Premium calculator

What is a premium calculator?

A premium calculator is an online tool that calculates and sorts the monthly basic health insurance premiums of all health insurers for a specific person. You enter a few details, the calculator looks up the matching values in the official premium tables and shows them side by side. The result is a premium comparison for your situation.

The calculator does not “calculate” anything in the sense of an estimate. Basic health insurance premiums are fixed: each insurer submits its rates to the Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH, in German BAG), which checks and approves them (Art. 16 of the Health Insurance Supervision Act, KVAG). The calculator looks up these approved values. The FOPH runs its own calculator for this purpose, Priminfo, and also publishes the data as an open dataset on opendata.swiss. Private calculators, including the premium calculator on this website, use the same source.

Two other tools should be kept apart. A single insurer’s quote calculator only shows that insurer’s offer and often asks for your contact details. A quote is a specific offer from one insurer, usually including supplementary insurance. And calculators for supplementary insurance work with rates that no authority approves and that may depend on your health.

How it works

The five inputs

1. Place of residence: postcode or municipality. This determines the premium region. The insurer grades premiums according to cost differences between cantons and may grade them by regions set uniformly by the Federal Department of Home Affairs (FDHA) (Art. 61 paras. 2 and 2bis of the Federal Health Insurance Act, KVG). What counts is where you live, not where you work.
2. Year of birth: It determines the age group: child, young adult or adult. Premiums are lower for children and young adults (Art. 61 para. 3 KVG); the age group is based on your year of birth (Art. 91 para. 3 of the Health Insurance Ordinance, KVV).
3. Deductible: Adults choose between CHF 300 and CHF 2,500, children between CHF 0 and CHF 600 (Art. 93 and 103 KVV). A higher deductible (Franchise) lowers the premium.
4. Model: the standard model with free choice of physicians, or an alternative model such as GP, HMO or telemedicine.
5. Accident cover: with or without accident cover. If you are insured through your employer under the Accident Insurance Act (UVG), you can exclude accident cover. The insurer must show the share of the premium for accident risk separately (Art. 89 let. a KVV).

Reading the result

The result is a list of all offers with their monthly premium, sorted by price. A good calculator also shows:

• The date and source of the data, for example “premiums 2026, source FOPH”.
• The annual premium (monthly premium × 12), because differences show more clearly over a year.
• The possible co-payment: On top of the premium come the deductible and a 10% retention fee (Selbstbehalt) up to a maximum of CHF 700 for adults (Art. 64 KVG, Art. 103 KVV). Only the total shows what a year could cost you in the worst case.
• The model of each offer, so that you can see which restrictions come with a low premium.

Your health, income and occupation play no part in the calculation. In basic health insurance, the insurer charges the same premium to all insured persons with the same characteristics, unless the law provides for an exception (Art. 61 para. 1 KVG). The calculator shows the premium before any premium subsidy that the canton grants depending on income.

Legal basis

There is no law on premium calculators. The rules for the figures a calculator displays are set out in the KVG, the KVAG and the KVV:

• Art. 16 KVAG: Premium rates for basic health insurance require the approval of the supervisory authority and may neither be published nor applied beforehand.
• Art. 61 KVG: The insurer sets the premiums, charges its insured persons the same premiums in principle and grades them by canton, region and age.
• FDHA Ordinance on Premium Regions: It assigns each municipality to a region. 15 cantons have only one region; Bern, Graubünden, Lucerne, St. Gallen and Zurich have three.
• Art. 89 KVV: The insurer must clearly separate the basic health insurance premium from daily allowance and supplementary insurance and show the accident share separately.
• Art. 93 and 103 KVV: optional deductibles and the maximum retention fee.

For comparison websites with an economic interest, for example through commission, intermediary law also applies: anyone who compiles a ranking with a price comparison counts as an insurance intermediary (Art. 182a of the Insurance Supervision Ordinance, AVO).

Example: monthly premium or annual cost?

Lea is 34, lives in the city of Zurich and is torn between a CHF 300 and a CHF 2,500 deductible. For 2026, the calculator shows the following values (premiums 2026, municipality of Zurich, region 1, adults, with accident cover, 128 offers; source FOPH):

The median values do not come from the same insurer; for your decision, you calculate with the premiums of a specific insurer. That is exactly what the deductible calculator does with your details. The model finder helps you work out which model suits your everyday life.

What this means for you

1. Enter your municipality, not just your postcode. That way you get the premiums for your region.
2. Choose accident cover correctly. If you work at least eight hours a week for one employer, calculate without accident cover.
3. Compare like with like. First fix your deductible and model, then compare the insurers. In a second step, check whether a different deductible or model would be cheaper.
4. Look at the insurer’s key figures. The premium is not everything: you will find reserves, administrative costs and models in the profiles under health insurers.
5. Plan your switch. If the calculator has shown you a cheaper insurer, the page switching health insurer explains the next steps. Your notice of cancellation must reach your current insurer by 30 November.

Common mistakes

• Entering your place of work instead of your place of residence. The premium depends on where you live. If you work in Zurich and live in a municipality in region 3, you pay the region 3 premium.
• Including accident cover although your employer insures you. That makes every premium higher than it needs to be for you.
• Only looking at the first line. The cheapest offer is often a model that requires you to consult a GP practice, an HMO or a telephone service first. Check whether the rules suit you.
• Entering contact details to see results. Basic health insurance premiums are public. A calculator that asks for your phone number or email address first is collecting leads.
• Using old figures. Premiums apply for one calendar year at a time. Check which year the calculator is calculating for.

We explain how our calculator handles the FOPH data under how we calculate.