Net Frontalier: The Free App That Finally Tells You Your Real Swiss Net Salary

Your Swiss employer quotes you a gross figure in francs. Your payslip then subtracts a stack of contributions with initials you have never seen — AVS, AI, APG, AC, LPP, NBU — and what you actually receive bears little resemblance to the headline number. If you are an Anglophone frontalier, you are decoding all of this in a second language, often before your first payslip even arrives.

Net Frontalier deducts each of those charges using the official 2026 rates and shows you a plain-language breakdown of every line:

• AVS/AI/APG — old-age, disability and loss-of-earnings insurance
• AC — unemployment insurance
• LPP — your 2nd-pillar occupational pension
• NBU — non-occupational accident cover

The result is the single figure you actually wanted: an estimate of what hits your account each month. The app shows this before income tax and health-insurance premiums, which it displays separately as reference rather than silently subtracting — so you always know what each number means.

Within three months of starting your Swiss job you exercise your droit d'option — a choice between Swiss LAMal health insurance and French CMU/PUMa. The option is exercised once and is irrevocable. A new option opens only on resuming work in Switzerland (e.g. after a period of unemployment), moving to France, or passing from worker to recipient of Swiss pensions only. The problem is that the two systems are priced in completely different ways, so you cannot compare them in your head:

• LAMal is a monthly premium per person: for a resident of France it follows the insurer's « residents of France » tariff (age, franchise), not the canton of work — a real quote confirms it.
• CMU/PUMa is income-based: roughly 8% of your income above a deduction of 25% of the PASS, computed by the Urssaf's national centre for Swiss frontaliers.

Net Frontalier puts both side by side for your actual salary. It uses an average LAMal figure (real quotes vary by insurer, so treat this as a starting point) and the CMU formula, so for the first time you get an apples-to-apples monthly comparison. For the full rules behind this decision, read our companion guide on LaMal vs CMU.

There is no paywall, no trial, no account. Download it, type your gross salary and canton, and you have your numbers in under a minute — nothing is uploaded.

• Android: Net Frontalier on Google Play
• iPhone / iPad: Net Frontalier on the App Store

Because it works in English and French, you are not forced to reverse-engineer French abbreviations to understand your own payslip — a genuine relief if you have just arrived and the whole frontalier vocabulary is new.

If you have children, your family benefits can come from two countries at once, and the rules are not intuitive. Under EU Regulation 883/2004, when a frontalier works in Switzerland and a spouse works in France, France generally pays first and Switzerland tops up the difference (the differential), or vice-versa depending on who works where.

Net Frontalier computes this CAF differential / Swiss family-allowance top-up across the cantons it covers, and it specifically handles the mixed-household rule — the common case where one parent works in Switzerland and the other works in France. Instead of guessing whether you are owed a top-up, you get an estimate of the gap between the French and Swiss allowances for your household.

This is the single most misunderstood point for new frontaliers, so be precise about it:

• If you work in Geneva (or another non-accord canton), your salary is taxed at source in Switzerland (impôt à la source). You also declare it in France (2047-SUISSE annex), where it gives a tax credit equal to the French tax: no double taxation, but a compulsory declaration.
• If you work in one of the eight 1983-accord cantons — Bern, Solothurn, Basel-City, Basel-Country, Vaud, Valais, Neuchâtel and Jura — your salary is taxed in France, and Switzerland withholds no tax if you hand your employer the 2041-AS attestation.

So the lazy summary you will hear — 'you work in Switzerland, so you're taxed in France' — is simply wrong for Geneva, where many frontaliers work. Net Frontalier keeps these straight by canton (it covers GE, VD, JU, NE, BS and VS) and never subtracts a phantom French tax from a Geneva salary.

Geneva frontaliers taxed at source may qualify as a quasi-resident (quasi-résident) if at least 90% of their household's worldwide gross income — spouse included — is taxable in Switzerland (a federal rule: LIFD art. 99a, source-tax ordinance art. 14). The request for a taxation ordinaire ultérieure (TOU), due by 31 March of the following year, lets you deduct real expenses — pension buy-ins, childcare, alimony, professional costs — which the at-source scale does not know. The outcome can be a refund or a higher tax, and a request once filed cannot be withdrawn.

Net Frontalier checks whether you cross the ≥90% threshold and flags your eligibility. Be clear on the limit: this is an eligibility flag only, not a tax computation. It tells you the door is open; it does not file your TOU return or calculate your refund. Treat a positive flag as a prompt to look into it (or speak to a fiduciary), not as a finished tax filing.

Two things make the app actually usable rather than just another calculator:

1. Per-deduction explanations. Every line — AVS, AC, LPP, NBU, the CMU cotisation, the family differential — comes with a short plain-English note on what it is and why it is there. You are not left staring at acronyms.
2. A shareable result card. Once you have your numbers, the app generates a clean summary card you can send to a partner, an accountant, or a fiduciary when you discuss your options.

That second point matters for the droit d'option in particular: a one-tap snapshot of 'here is my net, here is LAMal vs CMU for me' is far easier to discuss than a wall of payslip abbreviations.

Honesty about the limits is what makes an estimate trustworthy. Net Frontalier:

• Does not file anything with any administration — it is a calculator, not a portal.
• Shows net salary before income tax and health-insurance premiums; those appear separately as reference, not subtracted from your net.
• Uses average LAMal figures — real premiums vary by insurer, age and franchise, so confirm with an actual quote.
• Uses a fixed reference exchange rate, not a live FX feed — fine for planning, not for the franc you'll see on a given day.
• Treats quasi-resident as an eligibility flag only, not a tax calculation — and does not say whether a TOU would be favourable for you.
• Covers six border cantons, not every Swiss canton.
• Is not tax or legal advice — the app's own disclaimer says exactly this.

Within those limits it does the one thing that is genuinely hard to do by hand: turn a CHF gross number into a realistic monthly picture you can actually plan around — and for the other number every frontalier now has to watch, telework days, the free online telework tracker for frontaliers keeps the annual count.

An estimate is the right starting point. When you are ready to act on it — actually exercise the droit d'option, affiliate with CPAM, or file a Geneva quasi-resident return — you will want guided, document-level help rather than a single number.

That is what the AdminLanding cross-border France–Switzerland toolkit is for: a deeper LAMal-vs-CMU simulation, the affiliation steps, and the forms, built specifically for France-Switzerland frontaliers. Use Net Frontalier to understand your situation; use the toolkit when it is time to file.