Is the Magic Pass worth it? The maths with real numbers

The Magic Pass is the most successful Swiss season pass of the past decade. It started as an alliance of a few Vaud and Valais resorts and now covers 95 stations. The question that comes up every autumn is whether it pays off.

The answer hangs on a single number, and it appears in no advertisement: how many days do you actually ski in a winter?

We ran the calculation against our own dataset, using the day pass prices of the resorts genuinely included. The result is less clear-cut than either camp claims.

What it costs

The price is not a fixed figure but a staircase, rising as the season approaches.

The season runs from 1 May 2026 to 30 April 2027, summer operation included. Buy in March and you pay a little over half the full price. That is not a discount, it is the business model: the pass is sold long before anyone knows what the winter will do.

The calculation

Of the 95 stations, 34 are in our dataset. The rest are tiny operations with one or two lifts, thermal baths, and some French and Italian areas we do not track.

Across those 34, the median day pass is CHF 52 and the mean CHF 54.56. From which:

Ten ski days. That is the number that decides it.

For comparison: industry estimates put the average Swiss skier at five to seven days a season. For that person the pass does not pay off, at least not on paper.

The catch almost nobody writes about

The break-even calculation assumes you ski the same resorts you would without the pass. Usually you would not, for one plain reason:

This is not a criticism of the pass, it is its design. The Magic Pass is an alliance of small and mid-sized resorts against the large ones. That is precisely why it exists.

You can see it in the price level too: inside the pass the median day pass is CHF 52, outside it CHF 60. The expensive names are not in it and will not be joining.

When it pays and when it does not

That makes the question answerable with some precision, and the answer has little to do with arithmetic.

It does not pay if your winter is one ski week in Zermatt, Davos or LAAX. None of those is in the pass. You would be buying a season ticket for resorts you do not visit and paying for the week separately anyway.

It does pay if you live within reach of several pass resorts and regularly head up for half a day. The pass then changes not your costs but your behaviour: the twelfth ski day is free, so you go even when conditions are mediocre. That is exactly what it is built for.

Saas-Fee is a special case. At CHF 87 it is the most expensive day pass in the network and the only glacier area open in summer. Ski nothing else and you are ahead after six days at the current price.

What the calculation leaves out

Three things we deliberately did not price in, because they cannot be quantified honestly:

• Getting there. On a day trip the journey often costs more than the ticket. From 1 November 2026 the pass includes five days of public transport, which covers this for five days. What a journey costs depends on where you live; our journey times from Zurich, Bern, Basel and Geneva give a reference point.
• The weather. A season pass is a bet on the winter, placed in March. If the winter fails, you lose the bet. With single tickets you decide on the morning.
• The summer. 53 summer destinations are included. Anyone who hikes or bikes recovers part of the price outside the ski season, and those days appear in no ski-day calculation.

The short answer

The Magic Pass is not a discount on the skiing you already do. It is a bet that you will ski differently: more often, closer to home, at smaller resorts.

Ski more than ten days in pass resorts and you save. Ski fewer and you lose, unless the pass is what gets you out of the door more often. That is not an excuse made by the sellers, it is the actual effect, and if you are honest with yourself you know in advance which group you are in.

All 34 resorts

These resorts from our dataset are in the Magic Pass, by size. Together they come to around 1,576 km of piste.

Gstaad incl. Glacier 3000 (200 km), Villars-Gryon-Diablerets (125), Grimentz-Zinal (106), Saas-Fee (100), Saint-Luc / Chandolin (75), Meiringen-Hasliberg (60), Leysin (60), Anzère (58), Leukerbad Torrent (50), Sörenberg (50), Belalp Blatten (44.8), Villars-Gryon Swiss side only (44), Evolène (42), Les Mosses / La Lécherette (40), Klewenalp-Stockhütte (40), Lauchernalp Lötschental (40), Vercorin (35), Melchsee-Frutt (32), Charmey (30), Moléson (30), Jaun (30), Ovronnaz (30), La Robella Val-de-Travers (30), Les Bugnenets-Savagnières (30), Schwarzsee Kaiseregg (28), Moosalp Bürchen/Törbel (25), Les Marécottes (25), Rosswald (20), Wiriehorn Diemtigtal (20), Nax Mont-Noble (20), Marbach Marbachegg (15), Visperterminen Giw (15), Sattel-Hochstuckli (14), Arolla (12).

Sources and caveats

• Prices and station list: magicpass.ch, retrieved 13 August 2026. The price rises in steps; CHF 482 is the figure on that date.
• Day pass prices: our own dataset, reference values for adults in high season. Several resorts now use dynamic pricing, where a single figure is an approximation.
• We matched the stations to our resorts by hand rather than automatically. Not out of excess care: matching on name similarity merges Saas-Almagell with Saas-Grund, Sattel-Hochstuckli with Hoch-Ybrig, and Saint-Luc with Saint-Cergue, which lie 150 km apart. All four errors happened to us on the first pass.
• Not in the pass despite what the name suggests: Hoch-Ybrig and Saas-Grund / Hohsaas.