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I am doing my Ph.D. in Hungary via the Stipendium Hungaricum Scholarship. The stipend is extremely low: ~470 Euro per month for the first two years, ~570 Euro per month for the last two years.

I’m curious if there’s a resource that lists typical stipends or salaries for PhD students and postdocs in different countries. Ideally, this would help compare funding levels internationally.

Even more importantly, knowing whether the stipend or salary is enough to cover living expenses.

If no such comprehensive resource exists, perhaps we could use this thread to share country-specific estimates or personal experiences. This could help prospective students and postdocs get a realistic sense of funding and living costs around the world. There was a post about this, but in mathematics.

At my university, you can get paid extra as a teaching assistant. I just wanted to know if the situation is that bad in other places, or if it is just the worst in Hungary.

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    I get that it's difficult to get a sense of how your PhD/postdoc salary compares to others if you are unfamiliar with a given country, but as regards the cost of living in different places, that information is easily publicly accessible, no? Commented 2 days ago
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    @AdamPřenosil Yes, I agree with you. In fact, the cost of living can be found mostly on the university's website. I just wanted to know if there existed a source where we could have the salary with the expected living costs for major cities. Commented yesterday
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    @SARTHAKGUPTA That program via the link in your post very explicitly states that the stipend is not meant to entirely cover expenses and that other resources are expected, and links to cost-of-living information to help ensure that you are not mistaken about that. Commented yesterday
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    "Please bear in mind that these provisions are only a contribution to the living expenses of the Scholarship Holders. It means that it does not fully cover all the costs of living and the students need to add their own financial resources in order to cover all living expenses in Hungary. All applicants are highly advised to check the expected living expenses both in Hungary and in the city that they wish to live in before applying; please do check our Cost of Living Calculator" Commented yesterday
  • At least in the US, most PhDs (I'd guess at least 70%) have to work either as Teaching Assistants or Research Assistants in order to get any stipend. Without such work, the stipend is $0. What you have might be called a partial scholarship (i.e. isn't meant to fully cover all living costs). Do you get a free dormitory place? If you do, then €470/month (even in Budapest) isn't exactly very generous but should be enough if you're frugal. Commented 15 hours ago

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As the question you've linked to hints, there are a number of hidden factors which make a table of "average PhD student in country X receives funding Y" not particularly useful to estimate affordability without considerable additional context. For example:

  • Tax regimes differ, sometimes in subtle ways.
  • Visa and healthcare costs vary by host and home country.
  • Tuition costs may be fully dealt wth by the funder, partly included, or something you pay separately.
  • Cost of living varies at a city level as well as internationally.
  • Not all students are eligible for all sources of funding.
  • The concept of acting as a teaching assistant may be easy, possible, only good for beer money, or totally impossible.
  • The length of stipend/scholarship may not match the time it takes to complete the degree.
  • Some students may study part-time.

Having said that, many countries will have a government source which sets the level for public stipends, which other local funding sources will nearly match, match or exceed. For example, the UK research councils publish information on this page ( currently £20,780 a year tax-free outside London or £22,780 in London). I'm not aware of any aggregator for these, and do remember the points above if you find one.

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  • The biggest factor not listed here is field ... CS, engineering salaries have to be a lot higher to compete with industry. Averaging across fields tells a humanities scholar or a CS student little about what they should expect to earn Commented yesterday
  • @ÆzorÆhai-him- yes, I agree with you. I am mainly interested in STEM. In particular, for mathematics! Commented yesterday
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    @SARTHAKGUPTA Probably one of the lower-paid areas of STEM. Commented yesterday
  • @ÆzorÆhai-him- actually in the UK, unless you're a rock star Professor, the Arts/humanities vs STEM gradient is relatively flat (academia doesn't compete with industry on pay, and there's generally a whole load of collective bargaining going on once people stop being students), rather it's the number of positions which varies hugely. Commented yesterday
  • @origimbo Good to know! Commented yesterday
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I agree with origimbo that besides the raw salary/stipend amount, there are a lot of factors which can turn the tables. Salaried positions may also get you more pay on a pound-for-pound net basis since even though stipends can be tax-exempt since mandatory insurances covered partially by the employer can turn the tables there.

But FWIW in Germany for salaried positions you'll likely get at least a 25% TV-L E13 position, so you can use this page (Entgeltgruppe: E13, if not fulltime, then click on "Zulagen, Abzüge, Teilzeit" and enter your % time in Arbeitszeit) to get what you would get as a fresh MSc. starting as a doctoral student. Currently that would get you 2812 euro per month after taxes which isn't bad as long as you don't want to live in Munich city centre or the like. The pay increases a bit the longer you work there / have experience. Health insurance is mandatory and is completely covered by taxes; once insured, you rarely have to pay extra for health-related things. A 25% position would get you 883 euro on which living is a lot more difficult.

As a rough guide, STEM positions are more likely to be full-time, though I also know of chemistry PhD students only getting 25% positions.

When it comes to postdocs in Germany, you don't generally get an upgrade to E14. You can argue for a higher level within E13 instead of starting at 1 but that depends very much on the budgets available.

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This too vastly differs between institutions inside even one country, also, sometimes inside institutions. Some positions come with grant funding from certanin sources, which are quite hard to deal with when doing statistics. Like in our department, there was a minimum of 1300 EUR, but students could get up to ~2700 EUR, depending if the group allocated more, what grant they were covered by, etc.

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    I don't see why there being a range would be an obstacle to such a resource existing. Knowing the range is still useful info. Commented 2 days ago
  • Because it differs so vastly, it would be interesting to get data on that. Not talking about monay only harms normal people. In your example, it would be very imporaten to know what causes the differences. Commented yesterday
  • It depended on how much money each group was willing to allocate or what funding the students won/brought with themselves. Commented 3 hours ago

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