Where to live in Switzerland
We track 4 cities in Switzerland: Basel, Bern, Geneva and Zürich. Average temperatures run from 10°C to 12°C. We estimate a couple needs €4,547 to €4,815 a month to live centrally. Switzerland sits in our low to medium tax tier. For citizens from outside the EU, EEA and Switzerland, long-term residency is possible, with conditions.
12 questions, about 4 minutes, no account needed. Taking the quiz is free, and so is seeing your #1 city. Full results for both of you are a one-time US$12 (€12 in Europe).
- Tax tier
- Low to medium
- Moderate personal income tax
- Languages
- German, French, Italian
- Good English
- Safety
- 78/100
- country-level
- Healthcare
- 75/100
- country-level
- Internet
- ~230 Mbps
- median fixed broadband
The 4 cities we track
Source: City size from GeoNames, temperature from the Open-Meteo archive (2019 to 2023 averages), rainfall from TerraClimate (1991 to 2020 normals), coast distance from Natural Earth. Cost is our model estimate for a couple living centrally.
Taxes
Switzerland sits in our low to medium tax tier: moderate personal income tax. The tier applies to every city here, and couples who cap tax below it will not see these cities in their results.
Source: OurNextCity tax tiers, assigned by hand from each country's top marginal personal income tax rate and overall tax reputation, with no fixed rate cut-offs. Coarse by design; not tax advice.
Residency and visas
Possible, with conditions, for people from outside the EU, EEA and Switzerland. Realistic self-funded routes are residence without gainful activity for the financially independent (open to EU/EFTA on a sufficient-means test, but restricted to applicants 55+ with cantonal discretion for non-EU) and the lump-sum (expenditure-based) taxation permit for the wealthy, while ordinary work permits for non-EU nationals are quota-limited and employer-driven.
Citizens of the EU, EEA and Switzerland have freedom-of-movement or simplified residency rights here.
The cheapest self-funded routes we track for Switzerland:
- Income: about $2,178 a month (Switzerland residence without gainful activity, sufficient-means guideline = supplementary-benefit (Ergänzungsleistungen) general-living-expense threshold of CHF 1,722.50/mo (CHF 20,670/yr) for a single person; CHF converted at 1 CHF = 1.264 USD (June 2026).; as of June 2026)
For short visits, 93 of 198 passports can enter visa-free and 105 need a visa in advance.
Source: OurNextCity residency dataset, hand-reviewed approximations researched against published immigration rules, figures as of June 2026. Not legal advice: check the official source before you apply. Short-stay entry from the passport-index dataset (ilyankou, MIT).