Skip to content
Editorial standardsAdvertise
MeridiansIndependent reporting, reviews and buying advice
LIVE
Automotive/Buying guide

Four German charging networks publish an idle fee. At EnBW the cap is reached after exactly six hours

The idle fee is the one line on a charging bill you can avoid completely. Here is what the big networks in Germany actually publish — and why Tesla's number does not belong in the same column.

Meridians Technik-Redaktion

Published 2 September 2026 · Updated 2 September 2026 · 5 min read

Four German charging networks publish an idle fee. At EnBW the cap is reached after exactly six hoursAutomotive
Photo: Foto von Kindel Media / Pexels (Pexels-Lizenz — kostenlos nutzbar, Nennung rechtlich nicht erforderlich (oben dennoch angegeben).)

The short answer

  • Four of the five large charging networks in Germany publish an idle or occupancy fee: EnBW, Aral pulse, EWE Go and — in a different form — Tesla. Ionity names no amount on its retrieved price and FAQ pages.
  • Grace periods run from 45 minutes to four hours and per-minute rates from 10 to 50 cents. Two providers cap the total, one does not.
  • Tesla does not charge a conventional idle fee at all. It charges a congestion fee that applies only at busy sites and only from 80 percent state of charge.
  • Germany's ADAC noted in 2023 that no uniform schedule exists for these fees. Three years on, drivers still have to read each provider's own page.

Disclosure: some links on this page may earn Meridians a commission at no extra cost to you. Commission never influences our testing, ranking or verdicts. Read our affiliate policy.

The cost of charging an electric car in Germany is made up of things a driver cannot influence — the per-kilowatt-hour price, the tariff's monthly fee, the surcharge for plugging into someone else's hardware. And one thing that can be avoided entirely: the idle fee, charged when the car is still connected after charging has finished. Four of the five large networks publish a figure for it. They agree neither on how much it is nor on when it starts.

What the networks publish

  • EnBW mobility+ — 10 cents per additional minute — after more than four hours connected, capped at 12.00 euros per session
  • Aral pulse, DC charge points — 0.15 euros per minute — after 45 minutes connected, no cap; the fee does not apply at bp and Aral pulse's own charge points
  • Aral pulse, AC charge points up to 22 kW — 0.15 euros per minute — after 120 minutes connected, no cap; same exemption for its own charge points
  • EWE Go — 0.10 euros per minute — after four hours, capped at 24.00 euros per session, and only at partner charge points (none at its own stations)
  • Tesla Supercharger — 0.50 euros per minute — as a congestion fee, not an idle fee: only when the site is busy and the battery is at or above 80 percent or the session has ended, with a five-minute grace period
  • Ionity — no published amount — neither an idle nor an occupancy fee appears on the price and FAQ pages retrieved

Where the cap bites

Two of these amounts are capped, and both caps can be worked out exactly. At EnBW every minute after the fourth hour costs 10 cents, so the 12.00-euro ceiling is reached after 120 additional minutes — six hours plugged in, all told. Nothing beyond that is charged. At EWE Go the 24.00-euro ceiling corresponds to 240 minutes past the grace period at 10 cents a minute, meaning eight hours connected in total.

Aral pulse publishes no ceiling at all. At a DC charge point the clock starts after 45 minutes: stay connected for 90 minutes and 45 of them are billed at 0.15 euros, or 6.75 euros. Stay three hours and 135 minutes are billed — 20.25 euros. At an AC point the first two hours are free and the same per-minute rate follows. One practical detail from the retrieved tariff page: the fee does not apply at bp and Aral pulse's own charge points. It hits drivers using the Aral pulse card on other operators' hardware.

Why Tesla's number is a different kind of number

At 0.50 euros a minute Tesla has the highest per-minute rate here, but it follows a different logic. Its fees page names no standalone idle fee — it names a congestion fee. That fee applies only when the site is busy, and even then only once the battery is at or above 80 percent or the session has ended. Five minutes of grace are allowed for unplugging and leaving. At an empty Supercharger, according to that page, lingering costs nothing. At a full one, ten minutes too long costs 5.00 euros and half an hour costs 15.00 euros. No other network here reaches those figures as fast.

The network that names no figure

Ionity publishes per-kilowatt-hour prices — 0.69 euros for ad-hoc charging and 0.66 euros through the app, per its press release of 12 February 2026, alongside subscriptions at 5.99 euros (Motion) and 11.99 euros (Power) a month with per-kWh prices from 0.39 euros. No idle or occupancy fee appears on the price and FAQ pages retrieved. That is not evidence that none is charged. It means only that no published amount exists at that location to put in a comparison row.

Germany's ADAC identified the underlying problem on 26 June 2023: the level of the fee depends on the provider, and it is not always capped at a maximum. The motoring club wrote then that there was no uniform fee schedule, and that drivers would find the terms only on the provider's own website or in its app. Three years on the sentence still holds — and it is precisely why a list like this has to set six different rulebooks side by side rather than fill one column of a table.

Sources

Every factual claim above is traceable to these documents. Check them — that is why they are here.

About this byline

Meridians Technik-Redaktion is an editorial desk at Meridians, not an individual. A desk byline means the article was produced and fact-checked to that desk's published standards. Read our editorial standards and corrections policy.

Sponsored

Paid placement · not editorial

Related reading

The Meridians Brief

One considered email a week

What changed, what it costs you, and what to do about it — from the Meridians desks. No sponsored picks disguised as recommendations.

Sign-up opens with our launch issue. Nothing is sent or stored yet.