Zattoo is Switzerland’s live television service, and its free tier carries 279 channels for 0 CHF: Swiss and German-language TV, news, sport and entertainment, running all day. Zattoo Free cannot be used abroad. StreamLocator gives you a Swiss connection, so the channels open the way they do at home.
This guide covers what the free tier carries, why it stops the moment you leave the country, and how to get it back.
That is the whole job. The rest of this page is the why.
Zattoo is run by Zattoo AG in Zürich, and in Switzerland it streams 279 live channels on a free account. Free here means 0 CHF with no end date attached. Zattoo calls it a permanently free offer, not a trial. That is an unusual thing for a television service to say, and it is worth taking at face value.
The list is built around Swiss and German-language television. That is the point of the service, and the reason people go looking for it from abroad: the news at the hour, the talk shows, the live sport, in the language you grew up watching them in.
Getting an account is genuinely light. All Zattoo asks for is an email address, and it states that Zattoo Free itself never asks for payment details.
Zattoo publishes every one of the limits, so there are no surprises:
Most people watching from abroad are on a laptop or a phone anyway, where the hours are unlimited.
Zattoo is direct about this. Zattoo Free cannot be used abroad. Not reduced, not slower, not a smaller channel list: it stops.
A Swiss paid account travels barely better. In Zattoo’s own words, outside Switzerland only recordings can be streamed, and live TV, Replay, Restart and on-demand are not available. The screen you get instead reads “Unfortunately streaming is not permitted in this country.”
None of this is a fault in your account or your app. It is the licence, and it only works inside Switzerland.
Zattoo does grant travel rights inside the EU, but only to accounts registered in Germany and Austria. Switzerland is not part of those arrangements, so a Swiss account is documented separately and gets recordings only once you are outside the country.
StreamLocator gives you a Swiss connection, the kind a household in Switzerland already has. Zattoo sees that and plays. Most VPNs push thousands of people through the same small pool of company servers, and streaming services have got good at spotting it.
StreamLocator is a service you sign up for. It has apps for some devices, and for everything else it is a short change in that device’s settings. What Zattoo checks is where your connection is coming from. With StreamLocator running, that connection looks like one in Switzerland, and the channels play.
Step three matters more than it looks. Zattoo assigns your service region at registration and you cannot change the service region in your account settings later, so register on a Swiss connection the first time. If you already have a Swiss account, sign straight in. An account registered in Switzerland stays a Swiss account, and signing in over a Swiss connection is all it needs.
Setting StreamLocator up on the router is worth doing if the television is what you watch on. It covers every device in the house at once, including the ones that will never run an app. As a streaming-built alternative to a VPN, it is built to look ordinary.
Zattoo supports Samsung smart TVs from 2015, LG from 2016, Panasonic from 2017, Android TV and Google TV 7 and above, Hisense VIDAA U5 and above, Grundig and Loewe. Sticks and boxes: Fire TV, Chromecast, the Google TV Streamer, Apple TV HD and 4K, Nvidia Shield, Xbox One and Series S and X, and a Sky TV Stick in Switzerland only. Mobile and desktop: iOS 13 and above, Android 7 and above, a Windows 10 app, and Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Edge.
Most readers can stop at the free tier. Recordings, a second screen and the British channels are the reasons to go past it. The prices below are the Swiss ones. Germany and Austria are priced differently, and Austria has no free tier at all.
Premium costs CHF 14 a month, or CHF 140 a year. It takes you to 376 channels with 324 in HD, two streams at once, 1,000 recordings, seven-day Replay, Restart and Live Pause, the Zattoothek library with more than 30,000 titles, and unlimited watching on smart TVs. Ultimate costs CHF 22 a month, or CHF 220 a year, and adds four simultaneous streams, 2,000 recordings, 118 channels in Full HD and the ability to skip TV ads. Zattoo gives both paid tiers a 30-day free trial of its own, separate from StreamLocator’s.
On the Swiss free tier exactly two UK-origin channels are free, and both are international news feeds: BBC News and Sky News. Everything else British needs Premium or Ultimate: BBC One London, BBC Two, BBC Three, BBC Four, BBC Parliament, BBC Scotland, BBC Alba, CBBC, BBC Arabic, ITV1, ITV2, ITV3, ITV4, ITV Quiz, Channel 4, Channel 5, Film4, E4, E4 Extra, More4, 4Seven, S4C, U&Dave and Challenge.
That list is real, and it is live retransmission of a channel feed, which is narrower than the British catch-up services themselves, where the box sets and the archive sit. If British television is the point, BBC iPlayer, ITVX and Channel 4 are the better road.
| Route | Service cost | What you get | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zattoo Free via StreamLocatorRecommended | 0 CHF | 279 live channels, Swiss and German-language | Permanently free, and an email address is all Zattoo asks for |
| Zattoo Premium via StreamLocator | CHF 14 a month, or CHF 140 a year | 376 channels, recordings, Replay, the British channels | A monthly bill on top of a free tier that already covers most viewers |
| Zattoo Ultimate via StreamLocator | CHF 22 a month, or CHF 220 a year | Four streams, 2,000 recordings, ad skipping | The dearest route, and it adds streams and recordings rather than channels |
| Waiting until you are next in Switzerland | Nothing | Everything, while you are there | Live TV stays dark until then, and a Swiss paid account abroad gives recordings only |
The first row is what this guide is about, and the other three are here so you can see where each of them stops.
Yes. In Switzerland, Zattoo Free carries 279 channels for 0 CHF, and Zattoo describes it as a permanently free offer rather than a trial, so there is no date at which it turns into a bill. The limits are real: one connected device at a time, 10 hours a month on smart TVs and streaming devices while browser and mobile viewing stay unlimited, no recordings, no Restart or Live Pause, none of the big commercial German broadcasters such as Pro7, RTL, Sat.1 and VOX, and picture in SD and HD rather than Full HD.
Not on its own. Zattoo states that Zattoo Free cannot be used abroad, and a Swiss paid account fares little better: outside Switzerland only recordings can be streamed, while live TV, Replay, Restart and on-demand are not available. Switzerland also sits outside the EU travel rights Zattoo grants to accounts registered in Germany and Austria. With StreamLocator giving you a Swiss connection, Zattoo opens normally.
That message, “Unfortunately streaming is not permitted in this country”, means Zattoo has looked at where your connection appears to be coming from and found somewhere it is not licensed to broadcast. The Swiss channel list only works inside Switzerland. It is about your connection rather than your account, which is why signing in again changes nothing.
StreamLocator gives you a Swiss connection, the kind a household in Switzerland already has. Zattoo sees that and plays. Most VPNs push thousands of people through the same small pool of company servers, and streaming services have got good at spotting it.
Premium costs CHF 14 a month, or CHF 140 a year, in Switzerland. It brings 376 channels with 324 in HD, two streams at once, 1,000 recordings, seven-day Replay, Restart and Live Pause, the Zattoothek library with more than 30,000 titles, and unlimited watching on smart TVs. Ultimate, at CHF 22 a month or CHF 220 a year, adds four streams, 2,000 recordings, 118 channels in Full HD and skipping TV ads. Zattoo gives both paid tiers a 30-day free trial.
On the Swiss free tier, exactly two, and both are international news feeds: BBC News and Sky News. Every other British channel Zattoo carries sits on Premium and Ultimate, including BBC One London, BBC Two, BBC Three, BBC Four, BBC Parliament, BBC Scotland, BBC Alba, CBBC, BBC Arabic, ITV1, ITV2, ITV3, ITV4, ITV Quiz, Channel 4, Channel 5, Film4, E4, E4 Extra, More4, 4Seven, S4C, U&Dave and Challenge.
No, and they are two separate things. Zattoo is the content: the Swiss free tier costs nothing, and Premium and Ultimate are paid to Zattoo directly. StreamLocator is the access that gets you to it, and because it is not tied to any one service, the same subscription works with other streaming services too.
The strongest thing about Zattoo is also the simplest: 279 channels of Swiss and German-language live TV, for nothing, permanently. If it is British television you are chasing rather than Swiss, BBC iPlayer, ITVX and Channel 4 are the better route, and the same StreamLocator connection reaches them.
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