Starting a Business in Switzerland in 2026: Detailed Cost Guide for New Companies

Switzerland offers three primary legal structures, each with materially different capital requirements. A GmbH (or Sàrl in French-speaking cantons) — the standard choice for small and mid-sized businesses — requires CHF 20,000 in share capital, fully paid in before the company can register. An AG (SA) requires CHF 100,000, of which at least CHF 50,000 must be paid in at formation; the remainder can be called later. A sole proprietorship has no statutory minimum capital, but lacks the liability protection that makes GmbH and AG the preferred structures for anyone planning to hire staff or take on commercial risk.

It is worth being precise about what this capital actually represents. It is not a government fee or a sunk cost — it becomes the company's own equity, available immediately after registration to cover rent, equipment, salaries, or any other operating expense. The genuinely irrecoverable cost of incorporation — the amount a founder will not see again — is considerably smaller: typically CHF 3,000 to 5,000 for a standard GmbH, covering notary fees (CHF 800 to 2,000, depending on canton and complexity), commercial register filing (roughly CHF 550 to 620), and the escrow account used to hold the capital during the registration process (CHF 100 to 250).

Notarisation is mandatory for both GmbH and AG incorporation under the Code of Obligations — there is no option to complete the process without a notary, regardless of how administratively simple the company's structure is. Cantonal notary tariffs vary, and complexity (multiple shareholders, foreign documentation requiring translation or apostille) increases the fee. Translation of foreign-language documents typically costs CHF 160 to 220 per page, and apostille or legalisation adds roughly CHF 50 per document — costs that are easy to underestimate for a founder incorporating from outside Switzerland with documentation in another language.

Beyond incorporation, ongoing costs begin immediately. Accounting and bookkeeping services for a small GmbH typically start from a few hundred Swiss francs per month, and employer social security contributions — AHV/IV/EO — run at approximately 10.6% of gross salary, split between employer and employee, with no upper salary cap. Companies registering for VAT, mandatory once annual turnover exceeds CHF 100,000, must also budget for the administrative cost of quarterly or biannual filings.

A technology company establishing its first Swiss entity initially modelled the GmbH's CHF 20,000 capital requirement as a pure cost, treating it the same way they would a government registration fee in their home market. This led the finance team to flag the Swiss entry as disproportionately expensive relative to other European options under consideration, before HTLC clarified that the capital remains on the company's balance sheet as equity rather than disappearing into the incorporation process. Once the genuine cash cost — roughly CHF 4,000 in notary, registration, and account fees — was separated from the capital requirement itself, the comparison against other markets looked materially different, and the decision to proceed was made on accurate figures rather than an inflated cost estimate.

Timeline expectations should be realistic but not pessimistic: a standard GmbH incorporation, from the first notary appointment to commercial register entry, typically takes two to four weeks when documentation is complete and the capital deposit is processed promptly. Using a streamlined formation service can compress this to as little as one to two weeks in straightforward cases, though foreign founders requiring document translation or apostille should budget additional time at the front end of the process.