What is an alternative to LinkedIn Premium for job hunting?

The Swiss job portals at a glance

Click an image for the full-size view. What each portal actually is stands beside it.

1. 

   1. SwissJobs.appOur app

   Over 21,000 open Swiss roles from ATS systems, company sites and LinkedIn in one place — and from any advert, straight into a CV, a motivation letter, a CV check and interview prep. The RAV job-search-efforts form fills itself from your application tracker. Free to use; the account is asked for at save.

   SwissJobs.app →

2. 

   2. jobs.ch

   The best-known board in German-speaking Switzerland and the largest index in the country. Owned by JobCloud AG — as are jobup.ch and JobScout24.

   jobs.ch →

3. 

   3. jobup.ch

   The standard in French-speaking Switzerland and the first place to look for the Romandie — but the same JobCloud AG as jobs.ch.

   jobup.ch →

4. 

   4. JobScout24

   A third brand from the same company. Searching all three to widen your search means searching one provider three times.

   JobScout24 →

5. 

   5. Indeed Switzerland

   The broadest aggregation, because Indeed also collects from other boards — at the cost of many duplicates of the same advert.

   Indeed Switzerland →

6. 

   6. LinkedIn Jobs

   The best reputation for English-speaking and international roles in Switzerland. Considerably thinner for trades, care and commercial roles.

   LinkedIn Jobs →

7. 

   7. jobagent.ch

   A meta-search across the Swiss job boards, "every job in Switzerland at a glance". Its strength is the Job-Abo: a saved search that mails you new adverts from every portal it covers. Salary calculator and application guides alongside.

   jobagent.ch →

8. 

   8. SwissDevJobs

   IT and software only, and thorough about it: "183 IT & Software developer jobs in Switzerland", filtered by technology (C#, Java, Python, DevOps, ML) rather than by industry. Publishes salary statistics and lists the companies that disclose their ranges. The site itself is in English.

   SwissDevJobs →

Feature comparison

As of 4 September 2026. "not stated" means it could not be read on their own site — not "does not exist". Our rows come from the code (lib/stripe/trialConfig.ts) and from walking the live flow, not from marketing copy.

Pricing side by side

As of 4 September 2026. "not stated" means it could not be read on their own site — not "does not exist". Our rows come from the code (lib/stripe/trialConfig.ts) and from walking the live flow, not from marketing copy.

What you are actually paying for

Premium Career bundles four separate things, and separating them is the whole exercise, because each has a different alternative. Search: advanced filters, plus lists of adverts where LinkedIn calculates you are among the stronger applicants. Visibility: who looked at your profile, a badge, and the ability to mark one application as a top choice. Contact: five InMails a month to people outside your network. Learning: LinkedIn Learning, which the same page says holds more than twenty-five thousand courses.

Against Swiss adverts the bundle has a structural gap that has nothing to do with price. The filters that matter here are canton and Pensum — a Swiss job is not full-time or part-time, it is 60, 80 or 80 to 100 per cent, and that number is often in the advert's own title. On the Swiss boards those filters are free and sit in the search form. On LinkedIn the advanced filters are a paid feature, and the Pensum is not a field on the platform at all.

The most expensive part, the InMails, assumes there is somebody to write to. In our index 75.6 per cent of employers have four or fewer open adverts: trades businesses, medical practices, restaurants, communal administrations. Those employers have an application address, not a recruiter with a maintained profile. A subscription built around the direct message fits the quarter of the market that recruits continuously, and not the rest of it.

SwissJobs.app

A Swiss job search in four languages, with a CV tool attached. Searching, filtering by canton and Pensum and reading a full advert take no account and cost nothing. Tailoring a CV to one specific advert needs an account: seven days free, then CHF 15 a month or CHF 95 a year, which works out at CHF 7.92 a month.

Right for you if you are applying to Swiss adverts and want a document per advert rather than one profile for everything — and if you are searching from abroad, because nothing here asks for a Swiss address, an AHV number or a permit before it will show you a job.

The weakness: we are not a network. Nobody can find you here, nobody will message you, and there is no profile for a recruiter to search. If you want to be approached while staying quietly employed, LinkedIn is the right tool and we are the wrong one. Our index is also smaller than jobs.ch's.

LinkedIn without Premium

The most obvious alternative to LinkedIn Premium is LinkedIn. The free account carries the profile, the network, job alerts, Easy Apply and #OpenToWork — the feature that tells recruiters you are open to offers. Cost: nothing.

Right for you if your profession has an audience on the platform at all: English-language, international and senior roles, and the corporate and pharmaceutical belt around Zug, Basel, Zurich and Geneva. In that segment a well-kept free profile is most of the value at none of the price.

The weakness, stated plainly: without the subscription you lose the advanced filters, the applicant insights and the ability to message strangers. LinkedIn has also been rebuilding its search — in August 2026 a notice above the Swiss results list said the filters were being reintroduced gradually. And the free trial is not repeatable: LinkedIn says members who used one in the past twelve months are not eligible for another.

jobs.ch

The largest board in German-speaking Switzerland, free for job seekers — the Swiss App Store listing for its app shows no in-app purchases at all. The interface runs in German, French and English. The main navigation carries jobs, companies, a salary calculator and a job coach, and «Spotted by jobs.ch» is a talent pool: share a profile, and the site contacts you when a vacancy matches.

That is the fact to know before buying a subscription: being discovered and comparing your salary — two of the reasons people buy LinkedIn Premium — are free here. Right for you if you are looking in German-speaking Switzerland and want the board Swiss employers themselves use.

The weakness: Spotted and applications need an account, and jobs.ch, jobup.ch and Jobscout24 belong to the same company, so working through all three means reading many of the same adverts three times.

Indeed Switzerland

The aggregator. Indeed pulls adverts in from company websites and other boards, which surfaces vacancies that never reach a Swiss job board. Free for job seekers; employers pay to have their adverts stand out.

Right for you as a second pass once the Swiss boards are exhausted, and useful if you are searching across a border — a frontalier comparing jobs in Geneva and in Haute-Savoie sees both in one place.

The weakness comes from the same mechanism: aggregation drags in duplicates, expired adverts and agency listings, and the order of the results is not neutral, because visibility is sold. An automated request to the Swiss homepage was refused on 28 August 2026, so little about it can be checked from outside a browser.

Job-Room (arbeit.swiss)

The job portal of the Swiss public employment service, free and without advertising. arbeit.swiss calls it «Switzerland's biggest jobs platform» on its own jobseeker page. Anyone can search it, including from abroad.

Right for you if you are signed on with the RAV — and here comes the most important sentence on this page. No private tool, ours included, replaces the record of job-search efforts. You prove those efforts to your RAV in the form your canton requires; what counts is what your adviser tells you, and practice differs from canton to canton. We are a search layer on top of that, never a substitute for it.

It is also the closest thing to a free LinkedIn Learning: labour market measures, which arbeit.swiss says are there to «boost your chances of finding a job», run through the RAV for people entitled to unemployment benefit rather than through a subscription.

The weakness: registration is tied to signing on with the RAV, so the account side is closed to most people arriving from abroad. The interface is a government interface, part of the stock comes from the statutory vacancy-reporting duty rather than from employers advertising for reach, and international roles are thin.

jobup.ch

The same operator's board for French-speaking Switzerland, describing itself as carrying every job available in Suisse romande. Free for job seekers, with a French and an English interface, its own salary section and «Spotted by jobup.ch».

Right for you if your search covers Geneva, Vaud, Neuchâtel, Fribourg, Valais or the Jura — including English speakers working for the international organisations and multinationals in and around Geneva, where the advert may be in English but the employer is thoroughly Swiss.

The weakness: outside the Romandie it is thin, and it overlaps heavily with jobs.ch, which is the same company's German-language brand.

Jobscout24.ch

The third board of the same group, free, organised by region rather than by canton — north-west Switzerland, the Zurich region, eastern Switzerland, central Switzerland, Région Lémanique, Ticino — with its own section for apprenticeships and a salary area.

Right for you if you think in regions rather than cantons, and for anyone looking at Swiss vocational training: apprenticeships are a whole entry route that has no category on LinkedIn.

The weakness: heavy overlap with jobs.ch, a smaller audience, and an account is required to apply.

Who should take what

Take LinkedIn Premium if your field is English-language or international, if you want to message named people at large employers, and if «Who's viewed your profile» genuinely tells you something. In that part of the market five InMails a month are a real tool. Budget around CHF 40 a month and cancel once the move is made; the subscription renews otherwise.

Take the free LinkedIn account if you are in that same segment but willing to do the work yourself. Keep the profile current, switch on #OpenToWork, set job alerts — that is the larger half of the value, at no cost.

Take jobs.ch or jobup.ch, by language region, if you want the boards Swiss employers use. Spotted and the salary tool replace two Premium arguments for free.

Take Job-Room if you are signed on with the RAV, where it is not a choice but part of the procedure — and take courses through the labour market measures rather than through a subscription.

Take SwissJobs.app if you are applying to Swiss adverts, want to search by canton and Pensum without an account, and want a CV shaped to each advert instead of one profile for everything. Take LinkedIn instead if your goal is to be found rather than to search: we cannot do that, and paying us would not change it.