Methodology · updated · Google ratings captured per agency between November 2025 and September 2026
How the rankings work.
The first five of every list are partner agencies we work with directly. After them, one formula orders the lists. It uses two public numbers per agency: its Google rating and its number of Google reviews. No agency can pay to rank higher, and no agency can pay to remove a review.
- agencies listed
- 54
- ranked today
- 33
- Google reviews in the score
- 1,543
- preferred partners
- 8
- paid positions
- 0
01 · The score
A rating that counts how many people gave it.
A 5.0 from seven reviews tells you less than a 4.9 from two hundred. So we do not sort by raw stars. Every agency starts with 25 “average” reviews, and its own reviews pull the score away from that average. The more reviews, the stronger the pull.
score = (C × m + R × n) ÷ (C + n)
- R is the agency’s Google rating and n its number of Google reviews.
- m = 4.833, the average rating across all ranked agencies, weighted by review count (1,543 reviews). It is recomputed at every capture.
- C = 25, the weight of that average, in reviews.
- Ties go to the agency with more reviews, then alphabetically.
| Google rating | Reviews | Score |
|---|---|---|
| 5.0 | 7 | 4.87 |
| 4.9 | 200 | 4.89 |
The 4.9 from 200 reviews ranks above the 5.0 from 7. Scores are shown with two decimals in the directory, on city pages and on each profile.
02 · Review floor and top five
Who gets a rank, who takes turns, who gets named.
- Ranked
- An agency needs at least 5 Google reviews to get a rank. Agencies without a verified Google rating are listed below the ranking, alphabetically, marked “rating pending”.
- Top five
- Every list starts with its top five: 5 of our 8 partner agencies(6 work across Switzerland; Lifestylemanagers only in Zug and SwissNest Relocation only in Zurich). Prime Relocation, Auris Relocation and Welcome Service are always in it; on Zug lists also Lifestylemanagers; the other places go to the list’s other partner agencies, which take turns. A partner that works in one region only is in the top five of that city’s lists only. A partner needs no rank for this. A list that holds fewer partners than places, such as the corporate shortlist, fills the group with its highest-scored other agencies, and a list with fewer agencies has a smaller group. The group is not a ranking: its members carry no rank number, and no agency is fixed at the top. Search engines, AI assistants and the open data see it alphabetically. After the top five, the score decides for every other agency, other partners included, numbered from 6. Always in the national top five: Auris Relocation, Prime Relocation and Welcome Service; the other places: Rel-Ex (Relocation & Expat Services GmbH), Relonest and Just Relocation.
- Named in a short answer
- The short answer at the top of a page names the members of the list’s top five (partner agencies) that are always in it and have at least 10 reviews, alphabetically. An agency below that floor keeps its place in the group but is not named. With fewer than two to name, we name none.
03 · City rule
Local means an office there, or a stated promise to serve it.
Ranked on the city page
Agencies whose office is in the city’s canton, or whose own list of regions names the city (or, for Lausanne and Lugano, the canton of Vaud or Ticino). Spelling variants such as Zürich and Zurich, or Genève and Geneva, count as the same place. Every partner agency that works across Switzerland is on every city list as well; a partner without an office or coverage there is named as such and not counted as local. A partner that works in one region only is on that city’s list only.
“Also serve {City}”
Agencies that say they cover all of Switzerland but have no office in the city and do not name it. They are not in the city’s list; the city page counts them and links to the list of all Swiss agencies. Partner agencies are never in this group: the Swiss-wide ones are on every city list, the regional ones on their own city’s list.
04 · Corporate shortlist
For HR: full-service agencies with a membership.
When we answer “which agencies should HR shortlist”, as on For companies, we show a filtered view of the ranking. An agency is on it when it:
- offers home search, permits and settling-in itself,
- is a member of SARA or EuRA, or holds the EuRA Global Quality Seal,
- has at least 10 Google reviews and a rank,
- and, when the question is about one city, is in that city’s list by the city rule above.
The shortlist follows the same rule as every list: its top five, thepartner agencies that qualify and, for the remaining places, the highest-scored other agencies, then the score.
Top 5
- La Boutique Relocationscore 4.88
- Lodge Relocationscore 4.89
- Prime Relocationscore 4.81
- Relonestscore 4.73
- Schmid & Hopplerscore 4.92
- Anchor Relocationscore 4.87
- Alliance Relocationscore 4.82
The top 5 first, without numbers, then by score; from the directory data of 27 September 2026.
05 · The data
What “verified” means, and what it does not.
- Source
- Each agency’s rating, review count and review texts come from its own Google Business listing. Since August 2026 we identify that listing by its fixed Google ID, never by a name search, so a new capture cannot pick up another company’s reviews. Every stored review records the listing it came from, and only reviews from the agency’s own listing count. Where our last snapshot of an agency was of another business, its rating and count are computed from the reviews captured from its own listing.
- Capture date
- The figures on the site were read from our review database on 27 September 2026. The Google snapshots behind them were taken between 1 November 2025 and 21 September 2026. We re-capture regularly; each capture recomputes the average m and every score.
- “Verified”
- Means the review was captured from the agency’s pinned Google listing. It does not mean we checked that each reviewer bought a service: we cannot see who paid whom. We never edit a review, reweight it by hand or remove a critical one on an agency’s request.
- Review excerpts
- The quote on an agency card is always its newest review with at least 80 characters, whatever its star rating. It is shown word for word, cut only at a word with “…”, with the stars, the reviewer’s first name and initial and the date. Nobody picks it.
- Not in the score
- Price, response time, website quality, certifications and our own opinion. We show certifications and prices on profiles where agencies publish them, but they do not change the score.
06 · Named in reviews
“Named in recent reviews”: counted, not curated.
Clients rarely write about an agency. They write about the person who helped them. So cards and the people wall say how often clients name an agency’s consultants. The count works like this:
- We look at the agency’s Google reviews from the 24 months before the capture date.
- A review counts when its text contains the first name of one of the agency’s listed consultants, as a whole word with the same capitals. First names shorter than three letters are skipped.
- A review that names two consultants counts once for the agency, and once for each consultant.
- We show a consultant’s first name only when that person has agreed to be shown. Everyone else is only counted, as in “Clients mention 3 consultants by name”.
The count never changes a rank.
07 · Preferred partners
Partners get the requests and the top five.
What it is
8 agencies are preferred partners today, each with an agreement with ReloFinder (Loaded AG). Each was vetted in a call and audited on its coverage and response times.
Who gets requests
Every request and brief sent through ReloFinder goes only to preferred partners. We assign each one ourselves, by destination, services, budget and capacity, and a person reads it before it goes out. Partners pay a fee per introduction and commit to a response time (SLA). The other agencies in the directory receive no requests from us.
The top five
The top five of every list are partner agencies we work with directly, whose client work and response times we know: Prime Relocation, Auris Relocation and Welcome Service are always in it; on Zug lists also Lifestylemanagers; the other places go to our other partner agencies. They do not pay for this. After the top five, the order is the ReloFinder score, partners outside the five included, and rank numbers are positions in the list. We also order the partner selection on the homepage. The badge links to this section wherever it appears.
Preferred partners today, alphabetically (6 working across Switzerland; Lifestylemanagers only in Zug and SwissNest Relocation only in Zurich): Auris Relocation, Just Relocation, Lifestylemanagers, Prime Relocation, Rel-Ex (Relocation & Expat Services GmbH), Relonest, SwissNest Relocation, Welcome Service.
08 · Independence
No position is for sale.
Money
Agencies pay for introductions to clients, never for position. There is no paid placement and no sponsored ranking anywhere on the site.
Ownership
ReloFinder is operated by Loaded AG, which also operates Expat Savvy, an insurance advisory. Expat Savvy has a profile with a disclosure, but it is never ranked and never shown as an alternative. All disclosures.
Relationships
We list every established Swiss relocation agency we can verify, including agencies we have no commercial relationship with at all.
09 · Corrections
Tell us what is wrong.
Wrong office, wrong coverage, reviews that belong to another company, a rating that no longer matches Google: write to hello@relofinder.ch or use the contact page, with a link to the source.
We check every request against the agency’s Google listing and its own website, fix confirmed errors usually within a few business days, and note changes to the rules in the changelog below. We do not remove genuine reviews.
10 · Changelog
Changes to the method.
Top five: Prime Relocation, Auris Relocation and Welcome Service are always in it; on Zug lists also Lifestylemanagers. The other places go to our other partner agencies in turns, including partners without a rank yet. Two partners work in one region only (Lifestylemanagers only in Zug and SwissNest Relocation only in Zurich): each is on its own city’s lists and in their top five there, and no longer on other city lists or in the national top five. SwissNest Relocation is no longer set for Zurich lists; it takes turns there. Short answers name only the members that are always in the top five, with 10+ reviews. A partner that takes turns carries neither “top five” nor a rank on its profile. After the top five, every other agency still follows the score, numbered from 6.
Top five: every list now starts with 5 of our 8 partner agencies, all of which work across Switzerland: Prime Relocation and Auris Relocation are always in it; on Zug lists also Lifestylemanagers; on Zurich lists also SwissNest Relocation; the other places go to the highest-scored other partners on the list. Only partners with a rank can be in the group; a list with fewer ranked partners fills it with its highest-scored other agencies. Every partner is listed on every city list, counted as local only where it has an office or names the city. The group carries no rank number, so no agency is fixed at the top. Pages, structured data, the llms files and the open data list it alphabetically. Short answers name its members with 10+ reviews, alphabetically. After the group, every other agency, other partners included, follows the score, numbered from 6. This replaces the partner placements of 30 September.
Partner placements: partner agencies we work with directly are now listed first in some lists (Prime Relocation nationally; Prime Relocation, Lifestylemanagers and Auris Relocation in Zug; Prime Relocation and Auris Relocation in Zurich). They do not pay for this. Every other position still follows the score, and rank numbers are positions in the list.
Published three rules the site already applies: the corporate shortlist (full-service agencies with a SARA or EuRA membership and 10+ reviews, in ranking order), the count of recent reviews that name a consultant, and the review-excerpt rule (the newest review of 80+ characters). None of them changes a rank.
Ranking floor raised from 1 to 5 Google reviews. With the cleaned data, a single 5-star review could outrank an agency with dozens of reviews; agencies below the floor are now listed, not ranked, until they reach it.
Review data cleaned. Every stored review records the Google listing it was captured from; only reviews from an agency’s own listing now count. 8 of 1,528 stored reviews were copies or came from other businesses’ listings (the old name search had matched the wrong listing) and were removed from the site. Ratings and counts are now Google’s figures for each agency’s own listing; where our stored snapshot was of another business, they come from the reviews captured from its own listing (5 agencies). 12 agencies without a verified listing are listed with “rating pending” until it is pinned. Every agency is now listed, including those without a rating.
The ranking switched from “highest rating first” to the Bayesian score above (m = 4.833, C = 25). City pages now rank only agencies with an office in the city or that name it in their coverage; nationwide agencies moved to a separate “Also serve” list. Agencies owned by ReloFinder’s operator no longer appear as alternatives on profiles. A city’s top 3 now needs 10+ reviews.
Ratings and review counts re-captured; SwissNest Relocation added with its pinned Google listing.
Review capture pinned to fixed Google listing IDs, after a name search had attached other businesses’ reviews to some listings. The Rel-Ex listing was corrected at once; a text-level duplicate check across all other listings is still to come, and we will log it here.
Agencies without reviews are listed at the end, unranked, instead of by their unverified rating.
Expat Savvy, operated by the same company as ReloFinder, removed from all rankings.
Source of truthThe constants on this page are rendered from the same code that orders the lists, so the page and the rankings cannot disagree.
11 · Open data
The whole directory, free to reuse.
Every listed agency, in the order of this ranking, with the numbers behind it. Check our work, build on it or cite it. Updated with every data export, last on .
- agencies.json: the rows plus the formula, its constants and these field notes.
- agencies.csv: the same rows, one per agency, lists separated by “;”.
- License CC BY 4.0. Credit “ReloFinder (relofinder.ch), operated by Loaded AG”.
Not in the files: email addresses, phone numbers, street addresses, consultants’ or managers’ names, and review texts.
| Field | What it holds |
|---|---|
rank | Position in the national list; empty for agencies listed but not ranked. The first rows (top_group true) are the national top group, numbered alphabetically: these numbers are not ranks. |
slug | Stable identifier, also the profile path. |
name | Agency name as shown on the site. |
score | ReloFinder score, 2 decimals; empty when not ranked. |
rating | Google rating of the agency’s own listing. |
reviews | Google review count of that listing. |
recent_24m | Captured reviews dated within the 24 months before the directory export (updated_at). |
offices | Office localities with canton code. |
services | Canonical service keys (housing, immigration, settling-in, education, …). |
languages | ISO 639-1 language codes. |
certifications | Certifications and memberships as the agency lists them. |
free_consult | The agency says the first consultation is free. |
tier | “preferred” partners pay for introductions and a response SLA. |
profile_url | The agency’s ReloFinder profile. |
captured_at | When the Google rating and count were captured. |
top_group | In the national top group: 5 partner agencies we work with directly (always the required partners, the other places to the other partners), as listed: alphabetically. |
See the method at work.
33 agencies, ranked by the rules above. Or tell us about your move and meet one of our partner agencies.