How we calculate waiting times
Every number on Aktenzeit comes either from applicants' own reports or from an official source with a link and a date.
What applicants report
The office, the application type and the date the office received the complete application. Later, through a private link, the dates of further steps: confirmation of receipt, appointment, naturalisation assurance, decision and outcome, handover. We do not ask for names, file numbers or nationality.
The median
For each office and application type we show after how many days half of the applications are decided. We use the Kaplan-Meier method: applications that are still open count as "not decided yet" up to the last time the applicant confirmed them. A plain average of decided cases would hide long waits, because the longest cases are the ones still open.
An open application counts until its last confirmation (the report itself, an edit, or a click on "Nothing new yet"), not until today. This stops forgotten reports from inflating waiting times.
The personal forecast
The forecast compares an application with others at the same office, of the same type, submitted within 60 days of it. If there are too few, it widens to the whole office, then to Germany for the same period, then to all of Germany, and says which group it used. It takes into account how long the applicant has already waited. A date window is shown only when the group has at least 5 decisions.
Minimum numbers
- Office figures appear from the first report, with a warning below 5 reports.
- Typical step durations appear from 3 reports that include that step.
- Other applicants are only shown by month, or in weeks relative to you, so nobody in a small office can be identified.
Official figures
Where offices, parliaments or press reports quoting an office publish backlogs or processing times, we show them separately with their source and date. They are not mixed into the reported numbers. Demand per office on the map is estimated from the 2024 share of foreign nationals per district (Regionalatlas of the Federal and State Statistical Offices) and the district's population.
Limits
Reports are not verified. Offices with few reports can show numbers that change a lot. Nothing on Aktenzeit is legal advice or information from an authority.