Country-wide policy
Almost Every Money Test in Polish Immigration Law Points at One Figure, and the Act That Holds It Prints an Out-of-Date Number
The Ustawa o cudzoziemcach almost never states an amount. Where it asks for money it asks for a "stable and regular source of income sufficient to cover the costs of maintaining yourself and the dependants in your family", and article 140(2) then fixes what sufficient means: a monthly income higher than the income qualifying for cash benefits under the Ustawa o pomocy społecznej, measured for the applicant and for each dependant. The same test is used for posted workers, for business activity, for family reunification, for the long-term EU resident permit and, in a slightly different form, for students, where housing costs are deducted first. The figure itself lives in article 8(1) of the social assistance Act, and that article prints 461 złoty for a single person and 316 złoty for a person in a family with a footnote attached to each saying that the current amount is announced by the minister responsible for social security. The amount in the statute is therefore not the amount in force, and no instrument read here states the one that is.
Topics it changes
- Residency on passive income
- Residency through work
- Residency through investment
- Residency as a student
- Residency through marriage
- Becoming a citizen
What it requires
- A stable and regular source of income, measured monthly
- Above the social assistance threshold for you and for each dependant
- For students: above it after housing costs have been deducted
At a glance
- Where the test lives
- Article 140(2) of the Ustawa o cudzoziemcach, which the other chapters point back to
- What it measures against
- The income qualifying for cash social assistance benefits
Set by article 8(1) of the Ustawa o pomocy społecznej.
- The figures the social assistance Act prints
- 461 złoty for a person living alone and 316 złoty per person in a family
Article 8(1)(1) and (2). Each carries footnote 1, which says the current amount is announced by the minister under article 9(7), so these are not the amounts in force.
- The amount actually in force
- Not stated in either Act; it is published by the minister responsible for social security
Footnote 1 to article 8(1) of the Ustawa o pomocy społecznej. The ministerial announcement was not read.
- For students
- Housing costs come off first, and what is left must clear the threshold
Article 144(1a) and (1b) of the Ustawa o cudzoziemcach, which defines housing costs as the fixed charges per occupant plus energy, gas, water, sewage and waste.
What the law says
«Wysokość miesięcznego dochodu, o którym mowa w ust. 1 pkt 3, powinna być wyższa niż wysokość dochodu uprawniającego do świadczeń pieniężnych z pomocy społecznej określonych w ustawie z dnia 12 marca 2004 r. o pomocy społecznej, w odniesieniu do cudzoziemca oraz każdego członka rodziny pozostającego na jego utrzymaniu.»The test, stated once and used throughout the Act by cross-reference.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The Chancellery of the Sejm's statute collection. The same corpus is served at three addresses and they do not behave alike. isap.sejm.gov.pl is the public web front end; dziennikustaw.gov.pl, run by the Rządowe Centrum Legislacji, serves the Dziennik Ustaw as published; and api.sejm.gov.pl/eli is a machine interface over the same material, giving each act an ELI of the form DU/YYYY/N with its status, its entry into force, its repeal date, the acts that amended it, the consolidated texts announced for it, and the amendments made after each of those. Every act is served in up to four editions: O, the text as published in the Dziennik; T, the announced consolidated text; and U, the Chancellery's own tekst ujednolicony, which carries every amendment and prints on every page the date it was generated and, at its head, the list of Dziennik positions it was built from. The U edition also marks pending amendments in the body: words still in force are in square brackets and the wording that will replace them is in angle brackets, with a marginal note naming the amending Act and its commencement.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: **isap.sejm.gov.pl cannot be read by this project at all, and it fails without saying so.** A request for a document page answers HTTP 200 with an Imperva interstitial headed "Pardon Our Interruption"; a request for a PDF answers HTTP 200 with `Content-Type: application/pdf` and an Incapsula JavaScript challenge in the body, so a naive client stores an HTML page under a .pdf name and a PDF tool reports the file as corrupt rather than as blocked. The same documents come back intact from api.sejm.gov.pl, which is why every citation here uses that address. The tekst ujednolicony is the Chancellery's own consolidation and is not an official text; the Dziennik Ustaw as published governs. Its angle-bracket marking cannot be relied on to say what is in force today: the consolidation of the Ustawa o kierujących pojazdami generated on 1 October 2026 still marks a change to article 11(1)(5) as taking effect on 3 September 2026. It may not be cited for the amounts in instruments that delegate them - the Ustawa o pomocy społecznej prints 461 and 316 złoty with a footnote saying the current figures are announced by the minister - nor for anything the Chancellery does not publish: the district lists of occupations closed to work permits are kept in a register under article 31(6) of the 2025 employment Act and are not here, and ministerial announcements under article 9(7) of the social assistance Act are published in Monitor Polski.
We re-read it every 60 days. More about this source
«Prawo do świadczeń pieniężnych z pomocy społecznej, z zastrzeżeniem art. 40, art. 41, art. 53a i art. 91, przysługuje: 1) osobie samotnie gospodarującej, której dochód nie przekracza kwoty 4611) zł, zwanej dalej „kryterium dochodowym osoby samotnie gospodarującej”, 2) osobie w rodzinie, w której dochód na osobę nie przekracza kwoty 3161) zł, zwanej dalej „kryterium dochodowym na osobę w rodzinie”, 3) rodzinie, której dochód nie przekracza sumy kwot kryterium dochodowego na osobę w rodzinie, zwanej dalej „kryterium dochodowym rodziny”»The amounts as the Act prints them. The strings "4611)" and "3161)" are 461 and 316 with the superscript footnote marker 1 running into them, and are left exactly as the publisher set them.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The Chancellery of the Sejm's statute collection. The same corpus is served at three addresses and they do not behave alike. isap.sejm.gov.pl is the public web front end; dziennikustaw.gov.pl, run by the Rządowe Centrum Legislacji, serves the Dziennik Ustaw as published; and api.sejm.gov.pl/eli is a machine interface over the same material, giving each act an ELI of the form DU/YYYY/N with its status, its entry into force, its repeal date, the acts that amended it, the consolidated texts announced for it, and the amendments made after each of those. Every act is served in up to four editions: O, the text as published in the Dziennik; T, the announced consolidated text; and U, the Chancellery's own tekst ujednolicony, which carries every amendment and prints on every page the date it was generated and, at its head, the list of Dziennik positions it was built from. The U edition also marks pending amendments in the body: words still in force are in square brackets and the wording that will replace them is in angle brackets, with a marginal note naming the amending Act and its commencement.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: **isap.sejm.gov.pl cannot be read by this project at all, and it fails without saying so.** A request for a document page answers HTTP 200 with an Imperva interstitial headed "Pardon Our Interruption"; a request for a PDF answers HTTP 200 with `Content-Type: application/pdf` and an Incapsula JavaScript challenge in the body, so a naive client stores an HTML page under a .pdf name and a PDF tool reports the file as corrupt rather than as blocked. The same documents come back intact from api.sejm.gov.pl, which is why every citation here uses that address. The tekst ujednolicony is the Chancellery's own consolidation and is not an official text; the Dziennik Ustaw as published governs. Its angle-bracket marking cannot be relied on to say what is in force today: the consolidation of the Ustawa o kierujących pojazdami generated on 1 October 2026 still marks a change to article 11(1)(5) as taking effect on 3 September 2026. It may not be cited for the amounts in instruments that delegate them - the Ustawa o pomocy społecznej prints 461 and 316 złoty with a footnote saying the current figures are announced by the minister - nor for anything the Chancellery does not publish: the district lists of occupations closed to work permits are kept in a register under article 31(6) of the 2025 employment Act and are not here, and ministerial announcements under article 9(7) of the social assistance Act are published in Monitor Polski.
We re-read it every 60 days. More about this source
«Aktualną kwotę ogłasza minister właściwy do spraw zabezpieczenia społecznego na podstawie art. 9 ust. 7 niniejszej ustawy.»The footnote that makes the printed figures historical. Any guide quoting them as current is quoting a statute that says it is not.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The Chancellery of the Sejm's statute collection. The same corpus is served at three addresses and they do not behave alike. isap.sejm.gov.pl is the public web front end; dziennikustaw.gov.pl, run by the Rządowe Centrum Legislacji, serves the Dziennik Ustaw as published; and api.sejm.gov.pl/eli is a machine interface over the same material, giving each act an ELI of the form DU/YYYY/N with its status, its entry into force, its repeal date, the acts that amended it, the consolidated texts announced for it, and the amendments made after each of those. Every act is served in up to four editions: O, the text as published in the Dziennik; T, the announced consolidated text; and U, the Chancellery's own tekst ujednolicony, which carries every amendment and prints on every page the date it was generated and, at its head, the list of Dziennik positions it was built from. The U edition also marks pending amendments in the body: words still in force are in square brackets and the wording that will replace them is in angle brackets, with a marginal note naming the amending Act and its commencement.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: **isap.sejm.gov.pl cannot be read by this project at all, and it fails without saying so.** A request for a document page answers HTTP 200 with an Imperva interstitial headed "Pardon Our Interruption"; a request for a PDF answers HTTP 200 with `Content-Type: application/pdf` and an Incapsula JavaScript challenge in the body, so a naive client stores an HTML page under a .pdf name and a PDF tool reports the file as corrupt rather than as blocked. The same documents come back intact from api.sejm.gov.pl, which is why every citation here uses that address. The tekst ujednolicony is the Chancellery's own consolidation and is not an official text; the Dziennik Ustaw as published governs. Its angle-bracket marking cannot be relied on to say what is in force today: the consolidation of the Ustawa o kierujących pojazdami generated on 1 October 2026 still marks a change to article 11(1)(5) as taking effect on 3 September 2026. It may not be cited for the amounts in instruments that delegate them - the Ustawa o pomocy społecznej prints 461 and 316 złoty with a footnote saying the current figures are announced by the minister - nor for anything the Chancellery does not publish: the district lists of occupations closed to work permits are kept in a register under article 31(6) of the 2025 employment Act and are not here, and ministerial announcements under article 9(7) of the social assistance Act are published in Monitor Polski.
We re-read it every 60 days. More about this source
«Wysokość miesięcznych środków finansowych, po odliczeniu środków przeznaczonych na pokrycie kosztów zamieszkania, które cudzoziemiec posiada na pokrycie kosztów utrzymania, o których mowa w ust. 1 pkt 2 lit. b, jest wyższa niż wysokość dochodu uprawniającego do świadczeń pieniężnych z pomocy społecznej określonych w ustawie z dnia 12 marca 2004 r. o pomocy społecznej w odniesieniu do cudzoziemca oraz każdego członka rodziny pozostającego na jego utrzymaniu.»The student variant, which is stricter: the deduction comes off before the comparison.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The Chancellery of the Sejm's statute collection. The same corpus is served at three addresses and they do not behave alike. isap.sejm.gov.pl is the public web front end; dziennikustaw.gov.pl, run by the Rządowe Centrum Legislacji, serves the Dziennik Ustaw as published; and api.sejm.gov.pl/eli is a machine interface over the same material, giving each act an ELI of the form DU/YYYY/N with its status, its entry into force, its repeal date, the acts that amended it, the consolidated texts announced for it, and the amendments made after each of those. Every act is served in up to four editions: O, the text as published in the Dziennik; T, the announced consolidated text; and U, the Chancellery's own tekst ujednolicony, which carries every amendment and prints on every page the date it was generated and, at its head, the list of Dziennik positions it was built from. The U edition also marks pending amendments in the body: words still in force are in square brackets and the wording that will replace them is in angle brackets, with a marginal note naming the amending Act and its commencement.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: **isap.sejm.gov.pl cannot be read by this project at all, and it fails without saying so.** A request for a document page answers HTTP 200 with an Imperva interstitial headed "Pardon Our Interruption"; a request for a PDF answers HTTP 200 with `Content-Type: application/pdf` and an Incapsula JavaScript challenge in the body, so a naive client stores an HTML page under a .pdf name and a PDF tool reports the file as corrupt rather than as blocked. The same documents come back intact from api.sejm.gov.pl, which is why every citation here uses that address. The tekst ujednolicony is the Chancellery's own consolidation and is not an official text; the Dziennik Ustaw as published governs. Its angle-bracket marking cannot be relied on to say what is in force today: the consolidation of the Ustawa o kierujących pojazdami generated on 1 October 2026 still marks a change to article 11(1)(5) as taking effect on 3 September 2026. It may not be cited for the amounts in instruments that delegate them - the Ustawa o pomocy społecznej prints 461 and 316 złoty with a footnote saying the current figures are announced by the minister - nor for anything the Chancellery does not publish: the district lists of occupations closed to work permits are kept in a register under article 31(6) of the 2025 employment Act and are not here, and ministerial announcements under article 9(7) of the social assistance Act are published in Monitor Polski.
We re-read it every 60 days. More about this source
Practical notes
No złoty figure is published on this site for the Polish income test, because the only figures in the instruments read are the ones the social assistance Act itself disclaims. The ministerial announcement under article 9(7) was not read.
The citizenship Act asks for a "stabilne i regularne źródło dochodu" in article 30(1) without pointing at article 140(2), so whether the same threshold applies there is not something these instruments settle.
Article 8(2) lets a commune council raise the thresholds for periodic and special-purpose allowances, which is about social assistance rather than about immigration, but it is a reason the figure is not one number nationwide.