PhD Salary in Europe: What Doctoral Candidates Are Paid in 29 Countries

PhD salary in Europe – A new Eurodoc report sets out what doctoral candidates are paid in 29 European countries, and finds the best paid start on more than twelve times the salary of the lowest paid within the EU alone.

Remuneration of Doctoral Candidates Across Europe 2024-2025 was published on 17 September by Eurodoc, the European Council of Doctoral Candidates and Junior Researchers, a federation of 31 national associations of early career researchers from 26 countries. Written by Pil Maria Saugmann, Nicola Dengo, Norbert Bencze, Eva Hnátková and Agnieszka Żyra, with input from member organisations right across Europe, it pulls together government regulations, collective agreements and funder rules to show the starting gross pay a newly enrolled PhD student can expect under each country’s main national system.

The authors are clear it’s a baseline rather than the full picture. They want it updated regularly, and they want future editions to add tax, social security, pensions and leave, because the headline figure only tells you so much.

Why PhD pay matters for dementia research

Dementia research is an international field. Plenty of our community have done a PhD or postdoc in another country or are weighing one up, and many UK labs recruit doctoral students from across Europe. Whether a post comes with a salary and employee rights or a stipend with fewer protections matters as much as the number on the advert. If you supervise or recruit PhD students, it’s also a useful picture of what candidates may be comparing your offer against.

PhD salary or stipend: the real dividing line

Eurodoc sorts each country by its main model. In employment-based systems, candidates hold a contract, are covered by labour law and social security, and usually get employee rights and benefits. In scholarship or stipend-based systems there’s no standard employment relationship, and rights and social protection are often more limited. Fragmented systems have no single model at all. Of the 29 countries, 13 are employment-based, 13 are stipend-based, and three (Cyprus, Greece and Malta) are so fragmented that no representative figure could be given.

Pay follows that line almost exactly. With one exception, every country where doctoral candidates are employed pays more than every country where they’re on a stipend. The lowest employment-based rates are France (€26,400) and Finland (€25,744), while the best stipend is Spain’s at €24,360. The exception is Estonia (€21,600), which only switched from stipends to employment in 2023/24. Before that, candidates there typically got less than €1,000 a month.

The highest and lowest PhD salaries in Europe

Denmark pays PhD students the most, starting them on €58,014 a year, followed by Germany (€55,557), Belgium (€50,800), Norway (€49,728 to €51,118) and Switzerland (€49,675). At the other end are Ukraine (€2,263, a 2026 figure), Hungary (€4,615), Bulgaria (€8,283), Romania (€8,449) and Poland (€9,623). Denmark’s starting rate is around 12.5 times Hungary’s and more than 25 times Ukraine’s. The middle of the table sits at roughly €22,000 to €24,000, where Ireland and Spain land.

A few cautions before anyone starts packing. These are gross figures before tax and deductions, they’re starting rates, and they aren’t adjusted for the cost of living. Germany and Switzerland are shown at full-time equivalent, but candidates in both are often on part-time contracts, and in Austria 75% contracts are common, so what people actually take home can be well below the headline. Euro conversions use exchange rates from 13 September 2026.

Source: Eurodoc, Remuneration of Doctoral Candidates Across Europe 2024-2025 (CC BY 4.0). Figures are 2024 or 2025 rates, except Ukraine (2026). *Shown at full-time equivalent; many candidates are on part-time contracts. Cyprus, Greece and Malta have no single national system and are not shown.

The detail behind the numbers

The country notes are where the report earns its keep. A few that stand out:

• Italy lets universities admit up to a quarter of doctoral candidates without any funding, and its PhD stipend isn’t uprated each year. It only changes when the regulations are revised.
• The Czech Republic has, since 2025, pegged its doctoral scholarship to 1.2 times the national minimum wage, so it rises when the minimum wage does.
• Lithuania sets its scholarship at 19 times the Basic Social Benefit in the first year and 22 times after that.
• Hungary pays one of the lowest rates, but its state scholarship does come with social insurance and pension entitlements. Stipend doesn’t always mean no protection.
• Latvia is in transition. Since 2024/25, candidates on state-funded places are generally employed, while separate scholarships of €140 to €300 a month for 11 months cover those who aren’t.
• Sweden and Norway have no single legal minimum. Swedish PhD salaries are set by local agreements, so the figures come from Stockholm University and KTH, while in Norway a national collective agreement covers almost everyone.

The report also stresses that a national system rarely covers everyone. Finland, France, Ireland, Portugal, Romania and Spain all come with the warning that many candidates are funded differently, paid less, or not paid at all.

How the UK PhD stipend compares

The UK isn’t in the report, alongside countries including Croatia, Iceland, Serbia and Türkiye. For a rough comparison, the UKRI minimum stipend was £20,780 in 2025/26 and went up to £21,805 (£23,805 with London weighting) from 1 October 2026. Converted to euros, that would put the UK somewhere in the middle of the table, near Ireland and Spain.

Comparing like with like is harder than it looks, though. UK stipends are tax-free, so the money goes further than a gross salary of the same size. But they come with no employment contract, no pension contributions and no National Insurance record, which is exactly the trade-off Eurodoc is pointing at. We covered the last UKRI stipend rise at the time, and the recent Path to PhD report found that money is still the biggest pressure on many UK PhD students, even those on funded stipends.

Pay is only half of it

Eurodoc’s main point is that the type of funding decides far more than the amount. Whether you’re employed or on a stipend shapes your access to a pension, paid annual leave, sick pay and parental leave. Two candidates on similar money can end up with very different safety nets.

So if you’re looking at a paid PhD in Europe, read beyond the salary line. Is it a contract or a stipend? What percentage of full time is it? Does it come with pension contributions, sick pay and parental leave? And will the funding last as long as the PhD does? You’ll find PhD studentships and other posts across Europe on our jobs board, and our guide to masters in dementia covers the step before.

Common questions about PhD salaries in Europe

Read the full report: Remuneration of Doctoral Candidates Across Europe 2024-2025, Eurodoc, 2026. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.22809708. Published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence.