Nanny Service Switzerland — from CHF 42/h + 8.1% MwSt.
Nanny Service Switzerland — from CHF 42/h + 8.1% MwSt.
Two families, one nanny, roughly half the cost each. It is a good idea and it is cheaper than booking us. What nobody writes down in English is that Swiss social insurance is assessed per employer, not per nanny — so the same split that lets both households use the simplified payroll procedure can push a nanny below the BVG entry threshold with both families at once and delete a second-pillar pension she would have had in a single job. Every threshold that moves when you divide a week in two, in francs, with the sources.
Written to be quoted, so the expensive part comes first.
A nanny share means two families employ the same nanny, and in Switzerland that normally means two separate contracts. quitt states it flatly: "Die Nanny hat einen separaten Arbeitsvertrag bei Familie 1 und einen Arbeitsvertrag bei Familie 2." swissmom describes the families as joint employers negotiating terms together; Nanny Verein Schweiz requires a binding written agreement signed by every party. The arrangement where one family employs and the other reimburses is endorsed by none of them, and it is undeclared employment.
Every Swiss threshold that matters is measured per employer, and that is the whole story of this page. AHV is owed by each household from the first franc. The simplified payroll procedure is assessed per employer, which is good news. The BVG entry threshold of CHF 22,680 is too, which is not: Allianz states that someone earning less than that with each of several employers is not compulsorily insured even when the wages added together exceed it.
Two more thresholds move against her. Non-occupational accident cover under UVG starts at eight hours a week with the same employer, so a week split two by six hours leaves no cover from either family. The NAV Hauswirtschaft minimum wage applies from an average of five hours a week with the same employer, so a two-by-four-hour split falls out of the federal wage floor.
Where we fit, honestly: a share is cheaper than us. Rundil charges per child, so two families booking us separately will usually pay more each than two families sharing one directly employed nanny. What you buy instead is that none of the above is your problem — one employment relationship, properly insured, cover when the nanny is ill, and no exit negotiation.
There is no English page on this in Switzerland. There is one good German one, and it stops short.
A nanny share is one nanny caring for the children of two households at the same time, usually in one of the two homes and often alternating between them. It is not a rota, and it is not a Tagesfamilie: a shared nanny is an employee and the families are her employers.
On money the sources converge on one figure and one only: a shared nanny earns roughly 20% more than in a single-family engagement, and that larger total is divided between the two households. No Swiss source publishes a nanny-share hourly rate and none publishes a split ratio, so we will not invent either. The 20% tells you the shape of the saving: the combined wage bill rises about a fifth and is carried by two households instead of one.
Cost. Two households divide one wage bill only about a fifth larger than one family would have paid alone — the largest childcare saving outside a subsidised Kita place.
Setting. Care in a home rather than a group room, with one adult, and a peer group for a child who would otherwise have none.
Alignment. Two families have to want the same hours, days and approach to food, naps and discipline, for longer than a term.
Thresholds. Splitting a week moves the nanny across four legal lines measured per employer. Three move against her, one moves in your favour. The rest of this page is those four lines.
Exit. When one family moves or changes jobs, the arrangement does not degrade gracefully.
The most consequential decision in a share is made before anyone signs.
Families imagine three structures and only two survive contact with Swiss social insurance: two separate contracts; one contract signed by both families and the nanny with an explicit written allocation of hours and wage; or one family employing on paper while the other pays informally. The third looks simplest. It is the one you must not take.
Social-insurance mechanics push hard towards two documents. Each employer registers with an Ausgleichskasse for its own household, takes out its own UVG policy, owes its own holiday entitlement, and is assessed separately against the simplified-procedure limits and the BVG entry threshold. A contract pretending there is one employer contradicts every filing behind it.
Each family contracts for its own hours, wage, notice period, holiday entitlement and payroll registration — the structure quitt describes.
It lines up with how AHV, UVG, the simplified procedure and BVG are each assessed, and it survives an exit: if one family leaves, the other contract continues untouched.
swissmom and Nanny Verein Schweiz both contemplate a jointly agreed contract signed by every party, which puts hours, location, illness and holiday in one place.
It removes no registration and no filing. The written allocation of hours and wage between the households is the part doing the legal work. Without it you have two responsible parties and no way to say for how much.
No source endorses it, because it is not a structure — it is an undeclared employment relationship with a private cash flow attached.
Hours a second household receives are wages in that household's hands, contribution-liable there. The nanny loses permanently: undeclared wages accrue no AHV, do not count towards the BVG threshold, and sit outside anyone's accident policy.
The mechanism behind every trap and every advantage below.
Swiss social insurance is built around the employment relationship, not the person. With one job the distinction never surfaces. With two, every threshold is applied twice, to two smaller numbers, and the results are not what anyone expects.
Start with the one that has no threshold at all. AHV, IV and EO are owed on household wages "unabhängig von der Höhe des Lohnes" — regardless of the size of the wage. The only carve-out is for employees up to age 25 earning no more than CHF 750 a year from that employer, which a share will never fall inside. Both families owe contributions from the first franc, each through its own Ausgleichskasse.
| Threshold | What it controls | Measured how | Effect of splitting one week across two families |
|---|---|---|---|
| First franc | AHV, IV, EO liability | Per employer, no floor | Neutral — both families owe contributions on their own wages |
| 5 hours a week, average | NAV Hauswirtschaft minimum wage | Per employer | Against her — a small share can fall out of the federal wage floor |
| 8 hours a week | UVG non-occupational accident cover | Per employer | Against her — a 2 × 6h split leaves no cover from either family |
| CHF 22,680 a year | BVG entry threshold | Per employer | Against her — she can lose her pension while earning well above it |
| CHF 22,680 / CHF 60,480 | Simplified payroll procedure (VAV) | Per employer | For you — each family is far more likely to qualify for the 5% procedure |
Read the last column downwards. Splitting a week is neutral for AHV, positive for the payroll procedure you run, and negative for the wage floor, the accident cover and the pension that protect the nanny — what happens when thresholds designed for single jobs meet an arrangement that halves the job.
There is exactly one piece of good news and it is worth real money.
The vereinfachtes Abrechnungsverfahren, or VAV, was designed for households employing domestic staff. Instead of a normal payroll, the employer settles social contributions and tax together with the Ausgleichskasse, and income tax is discharged at a flat 5%.
The two 2026 ceilings are a gross wage per employee of no more than CHF 22,680 a year and a total employer wage bill of no more than CHF 60,480, both assessed per employer. A full-time single-family nanny blows straight through the per-employee ceiling; in a share each family pays for roughly half a week. Both families can typically use the simplified procedure when neither could have used it alone.
Below roughly sixteen and a half hours a week from a single household, at the federal EFZ minimum with the 8.33% holiday uplift included, that household stays under the per-employee ceiling. Pay above the minimum, as a share wage normally is, and the crossover arrives at fewer hours. This is arithmetic on published limits, not a quoted market rate.
One qualification: the procedure is a choice, not an automatic status. You apply to your Ausgleichskasse, and the 5% is a final tax on her wage — worth raising with her rather than deciding for her.
The most important thing on this page, and the thing the best German-language article on the subject does not mention.
The second pillar is compulsory above an annual salary threshold, which for 2026 is CHF 22,680. Above it, affiliation is mandatory, the Koordinationsabzug of CHF 26,460 is deducted to give the insured salary, and contributions run to the BVG upper limit of CHF 90,720. Below it, an employer has no duty to affiliate anyone.
Now apply the per-employer rule. Allianz puts it in one sentence: "Falls Sie bei mehreren Arbeitgebern arbeiten und bei jedem weniger als CHF 22 680.– verdienen, sind Sie nicht obligatorisch versichert – und zwar auch dann nicht, wenn Sie zusammengezählt mehr als CHF 22 680.– verdienen." If you work for several employers and earn less than CHF 22,680 with each, you are not compulsorily insured — and that stays true when the wages together exceed the threshold.
The collision is exact. The very split that puts both families inside the simplified procedure is the split that puts the nanny outside compulsory pension cover — one number doing two jobs in opposite directions. Neither family has done anything wrong, and neither has been told.
Each household pays CHF 20,744 a year, CHF 1,936 below the entry threshold, so neither is obliged to affiliate her. Her combined wage is CHF 41,489, nearly twice the threshold. In a single job she would be insured on CHF 15,029 after the coordination deduction. In the share she is insured on nothing.
| Gross hourly wage with one family | Weekly hours at which that family reaches CHF 22,680 | Below that | At or above that |
|---|---|---|---|
| CHF 20.35 | 19.8 h | Simplified procedure · no BVG duty | BVG affiliation compulsory |
| CHF 22.30 | 18.1 h | Simplified procedure · no BVG duty | BVG affiliation compulsory |
| CHF 24.55 | 16.4 h | Simplified procedure · no BVG duty | BVG affiliation compulsory |
| CHF 28.00 | 14.4 h | Simplified procedure · no BVG duty | BVG affiliation compulsory |
| CHF 32.00 | 12.6 h | Simplified procedure · no BVG duty | BVG affiliation compulsory |
Note what the table implies: the better you pay her, the sooner your household crosses the threshold, so the trap closes on the arrangements that look most modest.
Swiss law does provide an answer. Under Article 46 BVG, an employee working for several employers whose combined AHV salary exceeds the entry threshold may insure herself voluntarily — through the Auffangeinrichtung under its plan for multiple employments, or through one employer's own fund if its regulations allow it. Most do not. Each employer then owes half of the contributions attributable to the wage it pays.
A second route works the other way round. Under an AN Plus solution each employer voluntarily insures its own part-time wage from as little as CHF 2,500 a year, with no coordination deduction, so 100% of each wage is insured — which maps neatly onto the two contracts you already have. On the worked example, Article 46 through the Auffangeinrichtung insures CHF 15,029; AN Plus insures the whole CHF 41,489.
| Route | Who starts it | Insured salary in the worked example | Practical catch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nothing — the default | Nobody | CHF 0 | The most common outcome, and the reason this section exists |
| Art. 46 BVG via the Auffangeinrichtung | The employee | CHF 15,029 | Coordination deduction applies; each employer owes half of its share |
| Art. 46 BVG via an employer's fund | The employee | Depends on the fund | Most fund regulations exclude it, so this route is usually closed |
| AN Plus, voluntary per employer | Each employer | CHF 41,489 | Voluntary — both families must agree and both pay contributions |
Accident insurance is simple in a single job. Split the week and it stops being simple.
Under UVG each employer insures its own employees, and cover comes in two halves. Occupational accidents are covered from the first hour. Non-occupational accidents, known as NBU, are covered only if the employee works at least eight hours a week with that same employer. Below that there is no NBU cover from that employer, and commuting accidents are treated as occupational.
The rule is per employer, like everything else here. A nanny working twelve hours a week for one family has NBU cover. The same nanny working the same twelve hours split six and six across two families has no non-occupational cover from either of them. She has divided one job into two, and her cover for anything that happens on a Sunday has disappeared.
Above eight with that employer. Occupational and non-occupational cover both in place.
Below eight with each employer. Occupational cover only. No NBU cover anywhere, and commuting accidents count as occupational.
Above eight with each employer. Both carry NBU cover — the outcome you want, and why the hours split matters.
For an NBU claim, the insurer of the employer she last worked for and was NBU-insured with. Daily benefits use all employers' wages combined.
One of the few hard floors in Swiss employment law has a scope condition, and a share can fall through it.
The Normalarbeitsvertrag Hauswirtschaft sets binding minimum hourly wages for domestic staff in every canton except Geneva. From 1 January 2026 they rose by 2% to CHF 20.35 unqualified, CHF 22.30 for unqualified staff with four or more years and for EBA holders, and CHF 24.55 for EFZ holders, gross and excluding holiday supplements. Childcare workers are explicitly in scope — and anyone quoting CHF 19.95, CHF 21.85 or CHF 24.05 is quoting last year.
The scope condition is the catch. The NAV applies from an average of five hours a week with the same employer. In a single-family job that is never in play. In a share it is plausible: a family wanting two mornings covered can easily contract for four hours a week. A 2 × 4h split falls out of the federal NAV altogether.
| NAV Hauswirtschaft 2026 category | Gross minimum per hour | With 8.33% holiday uplift | Applies when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unqualified | CHF 20.35 | CHF 22.04 | At least 5 h a week, same employer |
| Unqualified, 4+ years, and EBA | CHF 22.30 | CHF 24.16 | At least 5 h a week, same employer |
| EFZ qualified | CHF 24.55 | CHF 26.60 | At least 5 h a week, same employer |
| Any category, under 5 h a week | — | — | Federal NAV does not apply to that engagement |
Falling outside the NAV does not make a low wage decent, and some cantons impose their own minima. What it means is that the automatic federal protection is gone, at exactly the moment her bargaining position is weakest.
A share is cheaper than booking us and we have said so. Put your actual week through this anyway, so the comparison is against a real number rather than an assumption — per child, including 8.1% VAT.
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.
A nanny share makes you an employer twice over — two registrations, two policies, two sets of thresholds and one shared nanny in the middle. This is the same decision, stated without the arithmetic.
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.
Two employers each owe a full entitlement. She has one calendar.
Article 329a of the Code of Obligations gives every employee at least four weeks of paid holiday a year, five up to the age of twenty. For hourly staff it is usually converted into an uplift on the wage: 8.33% for four weeks, 10.64% for five. In a share, each employer owes the entitlement on its own wage. There is no discount for sharing.
The money is the easy half. The hard half is that the four weeks are the same four weeks of her life. Leave from Family A in July and from Family B in October is not a holiday — she would be working the other job in both months. Both households have to agree when it falls, before the year starts.
If Family A is away for a fortnight and Family B is not, A owes the wage for hours it chose not to use, unless it agreed otherwise with her in advance — and meanwhile the share is not running, one half of it is.
Write down who bears the cost of a household's own absence. It is the clause families most often omit and most often argue about.
Both employers have to release the same weeks or she cannot take them. Agree the dates for the whole year when the share is set up and put them in both contracts.
This is where a share is measurably worse than an agency arrangement: when she is away, both households are uncovered at once and there is no bench behind her.
Public holidays are set cantonally. Two families twenty minutes apart can sit on opposite sides of a boundary and have different closed days.
If your share crosses a cantonal border — around Zurich and Zug many do — list both cantons' holidays in both contracts and decide in writing which calendar governs which hours.
The mechanics of hourly holiday pay and untaken leave are set out on our nanny holiday entitlement in Switzerland page, and all of it applies to each contract separately.
Shares do not usually fail. They end, for ordinary reasons, on a timetable nobody agreed.
Every article describes how to start a share. We could not find a Swiss source describing how one ends, which is odd, because ending is the part with the financial consequences. A share ends for reasons nobody can be blamed for: a job in another canton, a second baby, a Kita place coming free. It is two contracts held together by a coincidence of schedules, and coincidences expire.
When Family B gives notice, four things happen to Family A at once. The hours change. The wage question reopens. The thresholds move. And the household that stayed inherits an employment problem it never signed up for.
Each contract carries its own notice period, and the two are not synchronised unless you wrote them to be. Set identical periods in both contracts and agree that notice given to one household is copied to the other in writing the same day.
If she stays with Family A alone, A's hours may rise above CHF 22,680 a year, ending the simplified procedure and triggering compulsory BVG affiliation. Or her total income may fall below the entry threshold, quietly ending any Article 46 cover. Require a threshold review within thirty days of either contract ending.
The uplift exists because a share is a harder job. If the share ends, is the remaining family paying a share wage for a single-family job? Either the wage reverts on a stated date, or it does not and the remaining household has accepted that.
The nanny will have a view, since she has to work in that home. Write down who searches, who approves and how long the search runs before the arrangement becomes a single-family job.
Notice, threshold review, wage reversion and replacement rights. Five lines in both contracts in the first week, when the conversation costs nothing. Left to the last week, it costs the friendship that started the share.
We are careful here, because this is where most articles state something confident and unverified.
Two things are established. Private liability insurance is voluntary in Switzerland, so you cannot assume the other family holds any. And a policy typically excludes damage to persons living in the policyholder's household, which is why a visiting child is a genuine question rather than an obvious one.
A third point comes from quitt and surprises most families: children under the age of seven are not legally responsible for damage they cause, and they are generally excluded from liability insurance unless expressly added to the parents' policy.
What we are not going to tell you is what happens when Family B's child is injured in Family A's home. We could not verify that from a Swiss source and we will not guess in a page families rely on. It has to be answered by your own insurer, about your own policy, in writing. Here is the list to send.
Is a child from another household, present in our home under a nanny-share arrangement, covered under our private liability policy for injury occurring here?
Are our own children expressly named on the policy, given that under-sevens are not legally responsible?
Does the policy respond if the damage is caused by our nanny rather than by a member of the household?
Does regular childcare for a non-resident child affect the contents or building policy, or any condition attached to it?
Is there a limit on non-resident children, or a notification requirement, that hosting a share would breach?
If we alternate, does anything change in the weeks we are the visiting family?
Which policy responds if she is injured while caring for both sets of children in the other household's home?
Does she reach eight hours a week with this household, so that non-occupational cover applies?
Get every answer in writing and keep it with the contracts.
Every page quoting a share rate has made it up. Here is what the Swiss sources support.
The only cost figure any Swiss source publishes is the uplift: a shared nanny earns roughly 20% more than in a single-family engagement, and that larger total is carried by two households. Neither quitt nor swissmom gives an hourly rate, and nobody publishes a split ratio. So the honest statement is a shape rather than a number: the combined wage bill rises about a fifth, and two households divide it instead of one.
How they divide it is a negotiation, not a standard, and we have no source saying which division is normal. What we can tell you is the floor beneath the negotiation — the NAV minimum for the correct skill category — and that a share wage sits above that floor, because the uplift applies to a market wage rather than to a legal minimum.
| Cost element in a nanny share | How it behaves when the week is split | Who carries it |
|---|---|---|
| Gross wage | Combined bill rises about 20%, then divides | Both, by agreement |
| AHV, IV, EO, ALV | Owed on each household's own wages, from the first franc | Each household separately |
| UVG premium | A policy per employer, with its own eight-hour NBU test | Each household separately |
| Holiday uplift | 8.33% for four weeks, on each household's own wage | Each household separately |
| BVG contributions | Usually none, unless voluntary cover is arranged | Nobody, by default |
| Payroll administration | Duplicated, not divided — two registrations, two filings | Each household separately |
| Cover when she is ill | Both households lose care on the same day | Both, simultaneously |
Set against a Rundil booking the comparison does not flatter us. Our rates are CHF 42 an hour Qualified, CHF 47 Experienced, CHF 54 Expert and CHF 55 Flex, all excluding 8.1% VAT, charged per child, minimum two-hour session — CHF 42 excluding VAT is CHF 45.40 including it. Because we price per child, two families booking separately pay two full rates, while two sharing one employed nanny divide one wage bill. For two cost-sensitive families the share is cheaper, and often materially so.
We have spent nine sections saying the cheaper option is cheaper. Here is our actual argument.
A share is a good arrangement built on a structure Swiss law does not really support. Two private households become two employers, each with its own registration, accident policy, holiday liability, threshold assessment and notice period, pointed at one person whose pension may quietly not exist. Every one of those problems is solvable — by you, in your evenings.
What we sell is not a cheaper hour. It is the removal of that paragraph. Rundil is the employer, so there is one employment relationship rather than two, properly registered, insured and administered. When the nanny is ill, a vetted replacement is arranged rather than two households losing care on the same morning. And there is no other family whose relocation ends your childcare.
Two contracts, or one signed by every party with an explicit written allocation of hours and wage. Register each household with its Ausgleichskasse, and never run the arrangement as one employer reimbursed by the other.
At least five hours a week per household for the NAV wage floor, at least eight for accident cover, then look at where CHF 22,680 a year falls for each.
If neither household will cross CHF 22,680, she has no compulsory second pillar. Raise Article 46 BVG and the Auffangeinrichtung with her, or agree AN Plus cover from each employer, and record which you arranged.
Liability insurance is voluntary and under-sevens are excluded unless expressly added. Send the questions above and file the answers with the contracts.
Identical notice periods, a threshold review within thirty days of either contract ending, an agreed answer on wage reversion, and a rule on recruiting a replacement family.
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.
Each answer stands alone and gives the figure in the first sentence.
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.
Every figure quoted here is set out in full elsewhere in the cluster.
The full tier-by-tier arithmetic, from the NAV minimum wage to the number on your invoice.
See the maths →What being the employer involves — contract, registration, payroll, insurance and the risks.
Read the guide →Four weeks, the 8.33% uplift and untaken leave, applied to each contract separately.
Check the rules →The honest cost comparison against institutional care, including where the Kita wins outright.
Compare them →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.
