The latest Residential Attractiveness Index (WAI) from UBS has revealed the best places to live in Switzerland. The Swiss bank found that with costs rising in major cities, medium-sized towns now offer the best value for money.

Which Swiss cities are the best to live in?

To create the study, UBS compared Swiss towns, villages and cities by their quality of life and living costs. A total of 35 different factors were used to place each town on the list, ranging from the quality of public transport, the diversity of leisure activities and shopping, the proximity to crucial services like healthcare and affordability.

The bank then used this data to rank each town in one of 13 different regions. They reasoned that a nationwide ranking would be pointless as three-quarters of all relocations in Switzerland are to places within a 10-kilometre radius.

UBS seeks to reveal the best places to live for low-earners

The study also seeks to address an issue with other rankings of the best places to live in Switzerland. Typically, towns like Zug, Cham, Zurich and others tend to place top in other rankings thanks to their quality of life and proximity to services. However, fundamentally they remain completely unaffordable for many people, rendering the studies a window-shopping exercise rather than genuine advice for movers and newcomers.

Therefore, the ranking created three rankings whose findings varied by income. These three categories were a family with two kids and a total salary or income of 80.000 francs a year with 30.000 francs in assets (low income), a two-children family with a 145.000-franc salary and 80.000 francs in assets (medium), and a 300.000 franc a year family with two children with 200.000 francs in assets.

Each group is also looking for different-sized homes, with the low-income family looking for a 95-square metre home, the medium family opting for 110 metres squared and the high-income household going for 130 square metres and above.

Medium-sized Swiss cities offer the best value for money

For 2024, despite typically being the best in terms of services and leisure, UBS noted that places like Zurich and Geneva will not be high on the list due to their sky-high living costs. "The residential communities that are best placed in the residential attractiveness indicator are often expensive places to live. Their attractiveness has always made them a desirable place to live, which drives up property prices," the report explained.

Therefore, the best places to live in the majority of the 13 Swiss regions were found to be medium-sized cities with enough facilities and leisure to satisfy without the gut punch of high rental costs.

Where is the best place to live in Zurich?

This was showcased most clearly in the Zurich region, where Aarau, Schaffhausen and Baden (Aargau) were rated as the best places to live for low and medium-earners. This is because all three are well connected to Zurich and other amenities, but have been less affected by rising rental costs.

Zurich itself only featured in the top 10 for high earners, with the traditional high flyers on the Gold Coast also failing to reach the higher echelons. In the Vaud-Geneva region, the towns of Vevey, Lausanne and Montreux took the podium places for low earners, while Geneva itself only occupied the top 10 for those with high incomes.

Other medium-sized cities highly rated by UBS include Locarno, Chur, Fribourg, Lucerne, Neuchâtel, Sitten, Solothurn and St. Gallen. In fact, the only large cities to come out of the ranking well were Lausanne and Basel, the latter largely due to its wealth of leisure activities compared to other towns in Basel-Stadt and Land.

Best places to live in Switzerland revealed

In all, here are the top three best places in Switzerland, divided by region and income group:

For more information about the study, and to see which other cities and towns made each top 10, check out the official website.