardcoded strings is wasted work; see i18n vs l10n for the difference./de/) with hreflang, so German searchers land on German pages.If German is your first market after English, our guide to choosing your first SaaS languages covers how to sequence the next ones.
In the English and German UI strings of Excalidraw and Mastodon, German was 28 to 29% longer in total, about 80% of strings got longer, and a quarter to a third grew by 50% or more. Short labels grow the most: one in ten short Mastodon labels grew by 183% or more.
Developer and consumer tools increasingly use du, while products for conservative industries such as finance, insurance, law, and the public sector usually use Sie. Match how your customers write to each other, document the choice, and never mix the two forms in one product.
Use the Intl APIs with the de-DE locale instead of string templates. They produce 1.299,00 EUR for prices, 13.10.2026 for dates, and 19,5 % for percentages, and they handle Austrian (de-AT) and Swiss (de-CH) conventions too.
Commercial websites aimed at German users generally need one. Since May 14, 2024 the requirement is in § 5 of the Digitale-Dienste-Gesetz (DDG), which replaced § 5 of the Telemediengesetz (TMG). Have a German lawyer confirm what yours must contain.
Beyond cards, offer SEPA Direct Debit and payment by invoice or bank transfer, and consider PayPal for self-serve plans. German buyers use these methods far more than shoppers in most other Western markets.
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