It usually happens in a changing room. Someone mentions, without making anything of it, that their insurance gives them a few hundred francs back on their training every year.
And you do the arithmetic on what you’ve been paying for the last two years, and feel something small and specific drop.
Nobody told you. Not because anyone was hiding it, but because it sits in the part of your insurance policy that nobody reads, in language designed by people who were not thinking about you.
Here’s the whole thing, in one page, so it stops being the conversation you have too late.
The short version
Basic Swiss health insurance does not pay for training. Complementary insurance often does, and to qualify the place you train usually has to hold a recognised quality label. CASA BOOST holds Qualitop, which nineteen insurers recognise. The condition almost everyone misses is that most insurers only count memberships of six months or longer. What comes back depends entirely on your own policy, and the only way to know is to look.
Does Swiss health insurance pay for fitness?
Not the basic one. The complementary one often does.
AXA states it plainly on its own site: compulsory basic insurance does not contribute to the cost of a fitness subscription. That’s the part most people already half know, and it’s where most people stop asking.
Complementary insurance is a different product and a different answer. Many complementary policies include a prevention or fitness contribution, paid once a year, against proof that you actually trained somewhere that qualifies.
Which is where the label comes in.
What is Qualitop, and why does an insurer care?
It’s a Swiss quality label for training and movement centres, and it’s the shortcut insurers use to decide who counts.
An insurer has no way to assess every studio in the country. So instead of judging each one, they recognise a label and let the label do the auditing.
Qualitop certifies on three things: the offering itself, safety and hygiene, and the qualifications of the people coaching. Certification is done by independent accredited auditors on a three-year cycle, with an intermediate audit every year in between.1
CASA BOOST holds it. The legal entity on the certificate is BE Studio SA, which is the name your insurer will want to see on the invoice, and which is worth knowing before you send anything.
Per Qualitop’s own published list, these insurers recognise the label:
- Atupri
- AXA
- Concordia
- CSS
- EGK
- Glarner
- Groupe Mutuel
- Helsana
- Klug
- KK Birchmeier
- KPT
- OEKK
- Sanitas
- SLKK
- Sodalis
- Sumiswalder
- Sympany
- SWICA
- Visana
If yours is on that list, the question isn’t whether it’s possible. It’s what your particular policy says.
How much actually comes back?
Entirely depends on your policy, and anyone who gives you a single figure is guessing.
The only honest way to answer is with a published example.
AXA lists its own contribution as up to 300 francs a year on one complementary plan and up to 200 on another.2
That’s AXA’s number for AXA’s products, not a rule, and your insurer may pay more, less, or nothing at all.
We’re not your insurer and we can’t read your contract. What we can tell you is exactly what to look for, which is the next section.
The condition almost everyone misses
Most insurers only count a membership from six months upwards.
AXA names it directly: the contribution generally applies from a six-month subscription. Other insurers word it differently and some ask for a full year, but the shape of the condition is consistent across the market, and it’s the single most common reason a claim gets refused.
This is worth sitting with for a second, because it inverts the usual logic. A pack of ten classes is the flexible choice and the cheaper commitment. It is also, in most cases, the one your insurance will not touch. A six or twelve month membership costs more up front and is the one that qualifies.
We’re not going to pretend that makes the decision for you. If you’re not sure you’ll still be training in March, the flexible option is the right one and the reimbursement shouldn’t talk you out of it. But if you already know you’re in, the longer membership is cheaper than it looks on the page, and most people never do that piece of arithmetic.
How do you actually claim it here?
Three steps, and none of them involve us billing your insurer.
- One
Buy your package normally. Nothing special, no separate procedure, no form at the point of sale.
- Two
Download your invoice from your CASA BOOST account. It’s there whenever you need it, including months later. And if you can’t find it, or you’d simply rather not go looking, email us at hello@casa-boost.com and we’ll be happy to send it to you.
- Three
Send it to your insurer with their own form. Every insurer has one, usually somewhere in their app or client portal, often labelled prevention or health promotion rather than fitness.
Some insurers also ask for a Qualitop subscription confirmation on top of the invoice. We issue that at reception. Ask for it and you’ll have it.
That’s the entire process. It takes about ten minutes once a year and most of that is finding where your insurer hid their form.
What if you don’t have complementary insurance?
Then none of the above applies to you yet, and that’s worth knowing too rather than discovering it after you’ve sent the paperwork.
Autumn is when most people in this country actually open their policy documents. If you’re looking at yours anyway, the line to search for is prevention, health promotion, or fitness, in whichever language your contract is written in. It’s usually one line and it’s usually buried.
Whether a complementary policy is worth it for you is a question for you and a broker, not for a training studio. We’re only pointing at the line.
Why we bother writing this
Nobody skips this because they don’t want the money.
They skip it because it’s the kind of admin that never becomes today’s problem. There’s no deadline pushing you, nobody chases you for it, and the effort is small but the ambiguity is large, which is a combination the human brain is very good at postponing forever.
So the useful thing isn’t encouragement. It’s removing the ambiguity, which is what this page is.
And there’s a version of this that matters more than the francs. For a fair number of people, a few hundred back a year is the difference between training being something they do and something they keep meaning to start. The least glamorous page on this site is quietly one of the ones that changes the most.
If you get stuck, ask at reception. Someone there has done this with a member in the last week and knows what your particular insurer asks for. It’s a faster conversation with a person than with a portal, and it’s one of the reasons there’s a person there.
One thing to do this week
Open your complementary insurance policy and search it for one word: prevention.
Not fitness. Prevention is the word most Swiss insurers file this under, and it’s why people search for the wrong thing and conclude they aren’t covered.
Ten minutes, once, and you either find a line that pays you every year from now on or you close it knowing for certain. Both outcomes are better than the changing room conversation.
CASA BOOST is five pillars across two houses, and every room is included in the same membership. How the cycle works →
Qualitop certified · BE Studio SA · Geneva
The membership that meets the condition.
Memberships of six months and longer are the ones that usually meet the condition, and 12 Months Unlimited gives you every room in both houses.
If you’d rather answer the fit question before committing to anything that long, the Welcome Package runs fourteen consecutive days from your first class and tells you whether this works in your week.
See the packagesSources
Verified 24 September 2026. Insurance conditions change, and the only document that decides your case is your own policy.
- Qualitop. Label Qualitop and Reconnaissance des caisses d’assurance-maladie. qualitop.ch. Certification scope, audit cycle and the published list of recognising insurers.
- AXA Switzerland. Abonnement de fitness : ce qui est pris en charge par la caisse-maladie. axa.ch. Basic insurance does not contribute; quality label requirement; six-month minimum subscription; AXA’s own published annual contributions.