Which is the best salary calculator for Switzerland?

Where Swiss salary data comes from

On salary the best source is public. Salarium, from the Federal Statistical Office, rests on the official salary structure survey; commercial calculators are usually an interface over it, or rest on self-reported figures.

SwissJobs.app salary calculator

What it is: a calculator for placing a figure, not for looking one up. It shows the three anchor points of the 2024 Wage Structure Survey — CHF 4635 for the lowest-paid ten per cent, CHF 7024 as the median full-time wage, CHF 12 526 for the best-paid ten per cent — tells you what share of employees earn less than the amount you type in, and computes exactly the two deductions that are fixed by law nationwide: AHV/IV/EO at 5.3 per cent and ALV (unemployment insurance) at 1.1 per cent up to an annual gross of CHF 148 200.

What it costs: nothing, no account, in German, French, Italian and English. Who it suits: anyone who already has a number in front of them — an offer, a salary expectation, a draft contract — and wants to know where it sits nationally and what comes off it.

The limitation, plainly: we have no figure per occupation. Swiss adverts almost never state a wage, and we do not invent one. If your question is what an electrician earns in Aargau, use Salarium or SECO. What no statistics office offers, on the other hand, sits directly under the number: the live openings in that occupational field, updated daily and linked.

Salarium (Federal Statistical Office)

What it is: the Confederation's statistical wage calculator. You pick an industry, a region and an occupational group, add age, education, position and further characteristics, and get an estimated gross monthly wage with its spread, exportable as a PDF. It is built on the 2024 Wage Structure Survey and estimated with a model of fourteen explanatory variables whose coefficients are fitted for ten industry groups.

What it costs: nothing, no account, four languages. Who it suits: anyone who needs a figure that will hold up in front of an HR department, an authority or a court, and anyone in an occupation or region where self-reported data thins out.

The office puts the limitations on the front page itself: the estimates are "a simplified representation of reality", they "do not constitute wage recommendations", and interactions between the variables are not modelled — so in the model the effect of education does not depend on the job you actually do. Add the geography: Salarium works in major regions, not cantons.

SECO national wage calculator

What it is: the calculator built under the flanking measures to the free movement of persons. For a complete profile it returns three values — what a quarter earn less than, the central value, and what a quarter earn more than — at cantonal level where the data allows, otherwise falling back to one of sixteen labour-market regions or seven major regions.

What it costs: nothing, no account, in German, French, Italian and English. Who it suits: anyone who needs a cantonal figure — for a salary negotiation, for comparing two offers in different cantons, or for a company posting workers to Switzerland that has to know what is customary locally.

Two real limitations. It runs on the 2022 Wage Structure Survey, two years behind Salarium. And it uses private-sector data only: if you work in a public hospital, a school or an administration, your environment is not in it. The monthly figures are also standardised to 42 hours a week — on a 40-hour week the comparable value is lower.

jobs.ch salary calculator

What it is: the one large Swiss calculator that does not stand on an official survey but on wages reported by registered members. That is exactly where its strength comes from. For a given job title it breaks the figure down by age and gender, by six levels of experience, by a trend across several periods, and it ranks the best-paying industries for that title. No official tool comes close to that density.

What it costs: nothing, no account. Languages: German, French and English — there is no Italian version, though the same figures appear in French under the sister brand jobup.ch. Who it suits: occupations and regions with many entries, and anyone preparing for a salary conversation who wants to know whether their level of experience moves the number at all.

The limitation lies in the same source. The headline figure is an average rather than a median, the page states that it includes bonuses and the 13th month salary, and the "typical" range starts at CHF 10 000 a year — the bottom edge of the entered data, not a wage. When you quote the number, you are quoting what members of a job board said about themselves.

lohncomputer.ch

What it is: a gross-to-net calculator, and the only tool here that follows the question "what is actually left" all the way through. You enter gross salary, age, marital status, number of children, church membership and canton of residence; cross-border commuters get their own calculation under the double-taxation agreement.

What it costs: nothing, no account, in German, English, French, Italian and Spanish. Who it suits: people relocating and frontaliers who have an offer in francs and need to know what lands in the account after tax and social deductions — the question a mental conversion from home usually gets wrong.

The limitation: it does not tell you what a job pays, only what remains of an amount you type in. And it is not a neutral utility but the tool of a Zurich immigration agency that also sells advice and relocation services. That does not make the arithmetic wrong, but it is worth knowing whose site you are on.

Robert Half salary calculator

What it is: the freely accessible calculator of a recruitment firm, fed by its own placements and a survey of 750 respondents in June 2025, with projections for 2026. It gives ranges per job title of the kind a recruiter actually sees in negotiations — something a biennial federal survey structurally cannot deliver.

What it costs: nothing, no account. Languages: English, German and French. Who it suits: commercial, finance and IT roles at the more senior end, where title and responsibility say more about pay than the industry does.

The limitation is coverage. It covers three fields only — finance and accounting, IT, and administrative and office support. Nursing, construction, hospitality, retail, education: none of them are in it. And it is a market participant's projection, not a statistic; if you need a source someone else can check, use the federal tools.

lohnrechner.ch (Swiss Federation of Trade Unions)

What it is: the union calculator, running since 2004. It asks for occupation, industry, age, years with the employer, education, position and place of work, and returns a band that excludes the lowest and the highest quarter — explicitly on the grounds that below that threshold one can no longer speak of a customary wage. It is the only tool in this comparison that also shows the binding minimum wages from collective agreements (GAV/CCT).

What it costs: nothing. The form asks for a name and an email address, but neither is required for the calculation; entering them signs you up for the union's wage letter. Who it suits: anyone working under a collective agreement — hospitality, construction, cleaning, retail — where the minimum, not the average, is the number that decides.

Two limitations, and the second one matters if you are reading this page in English. It calculates on the 2022 survey, adding only the industry's average wage growth since then. And it exists in German, French and Italian only: request it in English and you get the German texts. For an English-speaking newcomer, this otherwise excellent tool is effectively closed.

In short: which calculator for which question

You want to know what your occupation pays: Salarium. Official, on the most recent survey year, with its model and its limits published. If you need the figure for one canton rather than a major region, add the SECO national wage calculator — and read that it covers the private sector only.

You work under a collective agreement: lohnrechner.ch, if you read German, French or Italian. The GAV minimum is the number that counts there, and no other calculator here shows it. You want to know what experience is worth in your job: jobs.ch, knowing it is self-reported. You are in finance, IT or administration and negotiating a senior role: Robert Half.

You are moving to Switzerland or commuting across the border and want the net figure: lohncomputer.ch. And if you already have an offer and want to know where it sits nationally, what is deducted by law and who else is hiring at that level: our calculator. It replaces none of the official tools — it answers the question that comes after them.