About and methodology

Vicinus compares all 2’110 Swiss communes on what a household keeps of its income, using official data only. Every figure comes from a named public source; where we calculate something ourselves (commute times, interpolation between tax levels) this page says how.

What “money left” means

Gross income − income tax − health insurance premiums, per year. It is a comparison measure, not your net pay:

• Included: federal, cantonal and communal income tax; mandatory basic health insurance for every household member.
• Not included: rent, commute costs, church tax, wealth tax, social security contributions (AHV/IV/EO, unemployment insurance, pension fund), and individual deductions beyond ESTV's standard model.

Because the excluded items are mostly the same wherever you live (social contributions) or not comparable from official data yet (rent), the difference between two communes is meaningful even though the absolute number is not your take-home pay.

Income tax

• Source: Federal Tax Administration (ESTV), Tax burden in the communes, tax year 2026. ESTV publishes the tax for standard households at 23 income levels from CHF 15’000 to CHF 1’000’000.
• Households: Single, no children; Married, single income, no children; Married, dual income (70/30), no children; Married, single income, 2 children. Income means total gross labour income of the household (for dual income, ESTV splits it 70/30).
• Between two published levels, the tax in CHF is interpolated linearly; the ranking says which levels were used.
• Communes formed by a merger after ESTV's reference date show the average of the former communes, marked with *.

Health insurance

• Source: Federal Office of Public Health (BAG), Health insurance premiums 2027 (mandatory basic insurance).
• Adults (26+): standard model, CHF 300 deductible, without accident cover (employees are insured through their employer). Children: standard model, CHF 0 deductible, with accident cover.
• Per commune we show the cheapest insurer and the median insurer of its premium region; the ranking uses the median unless you choose the cheapest.
• Household premium per year = 12 × (adults × adult premium + children × child premium), 2027 premiums.

Commute

• Public transport plus walking, from the official Swiss timetable (opentransportdata.swiss) and OpenStreetMap footpaths, routed with r5.
• For each pair of places we take the median door-to-door time over every departure minute from 07:00 to 08:30 on a Tuesday. This includes waiting for the next departure, so infrequent lines show longer times than the timetable trip itself.
• A commune's starting point is its busiest station (most departures in the morning window, counting stops within 300 m together). Communes without a served stop use a point inside their boundary.
• Workplace: type a postcode, a commune or a station. A postcode resolves to the commune holding most of its addresses (the others are offered). For cities with a main station hub (e.g. Bern, Lausanne, Zürich HB) we use that station; elsewhere the commune's busiest station.
• Trips over 3 hours are shown as “> 3 h”. The cost of commuting is not deducted.

The map

Communes are coloured in seven classes with an equal number of communes each, from lighter (less left) to darker (more left), recomputed for your household and income. With a workplace and a commute limit set, communes beyond the limit are greyed out. Lakes are cut out using BFS's generalised boundaries.

Updates and sources

A pipeline downloads every source monthly, checks coverage and plausible ranges, and rebuilds the site. Each dataset, its reference date, download date and licence are listed on Data sources; figures on commune and ranking pages carry a numbered link to their source.

Privacy

No analytics, no cookies, no ads, no accounts. Your household, income and workplace never leave your browser: the site loads small static data files and computes everything locally.

Independence

Vicinus is an independent project. It is not affiliated with, or endorsed by, any commune, canton or federal office. Coats of arms are shown on commune pages only to identify each commune, as in a reference work; they come from Wikimedia Commons, and each page credits its file and licence.

Limits

Figures are for standard households and are not tax advice. Your own tax depends on deductions, wealth, church membership and other details; use your canton's tax calculator for a binding figure.