Job-Room or a private job board — which one do I need, and for what?

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 the login actually buys

arbeit.swiss lists the account-only features exhaustively, which makes the comparison unusually easy: 'Certain eServices and functions in the Job-Room are only available to jobseekers who have signed on with the RAV and registered for Job-Room.' The list runs to five items — online submission of the 'Proof of efforts undertaken to find work' form, online submission of the 'Details of insured person' form, uploading application documents, setting up a job alert, and setting up job watchlists.

Two of those five are ordinary job-board features. Alerts and watchlists have been standard on commercial portals for a decade, and if that is all you want, you already have it. The other three are forms belonging to the unemployment insurance system, and no commercial product can offer them at any price, because the barrier is legal rather than technical.

So the account is narrower than it sounds: a benefits interface with a job board attached, not a better job board. If you are not signed on with an RAV, it is not an option you are missing — it is a door that does not apply to you.

The protected area, and why you cannot inspect it

The Swiss job-registration requirement obliges employers to report vacancies in certain occupations to the public employment service before advertising them elsewhere. arbeit.swiss describes the consequence for jobseekers: 'vacancies that employers register under the job registration requirement are only visible to jobseekers who have signed on with the RAV and registered in Job-Room for the first five days after publication. These vacancies can only be published on other job platforms after this period.'

The portal itself says the same thing in the interface. On a blocked advert: 'This job is subject to the registration requirement and can only be viewed by registered job seekers who are logged in.' In the job-alert dialogue: 'Jobs that need to be registered can only be viewed in the protected area by registered job seekers who are logged in.'

This has an awkward consequence for anyone weighing the two options: the value of the login is precisely the part you cannot measure from outside. Our anonymous sampling on 24 August 2026 found no visible advert carrying the registration-requirement flag, which is exactly what the design predicts and exactly why nobody can tell you in advance how much the head start is worth in your occupation.

The rule is also a Swiss construction with no equivalent in most countries people arrive from, it comes from the job-registration requirement rather than from unemployment insurance, and it applies only to the occupations on the current federal list. For every other vacancy on Job-Room there is no protected area at all.

The one place where getting this wrong is expensive

Art. 17 para. 1 of the unemployment insurance act (AVIG) requires an insured person claiming benefits to do everything that can reasonably be expected to avoid or shorten unemployment, to look for work — 'if necessary outside their previous occupation' — and, in the sentence that matters here, to be able to prove those efforts.

Art. 26 AVIV then sets the form and the deadline: efforts should be targeted, as a rule in the form of an ordinary application, and the proof for each control period must be filed by the fifth day of the following month, or the first working day after that. If the deadline passes without a valid excuse, the ordinance is blunt — those efforts are no longer taken into account. Not discounted; disregarded.

Only the competent authority receives that proof, and under para. 3 it checks the efforts monthly. arbeit.swiss names two routes: the Job-Room eService, or the official form filled in, printed, signed and handed in. A private job board is neither route, and no application list, tracker or export feature from any provider changes that.

This is the single point in this comparison where a mistake causes real harm. Choosing the wrong job board costs you time. Missing the proof can cost you benefit days — arbeit.swiss lists among the RAV's tasks 'discontinuing benefits if jobseekers fail to comply with the general requirements (e.g. if they do not make sufficient efforts to find a job)'. If anything here conflicts with what your RAV tells you, your RAV is right and this page is not.

What the commercial portals do that Job-Room does not

On 24 August 2026 jobs.ch carried on its own homepage a salary calculator, company profiles with employer reviews, an app, and a talent pool you join with a profile, which the site describes in German as matching vacancies against that profile and contacting you when one fits. jobup.ch runs the same pattern for French-speaking Switzerland with a salary estimator and a company search.

None of that exists on Job-Room, and 'but it is official' does not answer it. If you want to know what this role pays in this canton, how former employees describe a company, or which employers within commuting distance even exist, the commercial portals answer and the government portal does not.

There is a counterpart, though. Job-Room can also make you visible instead of only letting you search. The canton of Zurich describes it: your profile can be published anonymously on Job-Room, where employers and placement agencies see your occupational profile and can propose suitable positions to you. That is a talent pool with the RAV as operator.

CHF 0 against CHF 650, and what it does to the two catalogues

The reason the two portals hold different employers is rarely stated and entirely mundane: price. Among the services arbeit.swiss says the RAV offers free of charge are publication of a vacancy in Job-Room, personal advice on filling the post, pre-selection of candidates against the employer's own criteria, and contacting registered jobseekers.

JobCloud's price list for the same act of publishing: Basic CHF 650 per advert for 31 days online, Advanced CHF 890, Ultimate CHF 1090 for 45 days, Ultimate Plus CHF 1490 for 60 days, with the French-language tiers running from CHF 650 to CHF 1250.

A price of that size filters advertisers. For a small firm filling one post it is a decision; for an employer recruiting continuously and building a brand it is a budget line. That is why Job-Room carries proportionally more small and regional employers and staffing agencies — it even labels the latter in the results as 'job registered through a private employment agency' — while the paid portals carry proportionally more adverts with a company profile, a logo and reviews attached.

Free publication is also why Job-Room is larger than most people guess. On 24 August 2026 its public search returned roughly 1.8 times as many adverts as jobs.ch's own regional figures add up to. arbeit.swiss calls Job-Room 'Switzerland's largest job platform'; on that day and by that measure, the claim holds.

The regional question, and the surprise in it

The intuitive expectation is that a federal portal covers the language regions more evenly than a commercial one — or the reverse, that a commercial one is stronger in the Romandie. Neither is true. Of the publicly visible Job-Room adverts on 24 August 2026, 86.6 per cent sat in German-speaking cantons, 10.1 per cent in French-speaking cantons and 0.5 per cent in Ticino, with 2.7 per cent carrying no canton.

jobs.ch published 88.8 per cent German-speaking Switzerland, 10.3 per cent French-speaking Switzerland and 0.7 per cent Ticino on its homepage the same day. The two are within a few tenths of a percentage point of each other, which means switching between them changes nothing for someone searching in Geneva, Lausanne or Lugano.

For comparison, in our own index of Swiss adverts, among those where a canton could be read from the location text, 73.5 per cent were in German-speaking cantons, 24.8 per cent in French-speaking ones and 1.7 per cent in Ticino. The gap comes from collecting adverts that sit only on an employer's own website or on international channels: 54.3 per cent of the application links in our index point straight at an employer site. Same market, gathered differently.

Which you need, one case at a time

You are signed on with an RAV: you need Job-Room, logged in. The protected area and the job-search-efforts eService are the reason, and a commercial board sits alongside it rather than instead of it.

You have been given notice and are working out your notice period: sign on early — arbeit.swiss puts it plainly: 'You must sign on by no later than the first day for which you wish to claim unemployment benefits' — and in the meantime search wherever you like. Keep evidence of every application from the start, because the obligation to look for work begins before the benefit does.

You are employed and looking quietly: the public Job-Room search is open to you and costs nothing, but it has no salary calculator, no company profiles and no reviews. For a quiet search with comparison material the commercial portals are the more comfortable base, and Job-Room is the supplement that shows adverts they do not.

You are a cross-border commuter or still living abroad: use the public search freely, and treat the eServices as out of scope — they follow from signing on with an RAV, and benefit entitlement requires residence in Switzerland under Art. 8 para. 1 lit. c AVIG. Job-Room's interface is available in German, French, Italian and English, so the language of the site is not the obstacle; the language of each advert is the thing that decides whether you can apply.

And the sentence the public employment service writes about itself applies to both halves of this comparison: the RAV's counselling and placement work supports your own job search but does not replace it. No portal, public or commercial, takes that part off you. Where this page and your RAV disagree, follow your RAV. This page was checked on 24 August 2026.