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 meant-to-be-permanent choice between Swiss LAMal health insurance and French CMU/PUMa. Get it wrong and you are locked in for the duration of the contract. The problem is that the two systems are priced in completely different ways, so you cannot compare them in your head:

• LAMal is a fixed monthly premium set by your insurer, age and canton — real premiums vary roughly CHF 350–700/month depending on insurer and franchise.
• CMU/PUMa is income-based: roughly 8% of your income above a deduction of 25% of the PASS, billed by the French CNTFS.

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, your salary is taxed at source in Switzerland (impôt à la source). You are not taxed in France on that salary.
• If you work in Vaud, Neuchâtel, Jura, Basel or Valais (the 1983-accord cantons), your salary is generally taxed in France, and Switzerland does not withhold income tax.

So the lazy summary you will hear — 'you work in Switzerland, so you're taxed in France' — is simply wrong for Geneva, where the majority of frontaliers actually work. Net Frontalier keeps these straight by canton 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 they earn at least 90% of their worldwide income in Switzerland. Qualifying lets you file an ordinary Geneva tax return (TOU) and deduct real expenses — pension buy-ins, childcare, alimony, professional costs — which the flat at-source rate ignores. For many that means reclaiming several thousand francs.

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 (~CHF 350–700), 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.
• 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.