Living in Zurich

Zurich, Switzerland, about 415,367 people. What you would earn and keep, the climate month by month, and every open figure we hold, each with its source, period and licence.

Weigh Zurich against other cities, with your own numbers

Key facts

• Zurich has about 415,367 residents (GeoNames).
• On a gross salary of CHF 55,000 a year, an employee in Zurich takes home about CHF 45,650 a year (CHF 3,804 a month) after income tax and employee contributions, an effective rate of 17.0% (Switzerland 2026 rules).
• In Zurich the average daily high (air temperature in the shade) peaks at 24.6 °C in July and the average daily low falls to −1.5 °C in January (Historical weather (ERA5 reanalysis), Open-Meteo, 2021-2025).
• Zurich has about 41 nice days a year, days that are dry, mostly clear and feel 18 to 30 °C on average from 8 am to 8 pm, most of them in August (10) (Historical weather (ERA5 reanalysis), Open-Meteo, 2021-2025).
• Between 2021 and 2025 the air in Zurich reached 34.0 °C at its hottest and −11.0 °C at its coldest (Historical weather (ERA5 reanalysis), Open-Meteo).
• It rains or snows (at least 1 mm) on about 163 days a year in Zurich (Historical weather (ERA5 reanalysis), Open-Meteo, 2021-2025).
• The shortest day in Zurich lasts 8 h 27 min and the longest 15 h 57 min (computed from latitude).
• Fine dust (PM2.5) in Zurich averages 7.6 µg/m³ a year, 1.5 times the WHO guideline of 5 µg/m³ (WHO Ambient Air Quality Database v8.0 (2026), World Health Organization, 2024).
• Everyday prices in Switzerland sit at 128.2 on an index where the United States is 100 (World Development Indicators, World Bank, 2025).
• Life expectancy at birth in Switzerland is 84.4 years (World Development Indicators, World Bank, 2024).
• Switzerland records 0.60 intentional homicides per 100,000 people a year (World Development Indicators, World Bank, 2023).
• Besides citizens of Switzerland, citizens of 30 other countries under Swiss-EU free movement can live and work in Zurich without a visa.

What you would take home

Single employee, no children, no church tax: federal direct tax, cantonal and communal income tax for Zurich and Geneva, personal tax, AHV/IV/EO and unemployment contributions, occupational pension (BVG) at the statutory minimum and an assumed accident (NBU) premium. Rules for 2026. Sources: ESTV tax calculator 2026: tariffs, multipliers and deductions export (federal, Zurich, Geneva), Geneva: LIPP art. 41 (income tax scale) and art. 67 (indexation), AHV/IV: Merkblatt 2.01, contributions on wages (2026), AHV/IV: Merkblatt 2.08, unemployment insurance contributions.

• Occupational pension (BVG) is the statutory minimum: the employee's half of the age credit (7%, 10%, 15% or 18% of the coordinated salary between CHF 26,460 and CHF 90,720, by age; 10% without an age). Real plans often insure more and add risk premiums, so the employee share is usually higher; it lowers take-home pay and taxable income alike.
• Non-occupational accident insurance (NBU) is an assumed 1% of pay up to CHF 148,200; the employer's insurer sets the real rate, often between 0.4% and 1.5%.
• Geneva lets you deduct health insurance premiums as paid; we assume CHF 4,560 a year (the ESTV calculator's default). Mandatory health insurance itself is a cost of living, not a tax, and is not in these lines.
• Geneva's cantonal tax reproduces the ESTV calculator: the base tax less 12%, times 147.5%, plus one centime on the full base. Communal tax applies the city's centimes to the base tax.
• Cantons other than Zurich and Geneva: only the federal tax and contributions are included, so the figure is partial (cantonal and communal tax, most of the income tax, are left out). Pillar 3a contributions set as your pension share are deducted.
• Foreign nationals without a C permit usually pay tax at source (Quellensteuer) by monthly tables, reconciled to these rates above CHF 120,000; the Expatriates Ordinance allows extra deductions, which a taxable share below 1 can approximate.

A month in Zurich

Assumed: one person, €60,000 gross a year, renting a one-bedroom home, and everyday spending of €1,200 a month in Lisbon scaled by each country's price level. These are the app's defaults; change any of them there.

Who can live and work here freely

• Citizens of Switzerland.
• Citizens of Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, under Swiss-EU free movement (Agreement on the Free Movement of Persons (EU-Switzerland)). The EU-Swiss Agreement on the Free Movement of Persons (and the EFTA Convention). Swiss citizens have the same right in the EU and EEA.

Climate

Daylight is computed from latitude: the shortest day lasts 8 h 27 min, the longest 15 h 57 min.

Every figure

No open figure yet for: rent, one bedroom, rent, three bedrooms, your childcare cost, health insurance premium, public swimming pools (official), green urban areas (official). A country-wide figure is marked as such where it stands in for the city.

Compare Zurich with

• Zurich vs Berlin
• Zurich vs Bologna
• Zurich vs Florence
• Zurich vs Geneva
• Zurich vs London
• Zurich vs Lyon
• Zurich vs Madrid
• Zurich vs Milan
• Zurich vs Munich
• Zurich vs Rome
• Zurich vs Tallinn
• Zurich vs Torino

Elsewhere

Sources we link to but do not copy, because their licences forbid it.

• Numbeo: cost of living in Zurich
• WeatherSpark: year-round weather in Zurich
• Wikipedia: Zurich

Credits

• Borgo contributors, from the statutes cited in each figure's note (CC BY 4.0)
• Borgo's summary of the EU-Swiss Agreement on the Free Movement of Persons (State Secretariat for Migration) (Borgo's own summary of the law cited (CC BY 4.0); the official text is cited, not copied)
• Unicode CLDR territory information. Copyright © 1991-2026 Unicode, Inc. Used under the Unicode License v3 (https://www.unicode.org/license.txt) (Unicode License v3)
• Borgo contributors, from the statutes cited in each figure's note (CC BY 4.0)
• Source: Eurostat, Urban Audit (© European Union). Borgo keeps each city's latest value and converts units where its note says so Eurostat is not responsible for Borgo's use of its data. (European Commission reuse policy (Decision 2011/833/EU): reuse with the source acknowledged and changes stated)
• Founders Running Club communities list (facts of presence and links only) (No licence from the publisher: only facts of presence are stored)
• Places, coordinates, populations and time zones from GeoNames (geonames.org), CC BY 4.0 (CC BY 4.0)
• GHS-UCDB R2024A, European Commission, Joint Research Centre, CC BY 4.0, doi:10.2905/1a338be6-7eaf-480c-9664-3a8ade88cbcd; Borgo derives the distance from the centre to the urban centre's edge Shores and lakes from Natural Earth (public domain) decide which directions lead on to land. (CC BY 4.0)
• Counts of GitHub profiles by stated location, from GitHub's public user search (counts only, no profile data) (No data licence from the publisher: only total counts are stored, no record about anyone, as its terms allow public, non-personal information in openly published research)
• Borgo contributors, from the labour codes cited in each figure's note (CC BY 4.0)
• The M-Lab NDT Data Set, 2023-01-01–2023-12-31. https://measurementlab.net/tests/ndt (CC0 1.0 (public domain dedication))
• Public holidays from Nager.Date (date.nager.at), MIT License, Copyright (c) Nager (MIT License)
• Made with Natural Earth (public domain) (Public domain (dedicated by the publisher))
• OECD (2026), Net childcare costs, OECD Tax-Benefit Models, https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/net-childcare-costs.html Reusers must cite the OECD as above and pass this acknowledgement requirement on to anyone they share the data with. (OECD terms for data: any use, with the OECD citation passed on)
• OECD (2026), OECD Family Database, PF2.1 Parental leave systems, https://www.oecd.org/en/data/datasets/oecd-family-database.html Reusers must cite the OECD as above and pass this acknowledgement requirement on to anyone they share the data with. (OECD terms for data: any use, with the OECD citation passed on)
• OECD (2026), OECD Well-being Database (How's Life?), https://www.oecd.org/en/data/datasets/well-being-database.html Reusers must cite the OECD as above and pass this acknowledgement requirement on to anyone they share the data with. (OECD terms for data: any use, with the OECD citation passed on)
• Weather data by Open-Meteo.com (https://open-meteo.com/), CC BY 4.0 Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2021-2025. Neither the European Commission nor ECMWF is responsible for any use that may be made of the Copernicus information or data it contains. (CC BY 4.0)
• OpenAlex (openalex.org), CC0 (CC0 1.0 (public domain dedication))
• © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL 1.0 (https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright) (Open Database License 1.0)
• © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL 1.0 (https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright) (Open Database License 1.0)
• Airports from OurAirports (ourairports.com), public domain (Public domain (dedicated by the publisher))
• Borgo contributors, from official election results and ParlGov party positions (Döring, Huber and Manow, ParlGov 2024 release, CC0) (CC BY 4.0)
• Research Organization Registry (ror.org), CC0 (CC0 1.0 (public domain dedication))
• Terrain Tiles on AWS Open Data (Mapzen, a Linux Foundation project): SRTM and GMTED2010 terrain data courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey; ETOPO1, U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; Canada terrain data contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Canada (Terrain Tiles source terms: public domain (USGS, NOAA) and Open Government Licence – Canada, with attribution)
• World Health Organization, WHO Ambient Air Quality Database (Version 8.0), 2026, accessed 2026-10-27; data provided by the national and regional agencies named in each value's note WHO does not endorse Borgo, its use of these data, or any city ranking built from them. Values are as published by WHO; WHO advises against using the database to rank cities or compare countries directly, because monitoring differs between places. (WHO terms and conditions for data compilations)
• WMO Member Nations (2023). WMO Climatological Standard Normals for 1991-2020 (NCEI Accession 0253808), sunshine duration. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information. https://doi.org/10.25921/800j-vn07 (No licence attached: NCEI public access with a requested citation, under the WMO Unified Data Policy)
• World Bank, World Development Indicators, CC BY 4.0 (underlying sources named in each figure's note: ICP, IMF, UNODC, UN Population Division, WHO, ILO, UNESCO Institute for Statistics) (CC BY 4.0)
• World Bank, Worldwide Governance Indicators, Control of Corruption estimate, CC BY 4.0 (CC BY 4.0)

Cite this page

Borgo, “Living in Zurich”, https://borgo.abcastor.com/city/zurich-ch/, figures as of 2026-11-05. Please also name the original source of any figure you use; each is listed above with its licence. Data: zurich-ch.json.