Switzerland's motorway vignette costs CHF 40 and runs for 14 months, and neither the sticker nor the e-vignette is compulsory. The part that catches families out is the trailer: a caravan or gear trailer needs its own, and if neither vehicle has one the CHF 200 fine is charged twice.
If your drive to the Alps crosses Switzerland, you need a motorway vignette. It costs CHF 40, the price is identical whether you buy the sticker or the electronic version, and there is no cheap short version for people who are only passing through.
Here is the part that catches families out. If you are towing anything, the trailer needs its own vignette. Not a shared one, not a discounted one. A second CHF 40 vignette in its own right. And if you are stopped with neither the car nor the caravan carrying a valid one, the CHF 200 fine is charged twice, once for each, and you still have to buy both vignettes on the spot.
The vignette rules below come from BAZG's own directive (Richtlinie 15-01 in German, Règlement 15-01 in French, dated 1 March 2025), BAZG being the Swiss federal customs and border security office. The winter tyre answer comes from ASTRA, the Federal Roads Office, whose published guidance is commentary rather than statute, with Article 29 of the road traffic act as the underlying legal hook. Where a point rests on press reporting or on caravanning forums instead, we say so in the line itself. This is legal information, not legal advice. If your route runs through more than one country, the rest of the drive is covered in our guide to tolls, vignettes and winter tyres on the way to the Alps.
If you are towing and you read nothing else, read the trailer section. It is the one thing in this guide that is expensive to get wrong.
BAZG's directive puts the price plainly: the sale price of the annual vignette is CHF 40 for both collection formats. That is per vehicle, not per person and not per journey.
The validity window is where families either get value or waste money. The vignette goes on sale on 1 December of the previous year, and it authorises use of the charged national roads from 1 December of the previous year until 31 January of the following year. The 2026 vignette is therefore valid from 1 December 2025 to 31 January 2027. Fourteen months.
Work out what that means for your ski dates before you buy:
Pro tip: if your trip starts on or after 1 December, ask for the following year's vignette rather than the current one. Both are on sale at that point, both cost CHF 40, and the newer one runs fourteen months forward instead of expiring on 31 January. A family driving out at Christmas 2026 who buys the 2027 vignette is covered for that trip, for February half term, and for next Christmas, on one sticker.
Real talk on the price holding: CHF 40 has been the figure since 1995, and Swiss broadcaster SRF and the trade title htr.ch reported that a 2013 proposal to raise it to CHF 100 was rejected by 60.5 per cent of voters. That is media reporting rather than something the directive states, and BAZG can change the price, so check the figure for your own season. It is stable, not frozen.
One thing not to go hunting for: a cheaper short-term option. BAZG says no special, cheaper vignettes are offered for shorter periods, and that even for single use an annual vignette must be bought. There is no ski-week vignette. Stop looking for one.
You will read that Switzerland switched to an e-vignette. It did not switch. It added one.
BAZG offers two collection formats, the electronic vignette and the conventional sticker, and the directive says those liable have free choice over which form they buy. Same price, same validity, both valid proof that the charge is paid. Nobody is obliged to use the e-vignette, and nobody is obliged to use the sticker. Pick on convenience.
The practical difference is what the vignette is attached to. The sticker is vehicle-bound: the directive says each individual vehicle driving on the charged network needs its own sticker vignette. The electronic one is registered against the vehicle rather than stuck to it, which is why the scheme is keyed to number plates. Because the choice is free, a family with two vehicles can mix formats.
An honest gap: our sources set out the free choice between formats but do not spell out how the electronic version is handled for a towed trailer. If you are towing and you want to go electronic, confirm at the point of purchase that your trailer is covered before you rely on it. We would rather tell you to ask than guess on your behalf.
This is the sentence that costs families money, and it is sitting in plain sight in the German and French texts of the directive: in principle all domestic and foreign motor vehicles and their trailers up to 3.5 tonnes each are liable for the charge, and that group includes in particular passenger cars, motorcycles, delivery vans, motorhomes and trailers.
Read it again with a towbar in mind. The charge attaches to the vehicle, not to the journey and not to the family. Your car is one vehicle. The caravan behind it is another. Two vignettes, CHF 80, before you have bought a single lift pass.
A caravanner answering exactly this question on the French-language forum lescaravaniers2.com in January 2009 put it in one line: "you need two vignettes, one for the tow vehicle and one for the caravan!"
Then there is the part almost nobody quotes. The directive spells out what happens to a combination where neither vehicle is covered: if it is a vehicle combination, for example a passenger car with a caravan, in which neither the towing vehicle nor the trailer carries a valid vignette, the fine is levied twice.
The directive does not print a total. It states that the CHF 200 fine is charged twice, which is CHF 400, and the fine does not replace the vignettes, so you buy both of those as well. Roughly CHF 480 for something that cost CHF 80 to get right.
| What you are driving | Needs its own CHF 40 vignette? | What the directive says |
|---|---|---|
| Car, people carrier, van or motorhome up to 3.5 t | Yes, one each | Passenger cars, delivery vans and motorhomes are named as toll-liable light vehicles. |
| Caravan towed behind the car | Yes, a second one | Trailers up to 3.5 t are toll-liable in their own right, and a car with a caravan is the directive's own worked example. |
| Box, ski or gear trailer on a standard towbar | Yes, unless it meets the narrow rigid-trailer exemption | Only starre Anhänger are exempt: rigidly attached at two or more points, goods only. Check the registration document. |
| Rigid single-wheel cargo trailer, motorcycle trailer, sidecar | No | Named in the directive's exemption list. |
| Roof box on the car's roof bars | The rules do not address it | Roof boxes appear nowhere in the directive, which scopes the charge to vehicles and trailers. |
| Car plus caravan with neither carrying one | Both, and the fine is charged twice | If neither the towing vehicle nor the trailer has a valid vignette, the fine is levied twice. |
There is a real exemption, and it is narrower than it sounds. The directive exempts rigid trailers, motorcycle trailers and sidecars, and then defines what it means: rigid trailers, usually single-wheel, are connected to the towing vehicle at at least two rigid points, and they serve exclusively for the transport of goods.
Notice what is missing from that definition. There is no weight threshold and no size threshold. It is a description of a construction type, not of a small trailer. And the same document uses a caravan as its example of a trailer that is not exempt and that triggers the double fine.
So do not reason from "ours is only little" to "ours is exempt". A conventional single-axle box trailer on a ball hitch is not obviously a rigid trailer within that definition. If you think yours qualifies, check the trailer's own registration document rather than the internet, and if there is any doubt left, buy the vignette. It costs a fifth of the fine.
This is the question the trailer rule immediately raises, and we are going to answer it honestly rather than confidently.
Richtlinie 15-01 is thorough about vehicles. Across its pages it works through light and heavy motor vehicles, articulated combinations, towed vehicles, veteran vehicles, vehicles adapted for drivers with disabilities, and a named list of exempt categories. Roof boxes are not in it. The regulations enumerate trailers and say nothing at all about roof boxes.
That is an absence, and an absence is not a permission. We are not going to tell you a roof box is exempt, because no source we found says so, and we are not going to tell you it needs a vignette, because no source says that either. What we can tell you is what the scheme is built on: the charge attaches to vehicles and to trailers, both of which are registered and identified in their own right. A roof box is neither. That makes exemption the obvious reading, but it is a reading, not a rule.
If you want certainty rather than reasoning, ask BAZG before you travel. And if you meet a confident answer either way in a forum thread, ask which article it comes from. Silences in regulations are exactly where invented rules breed.
Start with the flat statement, because half the internet has it wrong. There is no legal obligation in Switzerland to fit winter tyres. That is not a loophole we found; it is ASTRA, the Federal Roads Office, saying so on its own blog: there is no legal obligation to equip the car with winter tyres in winter.
So what is the actual exposure? It runs through Article 29 of the road traffic act (SVG in German, LCR in French), the general operational safety clause: vehicles may only be operated in a roadworthy and regulation-compliant condition, and must be built and maintained so that the traffic rules can be followed and that the driver, passengers and other road users are not endangered. Read the text of that article and you will notice it names no tyre, no season and no date. It applies in August exactly as it applies in January.
The bite is consequential, not preventive. ASTRA's own guidance sets out where it lands: in the event of an accident or a significant obstruction of traffic caused by driving on summer tyres in winter, a fine or even withdrawal of the driving licence is possible, along with the insurer refusing liability cover.
Read that carefully, because the distinction decides how worried to be. There is no roadside tyre check that fines you for summer tyres on a clear day the way there is a check for the vignette. The exposure arrives after something has already gone wrong, and when it arrives it arrives as three things at once: the fine, your licence, and your insurer's position.
The "October to Easter" rule you will see quoted everywhere, the O to O mnemonic, is the headline of ASTRA's own blog post. It is a convention, and a sensible one, but it is not a legal date window and no statute contains it.
Which is why the practical advice does not change: fit proper winter tyres for an Alpine drive. Do it because of what happens after a crash on a wet, cold pass road, not because a Swiss police officer is going to check. And if you are hiring a car, ask what is fitted before you collect it, because no Swiss statute obliges the hire company to fit them either.
| What you will hear | Rule or convention? | What actually applies |
|---|---|---|
| You need a vignette to use Swiss motorways | Rule | Using a charged national road without a valid vignette is fined CHF 200 under the directive. |
| One vignette covers the car and whatever it is towing | Wrong | Trailers up to 3.5 t are toll-liable in their own right and need their own vignette. |
| Switzerland has moved to the e-vignette, so the sticker is finished | Wrong | BAZG offers both formats at CHF 40 and states that buyers have free choice between them. |
| Winter tyres are compulsory from October to Easter | Convention | ASTRA states there is no legal obligation to fit them. October to Easter is a slogan, not a date in law. |
| A roof box needs its own vignette | Not addressed | The directive enumerates vehicles and trailers and never mentions roof boxes. No source we found rules either way. |
| You can buy a cheap one-week vignette for a ski trip | Wrong | BAZG says no cheaper vignettes exist for shorter periods, and that even single use requires the annual vignette. |
We could not source enforcement figures, so we are not going to tell you how likely you are to be stopped, and you should distrust anyone who does. What is published and fixed is the price of being wrong: CHF 200 per vehicle, charged twice for an uncovered combination, plus the vignettes.
A specific thing to ignore: any figure of CHF 100 for the fine. Older forum threads still quote it, and it was correct once. Swiss broadcaster RTS reported the fine being doubled around 2011 and 2012, and BAZG's current directive says CHF 200. Vignette advice ages badly, which is worth remembering the next time a 2009 thread looks authoritative.
Then there is the question of where the second sticker goes. On the German caravanning forum wohnwagen-forum.de in March 2023, one owner suggested putting the caravan's vignette inside the gas locker, on the board wall. A second, more experienced member came straight back: "The vignette for the caravan must be visible! The gas locker doesn't work." Our sources for this guide do not set out a placement rule for a trailer's sticker, so treat that exchange as peer prudence rather than law, and put it somewhere a person checking can actually see it.
And the reassuring half, because it matters as much as the warnings. You do not need a vignette per person. You do not need to upgrade to the e-vignette. You do not need to find a short-term option, because there isn't one. You do not need winter tyres to satisfy a statute, because no such statute exists. For a family driving one car with a roof box and no trailer, the entire Swiss vignette question is one CHF 40 vignette, and then you can go back to the decisions that are actually hard, like which Swiss resort actually suits your kids or whether Austria works out better for your family.
If the driving is the part you dread, it is worth knowing you can skip it: several Alpine bases work perfectly well by train, and we keep a list of resorts that function without a car.
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Note de transparence : Ce contenu a été créé avec l'aide de l'IA et relu par Tom Meredith, notre rédacteur. Les prix, dates et disponibilités peuvent changer. Nous recommandons de confirmer les informations directement auprès de la station avant de réserver.