What is an alternative to the arbeit.swiss unemployment-benefit calculator?

The daily allowance: 70% or 80%

Under AVIG art. 22. Insured earnings are the average salary of the last six (or twelve) months, capped at the AVIG maximum. Your fund calculates the individual case — this table says which row applies to you. As of 7 September 2026.

Why the federal site stops short of a number

Start with what arbeit.swiss does better than any calculator. Its FAQ names the three routes to the 80 per cent rate, defines insured earnings as the average of the last six — or, «if more advantageous», twelve — monthly salaries, and lays the waiting days out in a table by income band. It does this in German, French, Italian and English, and it says plainly who is responsible. A calculator would have added a number and nothing else.

And the federal agency could not stand behind that number. Swiss unemployment insurance splits the work in a way that has no equivalent in most countries: the RAV places you and monitors you, while a separate Arbeitslosenkasse checks your entitlement, calculates the amount and pays it out (Art. 81 AVIG). You can be registered with the RAV, have appointments and application duties, and still be waiting on a fund that has not yet decided.

So the practical reading of the missing calculator is not that Switzerland forgot. It is that any figure you get before your fund has seen your Arbeitsbescheinigung — the employer certificate you hand in — and your last twelve payslips is an estimate, wherever it comes from.

The best alternative is a fund's own calculator

If the fund produces the number, a fund's calculator is the sensible substitute, and this route is more open than it looks: you may choose your Arbeitslosenkasse freely (Art. 20 para. 1 AVIG), public or recognised private, and Unia runs a recognised one. Its calculator asks for nothing in return — no account, no membership, no e-mail.

It is also the more accurate of the two we tested. For insured earnings of CHF 6000 on 24 August 2026 it returned a daily allowance of CHF 193.55, the 70 per cent rate, a maximum of 400 daily allowances, «Allgemeine Wartetage 10» and an average gross monthly benefit of CHF 4200 — the four quantities your budget actually depends on. Enter CHF 20'000 and it visibly reduces the insured earnings to CHF 12'350 instead of quietly carrying on.

Two honest weaknesses. It only accepts between 12 and 24 contribution months, so if you have worked ten and want to know whether anything is coming at all, it will not answer — and that is precisely the question a newcomer to Switzerland most often has. And it collects salary month by month, which is more accurate but slower. It states its own limits: the figures are for information, are non-binding and carry no warranty.

The thirty-second test for any calculator

There is one point in the law where a calculator is either right or wrong, and you can reproduce it in half a minute. Art. 22 para. 2 AVIG gives the 70 per cent rate only to people whose full daily allowance «beträgt mehr als 140 Franken» — exceeds CHF 140. Code that literally and you create a cliff: just above the line, the allowance would drop below what someone on a lower salary receives.

SECO's binding directive closes it at marginal note C78: between insured earnings of CHF 3797 and CHF 4340 the daily allowance is at least CHF 140. The directive works three examples — CHF 3797 gives CHF 140 at 80 per cent, CHF 4000 gives CHF 140 at 76 per cent, CHF 4340 gives CHF 140 at 70 per cent.

So enter CHF 4000 as insured earnings with no dependent children. CHF 140 means the tool follows the directive. CHF 129.03 means it applied the percentage rule raw. That is what arbeitslosenrechner.ch returned in our test — about CHF 11 a day short, roughly CHF 4388 across a full 400-day entitlement. Unia returned CHF 140.00 with the blended 75.95 per cent rate shown on the result.

Doing it yourself, and the three thresholds that trip people up

The formula fits on a napkin. Insured earnings divided by 21.7 give the daily earnings (Art. 40a AVIV); times 0.7 or 0.8 gives the daily allowance; times 21.7 again gives the rough monthly figure, because a month counts 21.7 allowances rather than 30 days.

Insured earnings are not your last salary. They are the average AHV-liable pay of your last six or twelve months, whichever is better for you, including contractually agreed regular allowances and the pro-rata share of the 13. Monatslohn — the thirteenth salary that most Swiss contracts pay out in one or two instalments and that people arriving from abroad routinely forget to include.

Then the three thresholds: nothing is insured below CHF 500 a month (Art. 40 AVIV); the CHF 140 floor applies between CHF 3797 and CHF 4340; and the ceiling sits at CHF 12'350 a month, above which extra salary changes nothing. If you support children under 25 there is also a supplement matching the family allowances you would receive in work (Art. 22 para. 1 AVIG) — neither calculator we tested shows it, which is a good reason to have the fund confirm the estimate.

Why the first payment is smaller than any calculator says

Four reductions sit between a calculator's output and your bank account, and three of them are invisible to any tool. First the general waiting days: five to twenty days without payment depending on insured earnings, capped at five if you support children (Art. 18 para. 1 AVIG). They are a deductible rather than a penalty, and they land in the month your budget is thinnest.

Second, Einstelltage — suspension days imposed for breaches of duty, most commonly for not having applied for jobs during the notice period. That obligation surprises almost everyone who has not been through the Swiss system: you are expected to be applying before your last working day, not from it. Third, contribution time: without twelve contributory months in the last two years there is no entitlement at all, whatever a calculator printed.

Fourth, the deductions from the allowance itself. Here the free commercial calculator is genuinely the better source: it sets your previous net pay against the future benefit and itemises AHV/IV/EO, the non-occupational accident contribution and the BVG risk premium. If what you need is the size of the hole in the household budget, you get it there in one view — on a base figure that may be too low.

If you commute across a border, none of this applies to you

This is the single most consequential thing on the page for anyone living in France, Germany or Italy and working in Switzerland. arbeit.swiss states, on its page about Regulation 883/2004, that where frontier workers become unemployed it is the state of residence that pays unemployment insurance benefits; Switzerland reimburses that state up to five months of benefits, at the rates of the state of residence.

So a Grenzgänger who becomes fully unemployed does not draw a Swiss daily allowance. Feeding a Swiss salary into a Swiss calculator produces a number that will never be paid to anyone.

This may change, but has not yet. The revision that would require unemployed frontier workers to register with the labour-market authority of the state of last employment was adopted by the European Parliament on 7 July 2026; the Council of the European Union has still to approve it, and Switzerland would have to accept it explicitly — at an estimated additional cost of between 600 and 900 million francs according to SECO. Until then the state of residence pays.

Which calculator suits whom, and what we do not offer

For most readers the fund's calculator is the right choice: it applies the marginal notes your benefit will later be settled under, it shows the waiting days and the ceiling, and it asks for no contact details. If what you want is the gap against your previous net pay, the free commercial calculator lays gross, net and deductions side by side, which no fund does — just re-check the CHF 3797 to CHF 4340 band before you trust the figure. With fewer than twelve contribution months, skip both and ask a fund directly. And if you live across a border, do not ask in Switzerland at all.

We do not have a benefit calculator and are not building one. On a figure that a fund formally decides, ours would be a third opinion at best. What we do have is a guide to registering with the RAV, in German, French and Italian, that sets out the rates, the waiting-day scale, the maximum number of allowances and the suspension days with the statutory references. It explains the rules behind the number; it does not replace the number.

And the limit that matters most here: we are in no sense a substitute for the official channels. Your entitlement is decided by your Arbeitslosenkasse, and your job-search efforts have to be filed through Job-Room or the cantonal form to count at all (Art. 26 para. 2 AVIV), by the fifth day of the following month. What we are useful for is the part that comes afterwards — finding Swiss vacancies and building the dossier to apply with.