What wild camping actually costs you in Switzerland

The number is decided by which law catches you, not by where you slept. Five different instruments can bite, they sit on top of each other, and their figures are nowhere near each other. At one end, a whole canton where camping carries no penalty at all because the articles were repealed in 2005.¹ At the other, a ceiling of CHF 50,000 under cantonal nature-protection law.² The commune is only one of the five.

First, the distinction that makes every published number misleading

Nearly every figure you will read, including most of the ones below, is a ceiling and not a price. Swiss regulations are written as "Busse bis zu Fr. 5000", a maximum the authority may impose. It is the top of a range that starts near zero, and it exists for the worst case the drafters could imagine, which is usually not one person with a bivvy bag.

A tariff is a different thing. A fixed-penalty tariff is a set amount for a set offence, handed over on the spot without a court. There are far fewer of these, and they are the numbers that actually predict what leaves your wallet. Camping inside a federal hunting-ban district is one: CHF 150, fixed, federal.³ Grindelwald has a ceiling of CHF 1,000 in its camping reglement but applies about CHF 200 in practice.⁴ Zermatt works out at roughly CHF 200 per tent.⁵

So when a site tells you wild camping costs "up to CHF 5,000", it is quoting a ceiling and implying a price. The honest version is that most people who are caught and fined pay somewhere between CHF 100 and CHF 200, and the four-figure numbers exist for cases with damage, fire, repetition or a group.

The five instruments, cheapest to most expensive

1. Nothing at all. This is more common than the guides suggest. Appenzell Innerrhoden repealed the penalty articles of its camping ordinance in 2005, so there is no cantonal camping fine there, which is why the Fälensee and the Seealpsee come out the way they do.¹ Uri has no camping ban. Glarus has no cantonal camping norm. Nidwalden has no on-the-spot camping fine anywhere. In those places the question is not how much, it is whether any norm exists to break, and often none does.

2. The communal camping or police reglement. The usual suspect, and the widest spread. Vals writes an actual range, CHF 50 to 500, rising to CHF 1,000 on repetition.⁶ Kandersteg lists CHF 200 in its fine schedule. Grindelwald caps at CHF 1,000. Lauterbrunnen, Brienz and Schwanden all cap at CHF 5,000.⁷ These apply across the whole commune, private ground included, at any altitude.

3. The federal hunting-ban districts. A flat CHF 150 fixed penalty for free camping inside one.³ That is cheap as a tariff, but the ceiling behind it is not: the federal Hunting Act allows up to CHF 20,000, and this is federal law, so no cantonal or communal permission reaches inside the boundary. Several of our forbidden verdicts sit here rather than on a communal rule.

4. Cantonal nature protection. Where the big numbers live. The Bern Nature Protection Act reaches CHF 50,000, which is the highest figure anywhere in our corpus and the one that decides the Engstlensee.² Silvaplana reaches CHF 30,000 through building law rather than camping law.⁸ Nobody is fining a hiker CHF 30,000, but the reason these are worth knowing is that they tell you the spot is protected for reasons that have nothing to do with camping, and enforcement there is taken seriously.

5. The richterliches Verbot, which is not a fine at all. At the Oeschinensee the bivouac is covered by a court-backed prohibition posted by the landowner. Rangers cannot fine you under it, which people read as permission. It is not: it is a different route, through a court, and the consequence arrives later rather than on the spot.⁹

The two things that cost more than the camping

Fire is consistently more expensive than the tent. The Glarus forest act carries up to CHF 20,000 for fire offences, at spots where camping itself attracts no cantonal penalty at all.¹⁰ That asymmetry runs through the whole corpus: a commune that shrugs at a bivvy bag will not shrug at a fire ring, and forest and fire law applies in places where camping law does not.

Litter is the other one. It is finable more or less anywhere in Switzerland regardless of whether camping is, and in Appenzell, where there is no camping fine, littering still carries CHF 100.¹¹ If you are looking for the realistic risk of a night out, it is not usually the sleeping. It is the fire and what you leave behind.

What you actually risk on a normal night

Put the ceilings aside and the practical picture is narrow. If a spot has no norm, nothing happens, because there is nothing to enforce. If it has a communal reglement and you are found, the realistic outcome is being asked to pack up, and a fine in the region of CHF 100 to 200 if the person who found you decides to write one. If you are inside a federal hunting-ban district, it is CHF 150 and the person writing it has no discretion to waive it.

The four and five-figure numbers are real, they are in force, and they are almost never what happens to a single considerate camper. They become relevant with fire, damage, groups, repetition, or a protected area where the point was never the camping.

Which is why the useful question is not "how much is the fine in Switzerland". It is "which instrument covers this specific piece of ground", because that single answer sets both whether you are breaking anything and what the number would be.

Six spots, six very different numbers

All six are researched to a named article. The spread is not about how remote they are or how high they sit. It is entirely about which law happens to reach them.

• Fälensee, Appenzell InnerrhodenNo fine

  The canton repealed the penalty articles of its camping ordinance in 2005. There is no cantonal camping fine to impose. The route here is the alp tenant's consent and a few francs per night.¹

• Milchspüelersee, GlarusCHF 150

  Inside the federal Kärpf reserve, so it is the federal fixed penalty for free camping in a hunting-ban district. A tariff, not a ceiling: this is what you pay.³

• Stellisee, ZermattAbout CHF 200

  Zermatt's police regulation of 2022 bans camping commune-wide. About CHF 200 per tent in practice, plus cleaning and operation costs where they arise.⁵

• Guraletschsee, ValsCHF 50 to 500

  One of the few communes that writes a genuine range rather than a ceiling, rising to CHF 1,000 on repetition. And it exempts the tentless bivouac by name.⁶

• Lauterbrunnen, BernUp to CHF 5,000

  A camping reglement in force since 1 January 2025, reaching the whole municipality. A ceiling rather than a tariff, but a serious one, and the commune meant it.⁷

• Engstlensee, BernUp to CHF 50,000

  Not a camping fine at all. This is the cantonal Nature Protection Act, and it is the highest figure anywhere in our 48-spot corpus.²