Monthly and annual premium

What are the monthly and annual premium?

The monthly premium is the price of your health insurance for one month. The annual premium is the same price for a whole calendar year, i.e. twelve monthly premiums. Both terms describe the same premium, just calculated over a different period.

In Switzerland, the monthly premium is the official unit. Health insurers submit their premiums for the following year to the Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH) as monthly amounts. The FOPH checks and approves them; no insurer may publish its new premiums before they are approved. After that, the FOPH provides the premiums of all insurers, regions, age groups, deductibles and models as open data. The official calculator priminfo.admin.ch and our premium calculator also show monthly premiums.

You need the annual premium as soon as you start calculating: for your household budget, for choosing the right deductible or for comparing with the co-payment. The deductible and the retention fee are annual amounts. If you compare a monthly premium with an annual deductible, you are comparing apples with oranges.

The terms also apply to supplementary insurance. There, however, premiums are not approved by the FOPH and are not publicly available as data; they also depend on age, sex and health information.

How it works

The amount of your monthly premium in basic health insurance depends on five factors:

1. Insurer: each insurer sets its own premiums, graded according to costs in the canton.
2. Place of residence: what counts is the premium region of the municipality where you live; the regions are set uniformly by the Federal Department of Home Affairs.
3. Age group: children up to 18, young adults aged 19 to 25 and adults aged 26 and over pay different premiums. You are assigned to a group by year of birth.
4. Deductible: the higher the deductible, the lower the premium.
5. Model and accident cover: GP, HMO or telemedicine models are cheaper. If you are insured against accidents through your employer, the premium falls by the accident component, by no more than 7%.

The approved premium applies for one calendar year. Your insurer must notify you of the new premium at least two months before it applies, i.e. by the end of October at the latest for 1 January. From then on, you can switch with effect from the end of the year until 30 November.

You get the annual premium by multiplying the monthly premium by twelve. If you pay six months or a whole year in advance, some insurers grant an early payment discount, which slightly lowers the effective annual premium. How you pay is explained in the entry on paying premiums.

Legal basis

Art. 61 para. 1 of the Federal Health Insurance Act (KVG) allows insurers to set their own premiums and requires them, as a rule, to charge the same premiums to all their insured persons. Para. 2 and 2bis allow premiums to be graded by canton and premium region, and para. 3 requires lower premiums for children and young adults. Under Art. 16 of the Health Insurance Supervision Act (KVAG), every premium tariff must be approved by the supervisory authority and may not be published or applied before then.

The Health Insurance Ordinance (KVV) sets out the details: Art. 90 KVV requires premiums to be paid in advance and, as a rule, monthly; Art. 91 para. 3 KVV assigns age groups by year of birth; Art. 91a para. 4 KVV limits the reduction for accident cover to no more than 7%. Art. 92 KVV requires the FDHA to calculate the average premium for each canton and for Switzerland every year. The deadline of at least two months for notifying premiums is set out in Art. 7 para. 2 KVG.

Example: from monthly to annual premium

Mia is 34 years old and lives in the city of Zurich. The table shows the cheapest, the median and the most expensive monthly premium of all 128 offers for her year of birth, each converted to a year (2026 premiums, municipality of Zurich, region 1, adults, with accident cover; source: FOPH).

The cheapest offers here are models with a restricted choice of physicians. The profiles under health insurers show which insurers are behind them.

What this means for you

Convert every monthly premium into an annual premium before you decide. Here is how:

1. Work out the annual premium: monthly premium times twelve, for families for everyone together.
2. Add your maximum risk: deductible plus no more than CHF 700 retention fee for adults. That gives you your worst-case year.
3. Compare offers: in the premium calculator, you can see all insurers for your municipality. You can switch with effect from the end of the year until 30 November; the dates are under deadlines.
4. Plan your budget: divide the annual premium into twelve equal parts and keep the deductible in reserve.

When the premium letter arrives in the autumn, look at the new monthly premium and compare it with the old one. Even an increase of CHF 20 a month is CHF 240 a year.

Common mistakes

• Only comparing monthly premiums. Small monthly differences seem harmless, but add up over twelve months.
• Weighing a monthly premium against an annual deductible. Always compare annual amounts with annual amounts.
• Including supplementary insurance. If everything is on one bill, separate out basic health insurance before comparing with the calculator.
• Forgetting accident cover. If you are compulsorily insured against accidents through your employer, you pay the accident component to your health insurer unnecessarily as long as accident cover remains included there.
• Filing the premium letter unread. It is the basis for switching and only comes once a year.