Cost of living: Zurich vs Netherlands

A price backdrop for comparing salaries, not a household budget. How these numbers were derived

The price level for Zurich is its whole country's; none is published for it alone.

Price levels 2024, checked 10 September 2026Basket: All itemsData checked 26 September 2026

€58,608.12 in the Netherlands buys what CHF 85,000 buys in Zurich.

On this basket, the Netherlands is 31.0% cheaper than Zurich.

Zurich: CHF 85,000
Netherlands: €58,608.12

At the exchange rate that amount would be €89,842.51 in the Netherlands, on 29 September 2026. That figure buys a different basket; the one above buys the same one.

Where the difference sits

Basket	Netherlands against Zurich	Relative price level
All items	69.0%
Food and non-alcoholic drinks	65.5%
Clothing and footwear	70.4%
Housing, water and energy	63.5%
Transport	93.4%
Restaurants and hotels	76.6%

The Netherlands as one price level

Every comparison on this page treats the Netherlands as a single place, because that is how the price data is published. Eurostat produces purchasing power parities for whole countries, and no official annual series breaks them down by province or city. Amsterdam, Utrecht and a town in Drenthe therefore carry the same figure here, even though the rent a new tenant pays in the three is far apart. Read a Dutch figure as a national average, and adjust upwards for Amsterdam and the other cities of the Randstad.

When the other side of the comparison is a US state, that side does have its own figure, but it is chained rather than measured. Nobody publishes a price level for Texas in euros. Eurostat publishes one for the United States as a whole, the Bureau of Economic Analysis publishes an index placing each state against the American average, and the state figure is the first scaled by the second. That is the standard construction and it still rests on one assumption more than a comparison between two countries does.

Where Dutch prices tend to sit

The Netherlands has one of the higher price levels in the euro area, above the European Union average and above Germany, Spain and France. Where the other side is another European country, the breakdown table can show food, clothing, housing, transport and eating out separately, because Eurostat publishes a parity for each of them. Where the United States or the United Kingdom is involved, only the whole basket is comparable: Eurostat publishes their headline parity but not the component detail, so the table stops at the total instead of estimating the rest.

What a Dutch price level leaves out

Housing is where the national figure is least representative. A large part of Dutch rental housing is social or regulated, let at rents well below the free market, and the index reflects the whole stock. Someone arriving from abroad usually rents in the free sector, often in a city where demand is highest, and faces a price level well above the national figure shown here.

Health insurance is the other difference to keep in mind. Every resident must buy a basic policy from a private insurer and pays the premium out of net pay, while the employer pays an income-related contribution on top of gross. Against an American state that makes the systems look more alike than a European comparison usually does, but the Dutch premium is regulated and the same for everyone with the same policy, and the salary comparison for the same two places, which runs both sides through their own payroll rules, is the fuller picture.

Currency, and why it is not in the answer

The equivalence on this page does not use an exchange rate. A purchasing power parity is a price in each country's own currency for the same basket, so the ratio between two of them is a ratio of prices and does not move when the euro does. Against another euro country the exchange rate is one to one and the whole difference is prices. Against the dollar or the pound, the market rate appears only as a dated contrast line, showing what a bank would give you for the same sum, which is a different and usually much less useful number for anyone deciding where to live.

Sources

Tax figures come from the official rules of each tax year. Price levels come from the statistical offices, for the reference year shown above.

How these numbers were derived

Purchasing power parities describe an average household basket for a whole state or country, not your rent.

na_item=PPP_EU27_2020 for ppp_cat A01, A0101, A0103, A0104, A0107 and A0111 at the most recent year the series carries, read from the Eurostat dissemination API. Values are the parity in national currency per PPS, so a ratio between two of them is free of market exchange rates. Not the price level index: that has the reference year's exchange rate built in.

Line codes 1 to 5 of table SARPP for the most recent year in the file, read from apps.bea.gov/regional/zip/SARPP.zip. Values are indices with the United States at 100. A state parity in national currency is derived as the United States parity multiplied by the state index and divided by 100. That is a linking step between two official series, not a single measurement.

Neither Eurostat nor the national statistical office publishes a price level for Zurich, so it carries the parity of the whole country unchanged. Prices in its largest cities are usually above the national figure.