SWITZERLAND ON A BUDGET: Top tips to travel to Switzerland on a budget in 2025!

Hey guys! Welcome back to our channel. If you are new here, my name is Alexis and I am from the US. And I'm Louis and I am Swiss. And together we make all kinds of videos about traveling and living in Switzerland. So if that sounds interesting to you, make sure to hit that subscribe button to stick around. So you saw it in the title, in this video we are going to be going through all of the budget tips to travel to Switzerland efficiently and in a cost-effective way. Because if you're planning a trip to Switzerland, you've likely seen Switzerland is almost always the top of those most expensive countries in the world to visit. So we're going to give you our years of knowledge of living here, a whole life basically of living and being from here, to plan Switzerland efficiently. So before we get into our video, we do have a bunch of itineraries available to you if you are in the midst of planning and feeling overwhelmed. If you're feeling very overwhelmed, you can book a one-on-one consultation with Louis as well. But with that, let's get right into the So we have so many tips for you, really. This video is jam-packed, we are going to be flying through them. But to organize it, we have broken them out into the main categories where you will spend money when traveling. And that is transportation, accommodations, food, money and data, and activities. So with that, let's get right into our first tip. Okay, so the first category we're going to go through, and this is likely the one where you can spend or waste the most amount of money, is transportation. If you're coming to Switzerland, you're likely already looking at some of these amazing panoramic rides. Switzerland is so beautiful, so well-connected, but if you are buying full-price train tickets, it can get extremely expensive very, very quickly. So we have a few very actionable tips for you that can help you make the most of your budget when traveling in Switzerland. The first one I'll talk about is actually something Louis pulled together, which is on our website, which is a train pass selector tool. You can go in there, put all the information about your trip. Louis will review it at a one or two business days. We'll come back to you with the train pass that we think makes the most sense for you. This is a completely free service that we started doing because we got so many questions about train passes. Trying to streamline it a little bit. We do have full videos and playlists here for you about all the different passes if you're interested about learning more, but that is a great place to start. So once you get a pass, there's always great ways to maximize the value out of it and to save money. For example, with the Swiss trolley pass or the Save a Day passes, you can go to different mountain trains. For example, the Rigi, Stoos, or the Steintzerhorn are all free with the Swiss trolley pass. So this is a good tip and a great way to have an amazing activity while saving money. And this is different because many of those mountains in the Interlaken region or Zermatt specifically are not covered at 100%. So you will still pay money in addition to the pass. You'll get a discount, but there are so many mountains that are a little bit less visited ones, but still incredibly beautiful that are 100% covered. And the last thing that I really like is if you buy a half fare card or a Swiss travel pass and you are a family with kids below 16, you're going to get a free family card. And with this, your kids can travel for free in all these different normal trains, which can save a lot of money compared to not having these family cards. So these are some tips about transportation in Switzerland. So I want to say thank you to BetterHelp for sponsoring this video. So for me personally, while living abroad, it comes with this fair share of struggles. While I love it, I'm removed from my family and friends, my original network, and I'm in a place that's just wholly unfamiliar to me. And this can come with a lot of struggles. And that's why I think taking care of your mental health is so important. And that's why BetterHelp means so much to me partnering with this video. So I want to say thank you to them. BetterHelp is the world's largest online therapy provider. It is 100% online. To get started, you just answer a few questions about your needs and preferences in therapy. And that way, BetterHelp can match you with a therapist from their network. Then you can talk to the therapist however you feel comfortable, which I think is a really great feature. So whether that's via text, chat, phone, or video call, you have tons of options, whichever is going to feel most comfortable and helpful for you. I also want to point out that it is a great option if you're living abroad and you're having a hard time finding a therapist where you live that speaks English. This is a great option for you to do remotely. And if the therapist isn't the right fit for you, for any reason, you can change at any time, no questions asked, at no additional fee. Get 10% off your first month at BetterHelp.com slash Traveling Swiss. That is BetterHelp.com slash Traveling Swiss. The link is on screen and in the description. The next category is about accommodation and hotels, which will be a huge part of your budget in Switzerland. So the first step to save quite a lot of money is actually staying outside of the sort of hotspots and the city centers, different things like this. You will be able to connect very quickly with the Swiss transportation and get to where you want to go in less than 15-20 minutes, for example in Zurich, and save a considerable amount of money when you are just outside of the city. So this is something that you should probably look at if you are tight on budget. The second tip that is not just about Switzerland but still I think is good to have is to really book early. We are looking for some of our clients at hotels and I've seen last year the change between when we were doing this in January versus when we were sort of trying to book in June for July and August and you have prices that just double for hotels. So book your hotels early. We have actually a guide that is free with all our favorite hotels in all the different cities and villages in Switzerland that you can find also in the link below. But booking early is important in Switzerland. The next tip is actually when you are going to be in cities, in villages, there are very often guest cards that are given to you and these guest cards can be very useful depending on the region. They will allow you most of the time to travel in the city or in the area for free. The guest card in Ticino for example, which is the Italian region of Switzerland, allows you to travel in the entire region for free by train, bus, etc. So that's a really cool one. They will also allow you to get some museum discounts and different activities for free or discounted. So take advantage of these guest cards. Ask for them. Usually they will give it to you but this is also a great way to save money on activities or transportation you will do anyway. And lastly, if you are able to sort of choose your travel dates to come to Switzerland, I would recommend to come maybe not at the high season for multiple reasons. You'll have more people, more tourists, but you'll have also some much cheaper prices in terms of hotels. So this is something also to consider. And coming maybe in May, in sort of October, even September, as opposed to coming in July and August where it will be more expensive. So like a lot of things we've mentioned, Switzerland is also notoriously expensive for food. Some of the most expensive in Europe. But there are ways that you can save. These are a lot of tips that we use regularly just living here. So you know that they work. The first two tips are two different apps that we love. This first one is called The Fork. The Fork is an app where it has functionality where you can reserve reservations online. So you can book either the same day or a few weeks in advance the reservation that you want for a restaurant. Where the savings comes in is if they have extra reservations or they don't think they're going to be full for the night, they will discount the entire check for that reservation. And you can see that in the app. So you can book tables at 20, 30, 40, even 50 percent. Louis and I have done this quite a bit in Geneva. There's a lot of options in Geneva. So definitely check it out. It's a free app. What I will say is this is available a little bit more in western Switzerland. So Geneva, Lausanne, I've seen it more there. But there's a few scattered throughout the Interlaken area. A couple I've seen around Zurich. So take a peek at it. It's not a bad option, especially because dinners can be super pricey in Switzerland. The next app, and this is something Louis and I use all the time, is called Too Good To Go. This isn't just available in Switzerland. So I recommend downloading it kind of wherever you are in the world because the concept of it is really nice. So essentially what Too Good To Go is, is you can pay an extremely reduced fee and you will get a mystery bag of food, goods, products at the end of the day for different locations. So this concept is essentially to eliminate food waste. So places that are going to throw food out at the end of the day, restaurants, bakeries, supermarkets, they're getting rid of the stock at the end of the day, you can get a huge discount on it. So you just go on the app, you reserve your mystery bag at different places, and you get it. So Too Good To Go is a great free app. I definitely recommend downloading it. Another tip, and this one might seem a little bit obvious, but I do want to say it, is trying to avoid eating every meal in a restaurant. So breakfast you could eat in your hotel. You can just go to a little bakery and get a croissant. They're great all over Switzerland. They're even great from the supermarkets here and very reasonably priced. For lunches particularly, that's a great time to kind of skip a restaurant. So pack a picnic. All the supermarkets in Switzerland have great grab-and-go sections. Migros Cup have great options. You can get sandwiches, salads, wraps, all kinds of different things and take it with you. Switzerland is so beautiful everywhere you go. You can drink outside here if you want to pack a bottle of wine or some beer and things like that and just have a really nice picnic. That's a great way to save some money and just avoid eating out in restaurants. So two more tips when you're in restaurants. One, you will notice that if you don't eat meat in Switzerland, it will be much, much cheaper, which tends not to be a problem in Switzerland because so many of their dishes are just cheese-based. So you can go that direction. Potatoes and cheese. But you will see that meat is very expensive here. There are very strict regulations about the way meat needs to be raised, where it needs to come from, which is great. But if you're eating meat and steaks and burgers for every meal, you will run up a bill very quickly. Another tip, and this is one that a lot of people don't know. When you're in a restaurant, you will see the price for water on a menu. So you will see the price for a bottle of water. You can ask the waiter for a carafe of water and they will just give you tap water. So that's just how you ask. But you have to ask. You have to ask for a carafe of water and they will just give you water from a tap. It's no problem. I have never had anybody give us looks. It's just not listed on the menu. So you don't need to spend up to $10 on a bottle of water and a glass bottle. So on the subject of water, the last tip in the food section is you don't need to buy bottled water in Switzerland. Louis does lots of consultations and sometimes the question comes up if the tap water is safe to drink here. The tap water in Switzerland is excellent. It is even better than the bottled water. It is coming from glaciers. It's mountain runoff. There will be water fountains in every part of Switzerland. In the most remote areas, you will see water fountains. So just bring a refillable bottle and fill it up over and over again. There's no reason to keep buying bottles of water. If you're buying it like a vending machine, a train station can get quite expensive. So just bring your bottle, fill it up and you'll be good to go. The next category is money and data. This category is one that I'm very accustomed to because in every consultation I have, I talk about it more in detail. But here are a few tips for you to save money on phones, data, and just money in general in Switzerland. So the first tip that I have about money and especially credit cards is to select when you are being rendered a choice between Swiss francs and dollars, for example, to always choose Swiss francs because otherwise the machine will take a fee on the conversion and this fee is never great. So you should always use Swiss francs. This goes with our second tip also about how to save money is to have really specific credit cards that are adapted for international travel. We have a few. We have a United one and a Merit one that we really like and use and they have no additional fees when you use internationally which can also be pricey every time you use a credit card that does not have this. Otherwise about data, something that can save you quite a lot of money especially if you're going to be here longer is to use an eSIM. I was against kind of changing these SIM cards because this is just you lose your your real SIM cards but these eSIMs don't have that whole manipulation that you can actually not do anymore with iPhones these days and these are actually prices that are super low and for 10-15 days in Switzerland will be below 50 bucks which is much more than the 10 dollars per day sort of roaming from an AT&T or Verizon. So we got ours for our relatives that came at myapp.net and it was actually very easy to use you have just you go online and then you activate it and it works. So we have a link actually to help you find this but this is a great option to save some money on data especially if you are multiple of you to come. You even have some options to do the hotspot so you can even use one for multiple people. And the last tip about cards and money is something for actually expats and people living in Switzerland but this is also useful. I am a part of Reifeisen, the bank, and being a Sociétaire, which is basically you own a little bit of the bank, you have then a card that allows you to go to any museum almost in Switzerland for free. So this is why we actually save a lot of money also ourselves when we have our Reifeisen card. So I invite you to have a look if you live in Switzerland about Reifeisen. Okay so this last category is how to save on certain activities. So that'll wrap up the video but we have some amazing tips here. The first one is actually if you are traveling around your birthday, which I know can often coincide because that's a trip that you take, if it is your birthday there are so many different providers in Switzerland that will give you things for totally free and expensive things. So the Schilthorn you'll get a free ticket. If you're in the Montreux or Oberland region and get a ticket on the Mob, they'll give you a free first class day ticket. This is the golden pass for example. Yeah that's crazy good value. The Brienzer Rotorn will give you a ticket. Schönegeplatz will give you a ticket. I'll have on the screen as many as I can find but that's something that's worth asking if you're traveling on your birthday in Switzerland. You'll have a lot of discounts all across the country. So some things that are always free to do activity-wise is walking around the beautiful villages and old town of Switzerland. You don't need to do guided tours, you can really just explore. So many cities have beautiful old towns. I know when you're in Switzerland there could be a need almost feeling like you need to go do these big ticket items every day. Spend a day just exploring the lovely countryside, the villages, take a walk. That's always free. It will feel even more authentic sometimes. And the last tip we have to maximize your budget on activities is if you have the Swiss travel pass, which I know so many of you purchase when you come to Switzerland, you can continue maximizing that pass in terms of activities because they have over 500 museums that are free if you have this pass included. And that includes some castles too. So you have some really incredible experiences all across Switzerland. I'll have the link to their website and pull some of the most popular ones on the screen. But some of the ones we've liked to visit have been the Chateau Chillon. So that really beautiful little mermaid castle on Lake Geneva near Montreux. You also have the Matterhorn Museum which is right in the center of Zermatt, which is also very cool. But you have tons of options here. So take a look and just keep maximizing that Swiss travel pass because you can get a lot of free things with this one. And I actually mention it every time. It would be free in our guide that you have where you can actually take advantage of this. All right. So that is it for the budget tips. I know that was a lot of information, but I really hope that you found that helpful and I hope that this helps you save a little bit of money in your trip planning to Switzerland. So again, I want to thank you guys so much for watching. Head to our website for all kinds of goodies. We have free resources. We have some guides that you can purchase or you can book a consultation with Louis. But that is it for us guys. We'll catch you in the next one. Bye guys. Bye. Hey guys, thanks for watching. Thanks for watching. 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