It is known that plant species can induce development of different soil decomposer communities and that they differ in their influence on organic matter decomposition and N mineralization in soil. However, no study has so far assessed whether these two observations are related to each other. Based on the hypothesis that root-induced growth of soil decomposers leads to accelerated decomposition of SOM and increased plant N avail- ability in soil, we predicted that (1) among a set of grassland plants the abundance of soil decomposers in the plant rhizosphere is positively associated with plant N uptake from soil organic matter. To test this, we established grassland microcosms consisting of two plant individuals, a natural soil decomposer community and 15 N-labelled plant litter as organic N source, and compared the rhizosphere decomposer communities and litter-N uptake of a grass Holcus lanatus , an herb Plantago lanceolata and a leguminous herb Lotus corniculatus .We further predicted that (2) in terms of litter-N uptake those plant species that induce lower abundance of decomposers benefit from sharing soil with species inducing higher decom- poser abundance. To test this, we grew the three plant species in two-species combinations and compared the ability of each species to acquire litter-N when living in the monoculture and in the species combinations. We found that the three plant species induced develop- ment of different soil decomposer communities and that they acquired different amounts of litter-N. However, while L. corniculatus induced the highest abundance of decomposers, H. lanatus had the highest uptake of N from the litter, which refuted our first prediction. Since this prediction was falsified, we could not properly test the second one, but we found that litter-N uptake of H. lanatus and P. lanceolata were not significantly affected by the presence of L. corniculatus and the higher abundance of decomposers induced by L. corniculatus roots. Our results