Nanny Service Switzerland — from CHF 42/h + 8.1% MwSt.
Nanny Service Switzerland — from CHF 42/h + 8.1% MwSt.
If you employ a nanny in your own home you are her employer under the Swiss Code of Obligations, and holiday is the obligation that catches households out first. You owe at least four weeks of paid holiday a year. On an hourly contract that is an uplift of 8.33%, not the 7.69% most calculators show. And since a 2023 Federal Supreme Court decision you cannot pay the percentage and skip the time off. Below: every obligation that lands on a household employer — and the version where Rundil is the employer instead.
The direct answer for a family employing a nanny in Switzerland, before any of the detail.
You owe your nanny at least four weeks of paid holiday every year under Art. 329a CO, rising to five weeks until the end of the year in which she turns 20, and pro-rated if she starts or leaves mid-year. Four weeks is a floor, not a target — agree more and it binds you.
On an hourly contract that entitlement becomes a percentage supplement: 8.33% for four weeks, 10.64% for five, 13.04% for six — because the holiday is funded out of the weeks actually worked, not all fifty-two. The widely quoted 7.69% is the same sum done wrongly, and it under-pays her every hour.
The percentage is a way of paying holiday, not a way of avoiding it. Art. 329d(2) CO forbids replacing holiday with money during the employment relationship, and in BGE 149 III 202 the Federal Supreme Court held that for full-time work with the same employer, rolling holiday pay into the wage is excluded outright — even where the monthly hours fluctuate. Your nanny still has to take the time off, and you still have to release her for it.
Holiday is one line of a longer list: sick pay under Art. 324a CO, public-holiday pay, notice under Art. 335c CO, the NAV Hauswirtschaft minimum wage, monthly payslips and social-security registration. All explained below — and all carried by us instead when a nanny is assigned through Rundil.
Art. 329a CO is short. The complications come from age, part-years, and the moment you write a more generous figure into a contract.
Swiss holiday law sits in a single article. Art. 329a CO obliges the employer to grant at least four weeks of holiday for each year of service, and at least five weeks to employees up to the end of the year in which they turn twenty; in an incomplete year the entitlement is granted in proportion. There is no separate régime for domestic staff — a nanny holds the same statutory floor as an employee in a bank.
Twenty working days on a five-day week, twelve on a three-day week. Holiday is counted in weeks, not days, so part-time patterns convert cleanly.
Granting twenty days to a three-day-a-week nanny hands her nearly seven weeks — and once granted as a matter of practice it is awkward to withdraw.
The higher floor runs to the end of the calendar year in which she turns twenty. It matters more in domestic employment than most sectors, because students taking on after-school hours sit inside that bracket.
A nanny turning twenty in September is on five weeks for that whole calendar year and on four from 1 January.
A nanny starting on 1 April has worked nine of twelve months, so her first-year entitlement is nine twelfths of four weeks — fifteen working days on a five-day week.
This is where households lose track, because the holiday year stops coinciding with the calendar year the moment someone joins mid-year.
Five or six weeks is common in Swiss white-collar employment and families offer it to attract a candidate. Once it is in the contract you cannot revert to the statutory four in year two.
It also moves the hourly percentage: five weeks is 10.64%, six is 13.04%.
Two points of practice. You decide when the holiday is taken, taking her wishes into account so far as the household allows. And at least two of the four weeks should be consecutive — which is where a family running the year on one nanny discovers it has no cover for a fortnight in July.
Four weeks of holiday on an hourly contract is 8.33%. Here is why, and why the 7.69% you will find on other pages is arithmetically wrong.
A monthly-salaried nanny is paid the same in August as in March, so her holiday is already inside the salary. An hourly nanny is paid only for hours worked. The supplement exists to fund those unpaid weeks out of the weeks she does work — and that dictates the formula.
The denominator is the weeks actually worked, not the calendar year: you are spreading four weeks of wage across the forty-eight in which wage is earned.
The common error is to divide by fifty-two: 4 ÷ 52 = 7.69%. That answers a different question and produces a fund that is short. Test it. A nanny on CHF 30 an hour for 40 hours in each of 48 weeks earns CHF 57,600; four weeks of holiday is 160 hours, or CHF 4,800; and 4,800 ÷ 57,600 is 8.33%. Apply 7.69% and you collect CHF 4,430 — roughly CHF 370 short every year, a wage claim sitting quietly in your household accounts.
| Contractual holiday | Weeks actually worked | Calculation | Correct uplift | On CHF 30/h |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 weeks (statutory floor) | 48 | 4 ÷ 48 | 8.33% | CHF 32.50 |
| 5 weeks (under 20, or agreed) | 47 | 5 ÷ 47 | 10.64% | CHF 33.19 |
| 6 weeks (agreed) | 46 | 6 ÷ 46 | 13.04% | CHF 33.91 |
| 4 weeks, calculated wrongly | 52 | 4 ÷ 52 | 7.69% | CHF 32.31 |
The supplement is calculated on the gross hourly wage before the supplement itself and is not compounded with a public-holiday supplement — each percentage is taken on the same base wage. Families go wrong by stacking: base CHF 30, plus 8.33%, then adding the public-holiday percentage to CHF 32.50 rather than CHF 30.
On a fifteen-hour week the supplement alone is roughly a fortnight of Kita — and it is the first figure anyone will ask to see on a payslip.
The most consequential rule on this page. It changed in 2023, and almost no English-language guide for Swiss families has caught up.
Art. 329d(1) CO requires the employer to pay full salary for the holiday period. Art. 329d(2) CO adds the rule that catches households out: holiday may not be replaced by cash payments or other benefits during the employment relationship. The word doing the work is during. The entitlement is rest; the payment is only how the rest is funded.
Swiss courts recognise one narrow exception. In BGE 129 III 493 (4C.72/2003, 25 June 2003) the Federal Supreme Court accepted that where employment is genuinely irregular, holiday pay may be included in the wage — but only where three conditions are met cumulatively. Miss one and the supplement is not validly paid.
| Condition from BGE 129 III 493 | What it means in a household | Typical household failure |
|---|---|---|
| The work must be genuinely irregular or part-time | Hours that vary unpredictably — occasional evenings, on-call cover, shifting patterns | A fixed 8am–6pm nanny is not irregular, however you describe her |
| The contract must state the holiday-pay amount or percentage | The written contract names the figure, for example "8.33% holiday supplement" | A verbal agreement, a WhatsApp message, or a rate described only as "all in" |
| Every payslip must show it as a separate CHF figure | A distinct line each month showing the supplement in francs, not a percentage | No payslips, or one gross figure with the supplement folded silently inside |
In BGE 149 III 202 (4A_357/2022, 30 January 2023) the Court went further, holding that for full-time work with the same employer, including holiday pay in the wage is excluded outright — even where the monthly hours fluctuate. In a full-time, continuous engagement the supplement must be paid when the holiday is taken.
A babysitter you call three or four evenings a month, or a weekend carer whose hours genuinely move. The 2003 exception can apply — if the contract names the percentage and every payslip shows the francs.
Even then the time off must be granted. The exception governs how the money moves, never whether the holiday exists.
A full-time live-out nanny, four or five days a week, same family, year after year. Since BGE 149 III 202 that cannot carry rolled-up holiday pay at all, and fluctuating hours do not change the answer.
It is the arrangement most families reading this have — and the one most Swiss nanny-contract templates still get wrong.
One moment permits payment instead of time off: the end of the employment relationship. The prohibition applies during it, so untaken holiday surviving to the final payslip is settled in cash. That is the exit, not the operating model — and a nanny leaving with three untaken weeks produces a final invoice few households have budgeted for.
Switzerland has exactly one constitutionally paid national holiday. The rest are cantonal, and for hourly staff they are not automatic.
1 August is the only public holiday guaranteed at federal level and it is paid, so for an hourly nanny the day is paid whether or not she works it. Cantons may designate up to eight further public holidays on the same footing as a Sunday — but designating a day is not the same as legislating that hourly staff must be paid for it. For domestic employees on an hourly wage, payment for cantonal holidays depends on the contract or the cantonal NAV.
| Type of day | Paid for an hourly nanny? | Where the rule comes from |
|---|---|---|
| 1 August | Yes — pay it | Federal: the only constitutionally paid national holiday |
| Cantonal public holidays (up to 8) | Only if agreed or required cantonally | Cantonal law designates the day; pay comes from the contract or cantonal NAV |
| A cantonal holiday she actually works | Yes — it is worked time | Ordinary wage rules; any premium is contractual |
| A holiday inside her booked holiday week | Treated as the holiday day it is | Contract and cantonal practice — write it down beforehand |
Because the cantonal answer is contractual, most well-drafted household contracts name the days and pay them. On an hourly wage the same arithmetic applies: eight paid public holidays across a 260-weekday year is 8 ÷ 252, roughly 3.17% — a second supplement on the same base wage, with its own payslip line, sitting on top of the NAV minimum rather than inside it.
The legal obligation is to pay. The operational one is to survive her absence — and with a single directly employed nanny there is no second person.
At least two of the four weeks normally run consecutively, landing in July or August — when the Kita you might use as backup runs a reduced summer service.
Bridging days at Easter, a week at Christmas, a Friday here and there — collectively ten working days on which somebody stops earning or starts improvising.
Her own illness, her child's illness, a family emergency. None of it comes out of the holiday allowance, and it arrives without notice.
Four weeks of holiday, a public-holiday calendar and a first-year sick-pay entitlement of three weeks at full pay mean a directly employed nanny may be legitimately absent for the better part of two months a year — all paid by you, none covered by anyone. Households solve it with a private bench, a nanny plus a Kita place, or a service that carries a pool. For the unplanned version see emergency nanny cover and sick-child care.
It sets hourly floors — not your holiday, notice periods or sick pay. And the figures on most websites are a year out of date.
The Normalarbeitsvertrag Hauswirtschaft imposes minimum gross hourly wages on domestic employment. From 1 January 2026 the rates rose by 2% and the instrument was extended to 31 December 2028. It applies in every canton except Geneva and bites from an average of five hours a week with the same employer — a threshold most nanny arrangements clear comfortably.
| Qualification level | Minimum gross wage 2026 | With 4 weeks' holiday at 8.33% | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unskilled | CHF 20.35 | CHF 22.04 | No relevant vocational qualification |
| Unskilled, 4+ years' experience, or EBA | CHF 22.30 | CHF 24.16 | Federal certificate (EBA), or four years in the occupation |
| EFZ | CHF 24.55 | CHF 26.59 | Full federal vocational diploma |
| 2025 figures — do not use | CHF 19.95 / 21.85 / 24.05 | — | Still on many sites; superseded 1 January 2026 |
Two things matter more than the numbers. The minimums are quoted excluding holiday and public-holiday supplements, so the 8.33% goes on top. And the exclusions are narrower than families hope: au pairs and trainees, family members and cohabiting partners fall outside the NAV — an experienced English-speaking nanny does not.
The NAV minimum is a legal floor, not a market rate: households competing for experienced, English-speaking nannies pay well above it. See nanny prices in Switzerland.
Holiday, public holidays, sick-pay reserve and employer contributions never appear on the wage you agree. They appear on the bill.
Take a Zurich base case: an experienced nanny on a market gross wage employed directly, four weeks of holiday, the usual employer contributions and the payroll behind them. Loaded onto the hours she is actually present, the true cost lands at roughly CHF 44.87 an hour of care delivered, of which about CHF 8,817 a year never reaches her bank account. The full build-up sits on our nanny price page.
Two things follow. The rate you negotiated is not the rate you pay — holiday alone adds 8.33% before anything else. And the gap between employing directly and booking a managed service is narrower than families assume, because most of what a service charges is cost you were already carrying.
Pick a tier and the hours you actually need. The figure includes 8.1% VAT, is per child, and already contains the four weeks of paid holiday, the public-holiday days, the sick-pay reserve and every employer contribution described on this page.
The monthly figure uses 4.33 weeks, the same convention Swiss payroll uses to turn an hourly contract into a salary. Rates are charged per child with a two-hour minimum session, and 8.1% VAT is already inside the numbers on the right. Flex is the on-demand rate for anything booked under 48 hours ahead.
Vetted, checked and English-speaking — the everyday tier.
Several years in the job with references we have called.
Degree in education or childcare, primary-curriculum aware.
On-demand: under 48 hours' notice, evenings, weekends, holidays.
Not a discount argument. The two hourly figures sit close together. What differs is who owns Art. 329a, Art. 329d, Art. 324a and the payslips that prove all three.
The employer column of the table above is a real bill someone pays. When you book Rundil, the person paying it is Rundil. We are a managed childcare service, not a placement or nanny agency: we employ the nanny, so the AHV number, the BVG number, the accident cover, the sick pay and the notice period are ours. Your household never registers as an employer and never files anything.
If your nanny falls ill you keep paying her. How long depends on which regional scale your court applies — and nobody publishes all three together.
Art. 324a CO obliges the employer to continue paying wages when the employee is prevented from working through no fault of her own. It applies once the relationship has lasted, or was agreed for, more than three months. In the first year the minimum is three weeks at full pay, and thereafter for an appropriately longer period set by length of service. It cannot be waived — a contract clause saying otherwise does not help you.
The Code does not define "appropriately longer". Swiss courts filled the gap with three regional scales, and which applies depends on where the court sits. They diverge sharply in the middle years — a nanny in her fourth year is on two months under the Berner scale and three under the Basler.
| Year of service | Berner scale | Basler scale | Zürcher scale |
|---|---|---|---|
| Year 1 | 3 weeks | 3 weeks | 3 weeks |
| Year 2 | 1 month | 2 months | 8 weeks |
| Year 3 | 2 months | 2 months | 9 weeks |
| Year 4 | 2 months | 3 months | 10 weeks |
| Years 5–9 | 3 months | 3 months, to year 10 | +1 week per further year |
| Years 10–14 | 4 months | 4 months, to year 15 | +1 week per further year |
| Years 15–19 | 5 months | 5 months, to year 20 | +1 week per further year |
| Year 20 and beyond | 6 months | 6 months from year 21 | +1 week per further year |
Read the second row again. A nanny in her second year signed off for a month draws one month at full pay in Bern, two in Basel and eight weeks in Zurich — while you also pay someone else to cover her hours. Many households take out voluntary daily-sickness benefits insurance so a long absence does not fall entirely on the family budget; that belongs in the contract, along with who pays the premium. What you cannot do is contract out of the obligation.
Nine guides out of ten tell Swiss families they must grant three days of leave when an employee's child is ill. For a household, that rule comes from the wrong statute.
The rule people quote is Art. 36(3) of the Arbeitsgesetz, which obliges an employer to grant up to three days of leave to care for a sick child on presentation of a medical certificate. It is a real rule. It is also not your rule as a household employer, because Art. 2(1)(g) ArG excludes private households from the scope of the Labour Act entirely.
To you, in your day job. If your child is ill and you stay home, the three-day rule is what you invoke against the bank or the school that employs you — which is why it is so widely repeated on parenting sites.
It gets mis-transplanted because the same reader is both an employee and, once a nanny is hired, an employer. The statute follows the workplace, not the person.
To your nanny. Because the Labour Act does not reach private households, its working-time, rest-period and sick-child provisions do not govern the relationship between your family and your nanny.
Your obligations run instead through the Code of Obligations — principally Art. 324a — and the cantonal NAV where you live. Those are where you look for continued wage payment, working time and rest.
The practical version is short. Do not tell your nanny she has a statutory three-day sick-child entitlement, because you do not owe it. Do write into her contract what happens when her own child is ill — notice expected, whether the time is paid, whether it comes out of holiday — because the contract and the cantonal NAV are what you both rely on.
Not unless you promised one. There is no statutory thirteenth month in Switzerland.
A thirteenth month salary is not mandatory in Switzerland. No provision of the Code of Obligations creates it. It is owed only where it has been agreed — in the individual contract, a collective agreement (GAV/CLA) or an applicable standard employment contract (NAV), the mechanism sitting in Art. 322 CO on the wage owed. The federal NAV Hauswirtschaft does not impose one, so for a nanny in a private household it is purely contractual.
| Source | Creates a 13th month? | Relevance to a household employing a nanny |
|---|---|---|
| Code of Obligations | No | Art. 322 CO governs the wage owed, and adds no thirteenth month |
| Federal NAV Hauswirtschaft | No | Sets minimum hourly wages only |
| A GAV / collective agreement | Sometimes | Rare in private domestic employment |
| Your individual contract | If you wrote it in | The only realistic source for a nanny |
Say so plainly at hiring. Swiss candidates reasonably expect a thirteenth month because so many Swiss contracts contain one, and a nanny who assumes it is standard reads its absence in December as a broken promise. If you do agree one, put in writing that it exists, how it is calculated, that it is pro-rated for a part year, and when it is paid.
The allowance is paid by the federal scheme, not your household — but the employment relationship and the gap in your childcare are still yours.
Swiss maternity insurance sits inside the loss-of-earnings scheme (EO/MSE). It pays 98 days — fourteen weeks — at 80% of average income earned before the birth, capped at CHF 220 per day. The mother must have been insured under AHV for nine months before the birth and in gainful employment for at least five of them. Because AHV is compulsory for household employees, a registered nanny qualifies — and one who was never registered may not, a problem that lands on the employer.
Above roughly CHF 8,250 a month the allowance stops tracking earnings. Over 98 days the maximum payable is about CHF 21,560.
Three consequences for you. Holiday continues to accrue during the statutory maternity period, so she returns with a balance to take. The Code of Obligations contains a protected period around childbirth (Art. 336c CO) during which notice is void — confirm the exact length before acting on it. And you need fourteen weeks of childcare that does not exist, at a point in the year you did not choose.
Notice runs to the end of a calendar month, which makes the real period longer than the statute suggests.
Art. 335c CO sets the statutory notice periods: one month in the first year of service, two months from the second to the ninth, and three months thereafter — always taking effect at the end of a calendar month. Periods may be varied in writing, but not below one month in year one except by a collective agreement, which private households do not have.
| Length of service | Statutory notice | Notice given 5 April takes effect |
|---|---|---|
| Year 1 | 1 month | 31 May |
| Years 2–9 | 2 months | 30 June |
| Year 10 onwards | 3 months | 31 July |
| Any length, varied in writing | As agreed | Still at the end of a calendar month |
The end-of-month rule is what surprises households. Two months' notice given on 5 April does not expire on 5 June: it runs from 30 April to 30 June, so you pay nearly three months of wage. Throughout it she remains entitled to her holiday, and anything untaken at the end is paid out in cash. This is also where missing paperwork becomes expensive: a household that never issued payslips cannot show the supplement was paid separately, cannot rely on the BGE 129 III 493 exception, and is weak on a claim reaching back years.
Five steps that keep a household on the right side of Art. 329a, Art. 329d and both court decisions.
State weeks, not days, and state that it is pro-rated in an incomplete year. Under twenty, the figure is five weeks. If you are being generous, be generous deliberately — you cannot walk it back.
Weeks divided by fifty-two minus weeks: 8.33%, 10.64% or 13.04%. Write it into the contract alongside any public-holiday percentage, as two distinct lines rather than one blended rate.
A monthly payslip with the holiday supplement as its own CHF figure. This is the condition households fail most often, and the one that decides whether the supplement counts as validly paid.
The percentage funds the holiday; it does not replace it. Keep a register of days requested, granted and remaining, and plan two consecutive weeks. For regular full-time work with your household, BGE 149 III 202 leaves no rolled-up alternative.
Compare days accrued against days taken every December, and make carry-over deliberate. On termination, settle the untaken balance in cash on the final payslip.
If that reads like a payroll function, it is one — and only the holiday half. Alongside it sit AHV, IV, EO and ALV registration with the cantonal compensation office, family allowances, accident cover, BVG above the salary threshold, an annual Lohnausweis and often withholding tax at source, on forms that mostly exist only in German or French. Our guide to hiring a nanny in Switzerland walks through the sequence in order.
Three groups of things you would otherwise arrange, fund or defend yourself. The holiday entitlement, the payslips that prove it and the sick-pay scales are all inside the hourly number.
We have had a wonderful experience with Rundil Childcare. Our child felt comfortable from the beginning, and the communication with us has always been clear and reassuring. It has made managing our weekly schedule so much easier.
Rundil helped us find reliable support for our two children after school. The childcare has been warm, attentive and dependable, and the children genuinely look forward to the time they spend together. We are very pleased with the service.
We needed occasional childcare that could fit around our changing work commitments. The process was straightforward, and the support we received was professional and caring. It is reassuring to know we have someone dependable when we need help.
Our daughter settled in very quickly and always seems happy and relaxed after each visit. We particularly appreciate the regular communication and thoughtful attention given to her routine. Rundil has been a great support for our family.
We contacted Rundil for evening childcare and were very happy with the experience. Everything was handled calmly and professionally, and our children felt safe and comfortable. We would happily use the service again.
The childcare support has been reliable, friendly and very well suited to our family. Our son enjoys the activities and attention, while we appreciate the punctuality and good communication. It has given us real peace of mind.
Eighteen answers for the family paying the wage, each naming the article or decision behind it.
Rundil charges the same rate everywhere in Switzerland. What changes canton by canton is the cost of the alternative — so the gap between employing a nanny yourself and booking one from us is widest in Vaud and narrowest in Zug.
The rest of the cluster, written to the same standard as this page.
The registration sequence in order: contract, cantonal compensation office, AHV, family allowances, accident cover and the annual Lohnausweis.
Read the hiring guide →The full build-up from gross wage to true hourly cost, including the Zurich base case used above.
See the price breakdown →How the managed model works, what the four tiers include, and why the nanny is employed by us.
See the service →The comparison families run once they realise a single nanny is absent for weeks each year.
Compare the two →School-hours childcare on a fixed weekly pattern, the arrangement most exposed to the holiday calendar.
See after-school care →Same-day cover for the Tuesday your nanny is unwell and both parents have meetings.
See emergency cover →Care at home for a child who cannot go to school or Kita, assigned at short notice.
See sick-child care →Which cantons pay towards childcare, which do not, and the tax deduction a nanny does qualify for.
See what is funded →CHF 42, 47 or 54 an hour excl. 8.1% VAT, per child, minimum two hours. No placement fee, no registration fee, no employer paperwork and no minimum term — a vetted, English-speaking nanny assigned in 48 to 72 hours.
