Switzerland on a German Licence — The CHF 40 Vignette & a Hard 120 Cap

For a German driver, Switzerland flips the usual problem on its head: the licence is effortless, but the driving culture you’ve internalised — the open Autobahn — simply doesn’t exist across the border. Adjusting to that is the whole job.

Deal with the sticker first, since it catches people at the frontier. Switzerland charges one annual motorway vignette of CHF 40 to use its motorways; there are no toll plazas, so the vignette is the toll. Pick it up at the border, a post office, or online as an e-vignette tied to your plate, before you join the first motorway. Drive a motorway without one and it’s roughly CHF 200 plus the vignette. The Switzerland vignette guide covers the e-vignette and where to buy.

The licence side is nothing: as an EU holder you need no IDP and no conversion — just keep the German licence, passport and rental papers in the car.

Now the real adjustment. There is no unlimited section anywhere in Switzerland. Motorways are a flat 120 km/h, and Swiss enforcement is in a different league to the relaxed stretches of German Autobahn — dense fixed and mobile cameras, plus attentive patrols through the tunnels and passes. A 10 km/h overshoot is about CHF 120, and the penalty curve steepens fast above that, so the Autobahn reflex of “open road, open throttle” is an expensive habit here. The speeding fine calculator shows how the numbers escalate. Towns are 50, open roads 80, and the drink-drive limit matches home at 0.05.

The mountain driving is where Switzerland earns the trip — but the passes are higher and longer than the Mittelgebirge, so engine-brake the descents rather than overheating the discs, and confirm winter tyres on the rental for the cold months. Petrol is about $1.92/litre and 112 covers emergencies. Full local rules are on our Switzerland driving guide.