Using AI in regulated settings, 4 parts
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Part 1
What is actually allowed?
Factsheet, data protection, official secrecy. And what running it yourself solves.
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Part 2
Does it have to be the strongest AI model?
Measured performance on administrative texts, licences, the limits of size.
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Part 3
The cost driver is rarely the AI model
Cloud versus running it yourself, hardware, power, and when it tips.
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Part 4 · you are here
Swiss providers, and what they leave to you
Ten providers, three operating models, and what to watch for.
In short
- Three operating models, three amounts of work for you. A ready-made interface, bare model access, or rented computing power. Confuse them and you are comparing offers that do not deliver the same thing.
- A Swiss provider is not the same as a data centre in Switzerland. At Exoscale, for one, the larger part of the cards sits in Vienna and Frankfurt. Ask about the individual machine, not about the registered office.
- Four points belong in every contract. Location, sub-processors, exclusion of your data from training, and what happens to it on termination.
We found ten providers with a Swiss connection whose offering we could document, and checked eight more that we then set aside because they have nothing relevant on offer. Before the list comes the distinction on which most comparisons founder.
Five terms, in case you started here
- Model. A program that continues a piece of text. You give it an instruction and a text, it gives you a text back. ChatGPT is an interface to such a model, not the model itself.
- Open model. A model whose files may be downloaded publicly. For you that means it can be run at several providers and, if need be, in your own building. With a closed model such as ChatGPT there is exactly one provider, and it sets the price, the availability and when it is withdrawn.
- Interface. The window your staff actually work in. A model on its own has none. Buy only a model and you have nothing anybody can operate. The whole price difference below hangs on this distinction.
- Graphics card. The component a model runs on. The name is misleading: this has nothing to do with what appears on a screen. With every rental offer below, that card sits in the provider's data centre, not with you.
- Access key. A string of characters that lets a program call a model. Buy only an access key and you still have no interface for anyone to work with.
These terms are covered in more detail in Part 1, what the three forms cost in Part 3.
Three operating models, and what they mean for you
Several layers sit between a language model and the member of staff working with it. Depending on the offer you get a different number of them.
| Form | What happens on Monday morning | What is left on your desk |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Ready-made interface AlpineAI, PeakPrivacy, Safe Swiss Cloud |
The caseworker opens a page in the browser that looks like ChatGPT. She logs in with her account, drags a PDF into the window and writes: 'Summarise this for me on one page.' She copies the result into her document. Nothing to install. | Training, internal rules, sign-off on the categories of data. If the documents are to come from your specialist system rather than being dragged in by hand, that is a project of its own. |
| 2. Model access Infomaniak, PHOENIQS, Safe Swiss Cloud |
Nothing. You receive an access key, a string of characters that lets a program call the model. There is no interface and no screen for anyone to open. | The whole application. Somebody has to provide an interface or set up a ready-made one, connect it to the access key and settle log-in and permissions. That is a job for your IT department or for a contractor. |
| 3. Rented computing power Exoscale, cloudscale, Nine, AIVITY |
Nothing. You receive remote access to a server with a graphics card. That server sits in the provider's data centre; nobody sends hardware to your building. | Everything but the metal: loading the model files, installing the serving software, setting up access and logging, providing the interface, applying updates, responding when it breaks. |
Two providers appear in more than one row because they offer more than one form: Safe Swiss Cloud sells both a ready-made chat interface per person and bare model access, Infomaniak both model access and computing power. AIVITY sits in between: the models are already installed there, but the interface is missing. Swisscom offers all three forms but publishes no prices for them. What the forms cost is in Part 3.
The price difference between form 1 and form 2 is not a saving. A ready-made interface costs up to 4,800 francs a month for 60 people, bare model access around 3 francs for the same work. The difference is the software, which in the second case you provide and look after yourself. Compare only those two prices and you are comparing a car with an engine.
The providers
The overview lists only providers whose offering we could document on their own pages.
| Provider | Form | Prices public | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Infomaniak | model access, plus computing power | yes | Eight language models, Apertus 1.5 70B among them. Runs its own data centres in Switzerland. Requests are, by its own account, neither stored nor used for training. |
| Safe Swiss Cloud | ready-made interface and model access | yes | The interface costs CHF 35 per person per month, CHF 30 paid annually, with a cap of 250 requests per person per day. That makes it around half the price of the other ready-made solutions. Over 25 models. Holds ISO certifications and states conformity with FINMA's outsourcing requirements and with the EU regulation DORA. For bare model access a minimum spend of CHF 95 a month applies. |
| PHOENIQS | model access, plus computing power | yes | Billed in credits, 1 credit being CHF 1, plus a subscription of CHF 50 a month. Advertises confidential computing, a technique meant to shield the data from the operator even while it is being processed. Formerly Phoenix Technologies. |
| Swisscom | model access, computing power, development environment | no | Runs Apertus 1.5 70B. Prices on request only, and none were to be had for the comparison in this series either. |
| Exoscale | computing power | yes | Location: only two of the card types on offer sit in Switzerland, in Geneva and in Dielsdorf. The rest sit in Vienna and Frankfurt. Registered office in Lausanne. |
| cloudscale.ch | computing power | in part | Cards with 96 GB, under CHF 2.20 an hour according to the provider. ISO 27001 and an assurance report under ISAE 3000. A price rise announced for 1 September 2026, with no figures given. |
| Nine.ch | computing power, with upkeep on request | yes | From CHF 1,104 a month. Two locations in Zurich. Built the infrastructure for PeakPrivacy. |
| AIVITY | computing power with models pre-installed | yes | CHF 390 to 990 a month for a shared card, CHF 1,490 for a dedicated one. Shared means other customers are running on the same card. Anyone citing data sovereignty as the reason has to check that. |
| AlpineAI | ready-made interface | yes | CHF 74 to 80 per licence per month, that is, per person. Reference customer: the municipality of Glattfelden. The only model documented by name is Mistral Large, which does not carry a permissive licence; with a ready-made solution the licence question rests with the provider. |
| PeakPrivacy | ready-made interface | yes | CHF 742 a month for ten people, CHF 3,325 for fifty. States for each model whether it runs in Switzerland, in the EU or in the United States. Only the 'Swiss Daily' class stays in Switzerland; the stronger models do not. |
Our own research, every detail from the providers' pages, retrieved on 8 August 2026. Checked and with nothing relevant on offer: Green.ch, Hostpoint, Metanet, VSHN, SWITCH, Aveniq, ELCA and Adnovum. CSCS runs Apertus but offers no commercial interface; access goes through research programmes. We did not ask any of the providers for comment. Prices and offerings change quickly; this table is a snapshot.
The abbreviations in the table, briefly
- ISO 27001 is the common standard for information security management systems. It says the provider keeps its security processes in order and has them audited externally. It says nothing about where your data sits.
- ISAE 3000 is an auditor's assurance report on outsourced processes. Useful when your own auditors want to know what they can rely on at the contractor.
- FINMA requirements and DORA concern banks and insurers, not public administration. For a municipality they are not a selection criterion.
- None of these abbreviations works on its own as a knock-out criterion. What decides it is the four contract points further down.
A registered office is not a location
Exoscale illustrates the trap. The company is registered in Lausanne and is, naturally enough, listed as a Swiss provider. Of the graphics cards on offer, though, only two types sit in Switzerland, the rest in Vienna and Frankfurt. Order an instance without checking the location and your data sits in the EU, even though your contracting party is in Lausanne.
Do not ask where the provider is based, ask where the particular machine your model runs on is located. When ordering, you pick the card type and the region from a form. Then have the location guaranteed in writing in the contract. A selection in the order form is not a contractual guarantee, and it does not survive a change of instance.
What belongs in the contract
Four points, whoever the provider is
- Place of processing, in writing. Not 'Switzerland or the EU' but the location of the machine, and a duty on the provider to inform you before any move.
- Sub-processors, by name. Art. 9 para. 3 of the Federal Act on Data Protection requires your prior approval. What works is a list of names and locations and a right to object when they change. A blanket 'we may engage sub-processors' will not do.
- Exclusion of use for training. Several providers give that assurance on their pages. What a web page says is not the same as what the contract says.
- What happens on termination. A deadline for returning or deleting your data, evidence that it happened, and whether you can take your configuration with you.
What we recommend
Choose the operating model first, the provider second. What decides it is who at your end can look after an application:
No IT staff in-house, an external partner on call. That is the normal case for municipalities. Take a ready-made interface, even if the price per person looks high. Three providers are in the running, and the price difference is considerable: Safe Swiss Cloud is at CHF 35 per person per month, AlpineAI at 74 to 80, PeakPrivacy at around 66 to 74 depending on the tier. For 40 people that is between 17,000 and 38,000 francs a year. Have all three quote for the number of people who will actually use it, not for your headcount.
Your own IT department running specialist systems. Then model access is considerably cheaper and more flexible, because you can provide or connect the interface anyway. Factor that effort in before you compare prices.
Start small and without personal data. Every ready-made interface can be tested without anyone installing anything: open an account, drag in a dozen of your own documents that contain no personal data, two afternoons. If you have an external partner, this is still your job and not theirs, because it is your specialists who have to judge the results.
And talk to somebody who has already done it. The municipality of Glattfelden is the only named reference from a Swiss municipality that we found in this research. One phone call there replaces several conversations with providers.
Disclosure
- digitario advises administrations and companies on selecting, procuring and introducing AI systems. This article ends with an offer to talk.
- It was written without a commission, without payment and without prior sight by any of the providers named. None of them supplied material that is not publicly available.
- Where details are missing, as with Swisscom's prices, the text says so, and it is not meant as a reproach.
Open questions
Which operating model suits your organisation?
The question turns on your IT department, not on the price. In an initial conversation we go through what you can look after yourself and what is better bought ready-made, and what follows from that for the tender.
Sources
- Our own research. Every detail on Infomaniak, Safe Swiss Cloud, PHOENIQS, Swisscom, Exoscale, cloudscale.ch, Nine.ch, AIVITY, AlpineAI and PeakPrivacy comes from the respective provider's pages, retrieved on 8 August 2026.
- Our own research. Checked and with nothing relevant on offer: Green.ch, Hostpoint, Metanet, VSHN, SWITCH, Aveniq, ELCA and Adnovum. CSCS runs Apertus but offers no commercial access.
- Switzerland. Federal Act on Data Protection (FADP, SR 235.1), Art. 9 on processing by a third party · fedlex.admin.ch
- Our own work. The cost calculation for these offerings is in Part 3 of the series · digitario.ch/artikel/open-weights-verwaltung-kosten
Advises public administrations and companies on procuring and introducing AI systems. Maintains the comparison tables on this site.