What are the best tools for tracking job applications in Switzerland?

The tools compared directly

As of 4 September 2026. Every figure for another tool comes from that tool's own site; "n/s" means it was not readable there — not that the feature is missing. Our row comes from the code and from walking the live flow.

SwissJobs.app — the application list

What it is: the list that sits inside the job search where you find the adverts. Save a job in the feed and it appears in the list with the job title, employer, town, the advert's address and the date, without typing a field; a tick turns it into «applied», the date can be clicked and corrected, and entries are grouped by day. Applications from elsewhere are added manually, with a contact person's name, email and phone. Cost: free — an account with an email address, no credit card.

Who it suits: anyone applying regularly to Swiss adverts found online, and anyone doing that in more than one language. The interface exists in German, French, Italian and English, which none of the American tools on this list offers. If you have just moved to Switzerland, this is also the only entry here whose search fields match the way Swiss adverts are written.

Where it stops: there is no export and no print view, so the list cannot be handed in as a file or carried to an appointment on paper. There are exactly two states, saved and applied — if you want interview stages, rejection reasons and follow-up dates, Huntr does that and we do not. And for adverts sourced from LinkedIn we show no back-link to the original posting.

Job-Room (the unemployment insurance eServices)

What it is: the official channel where job-search efforts are recorded — not a tracker in the sense of the rest of this list, but the place where the record legally lands. arbeit.swiss lists the jobseeker eServices as efforts to find work, incapacity to work and documents for jobseeking, plus jobs including job alerts and watchlists. Cost: free, and SECO says so in those words.

Who it suits: everyone registered with an RAV, and it is not a matter of preference. The SECO information sheet of 11 August 2026 states that an entry made with a private provider does not count as a submission to the RAV or to the unemployment insurance fund, and that anything subject to a deadline must go through the eService on Job-Room or a channel the RAV or the fund has expressly named.

Where it stops: it is unavailable until two steps are done, both described on arbeit.swiss — signing on with the RAV for public employment services, then registering for a Job-Room account. If you are job-hunting from abroad, or in Switzerland but not registered, this entry does not apply to you at all. And how many applications per month are expected is agreed individually with your RAV and varies by canton.

Microsoft Excel

What it is: the spreadsheet everything else is measured against, and still hard to beat for an application list — calculate, filter, sort, print, keep. Cost: the web version is free, advertised on Microsoft's Swiss site as free Microsoft 365 apps for the web. For the desktop programs, Microsoft 365 Single is CHF 99.95 a year or CHF 9.95 a month in the Swiss store, Family CHF 139.95, Premium CHF 199.95, and Office Home 2024 is a one-off purchase at CHF 159.95.

Who it suits: anyone who needs a file to hand over, print or still be able to open in ten years — and anyone with their own questions about their search. How many applications this month, how many with no reply after four weeks, what share of rejections came from adverts versus speculative approaches: three formulas, and you have numbers no finished product will give you in that shape.

Where it stops: every row is typed by hand, at the exact moment you have just finished applying and want to stop. That is where the gaps appear — employer noted, exact job title not, Pensum missing. And the link to the advert expires while the spreadsheet stays, so write the details out rather than pointing at them.

Google Sheets

What it is: the same spreadsheet in a browser, with sharing and version history. Cost: free for this purpose — anyone with a Google account can create one, per Google's own product page. The paid tiers are aimed at companies and start in Switzerland at CHF 7.00 per user per month for Workspace Starter, CHF 14.00 for Standard and CHF 22.00 for Plus.

Who it suits: anyone updating the list on a phone, and anyone who wants to show it to someone — a careers adviser, a coach, a partner — without emailing a file. Also anyone who wants an edit history: it records who changed what and when, which a file on a laptop does not.

Where it stops: the same manual entry as Excel, plus one more thing. The sheet lives in a Google account rather than on your own disk, and it will contain the names and phone numbers of contact people at Swiss employers. That is not a reason to avoid it, but it is a reason not to store documents there you would not hand to a stranger.

Notion

What it is: a construction kit in which an application database takes twenty minutes to build — table, board and calendar views, and your own fields for Pensum, canton, permit question or rejection reason. Cost: the free tier is explicitly «For individuals to organize personal projects and life»; Plus is USD 10 per member per month (about CHF 8), Business USD 20 (about CHF 16). The pricing page is quoted in dollars.

Who it suits: people who like modelling their own process and want notes, templates and interview debriefs in one place. It is also the only tool here in which you can rebuild the Swiss proof-of-efforts fields exactly — date, company, contact person, job title, form of application, outcome — because you define the columns yourself.

Where it stops: it is an empty tool. Nothing fills itself in, you build the structure, and the time to do that is scarcest in week one of a search. Templates from the internet are almost all American: fields for salary range, none for Pensum, canton or the RAV record.

Trello

What it is: a kanban board — cards move from «to apply» through «sent» and «interview» to «closed». For applications this is the most intuitive shape on the list, because an application really does pass through stages. Cost: free, described by Trello as «Free for up to 10 collaborators per Workspace» with unlimited cards; Standard is USD 5 per user per month billed annually (about CHF 4), Premium USD 10 (about CHF 8), or USD 6 and USD 12.50 billed monthly.

Who it suits: visual thinkers and searches running many parallel processes, where the state matters more than the date. Add due dates to cards and it becomes a workable follow-up list.

Where it stops: a board does not count. «How many applications did I write in August» is the question the RAV asks, and a stack of cards is the worst possible data structure for answering it. Every card is also created by hand.

Huntr

What it is: the most developed pure application tracker here — job tracker, contact tracker, interview tracker and search metrics, plus a Chrome clipper and autofill for application forms. Cost: the free tier tracks up to 100 jobs with unlimited contact management, unlimited autofills and up to 100 document uploads. Pro is USD 40 a month (about CHF 32), USD 90 per quarter (about CHF 24 a month) or USD 160 for six months (about CHF 21.50 a month).

Who it suits: high-volume searches where the history is worth analysing. This is where Huntr is factually better than we are — interview stages, contacts per company and metrics are things we simply do not offer, and a page that pretended otherwise would be worth nothing to you.

Where it stops: it is built for the US process, priced in dollars, and knows nothing about the proof of job-search efforts, Pensum, permits or cantons. The clipper helps most where it recognises the form, and in Switzerland only 20.2 per cent of adverts lead into an international applicant system.

Simplify

What it is: a Chrome extension that fills in application forms and, per the vendor, files what you submit automatically — «Simplify automatically saves job applications you submit», its tracker page says. Cost: free; the Copilot page promises autofill, resume tailoring and automatic tracking «all for free», and the site publishes no pricing page.

Who it suits: high-volume applicants at large, internationally organised employers — pharma, tech, the corporate offices around Zurich, Basel and Zug — because that is where the forms it recognises live. For students and graduates searching in Switzerland and abroad at the same time, it is the least effortful entry on this list.

Where it stops: what the extension does not recognise never reaches the list, and in Switzerland that is the majority — 51.9 per cent of live adverts go to the employer's own website, and 45.9 per cent of all apply destinations carry a single advert. Automatic tracking also means letting a third party watch you apply.

Which one to pick

Registered with an RAV: the order is fixed rather than a matter of taste. The record goes through the Job-Room eService or the channel your RAV named, and alongside it you keep a working list for contacts, follow-ups and appointments. For that second list, take whichever one you will actually maintain — ours fills itself when you save, a spreadsheet is yours forever, a board shows the state at a glance.

Not registered, applying to Swiss adverts you find online: take the application list on SwissJobs.app. It is free, it exists in four languages, and the row appears without typing. Want interview stages, contacts per company and metrics? Take Huntr — the free tier's 100 tracked jobs covers most searches, and its feature set is genuinely larger than ours. Want a file that calculates, prints and can be handed in? Stay with Excel or Google Sheets, and set the columns to match the official Swiss form rather than to taste.

Searching from abroad for a move to Switzerland: skip the Job-Room entry until you are actually registered, and be sceptical of autofill as a selling point — the coverage figures above are the reason. What matters more at that stage is that the row records the language the advert was written in and the canton, because those two fields decide which of your applications were ever realistic.