Dishwasher Tablets in Switzerland: What the Tests Say and What a Cycle Costs

Switzerland has four published rounds of dishwasher tablet testing to lean on, and they broadly agree on one thing: price and cleaning performance do not track each other. In the comparison published by the Fédération romande des consommateurs on 4 March 2025, the Denner tablet came first for cleaning effectiveness while the ecological products closed the field. In the Kassensturz test of 11 April 2017, the cheapest product in the panel, W5 from Lidl at 10 Rappen a piece, scored 5.0 and sat among the top three. What a tablet costs in your canton this week changes every Thursday, so this guide gives you the method and Rappn shows the current prices live.

Last updated: September 2026. Sources: FRC, "Le test comparatif des tablettes vaisselle tout-en-un", 4 March 2025 (frc.ch); SRF Kassensturz, "Multi-Tabs im Test: Sauberes Geschirr auch ohne Phosphate", 11 April 2017; SRF Kassensturz, "Phosphatfreie Tabs spülen überraschend sauber", 27 September 2011; K-Tipp, "Test: Die billigsten Geschirrspültabs reinigen am besten" (ktipp.ch), and its Suisse romande counterpart at Bon à Savoir, "12 pastilles multi-usage pour lave-vaisselle" (bonasavoir.ch). Those last two articles are paywalled and not retrievable by us, which is why no issue date is attached to them here. Current shelf and promotion prices are deliberately not quoted in this guide.

Rappn is the only neutral grocery price comparison app in Switzerland, with no commercial agreements with any retailer.

Which dishwasher tablets won the Swiss tests?

There is no single winner, there are four dated snapshots. They come from the FRC, from Kassensturz and from the K-Tipp and Bon à Savoir stable, they cover different ranges and different years. Standing in front of the shelf, read them as patterns rather than as a shopping list.

Aligro and Otto's are in the Rappn comparison too. We found no published Swiss test of their dishwasher tablets, which is why the table names none.

Why the cheap tablets keep finishing in front

This is the most striking finding across all four rounds. In 2011, according to Kassensturz, the cheapest candidate in the panel won: OEcoplan from Coop reached 73 points at 19 Rappen per tablet, while Ecover cost more than twice as much. In 2017, W5 from Lidl scored 5.0 among the top three while also being among the least expensive products in the test at 10 Rappen a piece, on a range running from 9 to 64 Rappen. In the twelve-product comparison K-Tipp published under the headline "Die billigsten Geschirrspültabs reinigen am besten", the private labels of Coop, Denner and Lidl sat at the top at 11 Rappen per cycle.

None of that makes cheap automatically better. The 2017 test supplies the counter-check: 7 of 15 tablets earned only a "sufficient" verdict, and Prix Garantie struggled with lime deposits. The durable conclusion is narrower: on its own, the price of a tablet tells you nothing about how it performs, and paying more buys you no guarantee.

How to work out the price per wash cycle

This is the number that appears in large print on no pack and that none of the tests above publishes consistently. It is trivial to get: pack price divided by the number of tablets in the pack. Only that figure makes a 20-piece pack and a bulk pack comparable, because the bulk pack costs more and still often costs less per cycle.

• Step 1: read the tablet count printed on the pack, not the weight.
• Step 2: divide the pack price by that count.
• Step 3: convert to Rappen and hold it against the test figures that exist: 10 Rappen for W5 in 2017, 19 Rappen for OEcoplan in 2011, 11 Rappen for the private labels in the K-Tipp comparison.
• Worked example, not a real price, purely to show the formula: a pack of 40 tablets at CHF 12.00 works out at 30 Rappen per cycle; a pack of 100 tablets at CHF 25.00 works out at 25 Rappen.

Rappn does that division for you: the unit price sits next to the pack price, so you can compare formats directly instead of doing arithmetic in the aisle. The same principle applied to litres and kilos is explained in our guide to the unit price.

Eco tablets: in front in 2011, at the back in 2025

The picture flipped, and both snapshots are cleanly dated. In the Kassensturz test of 27 September 2011, run in two French laboratories together with the FRC and "A Bon Entendeur", ecological products took the top three places, and the conclusion was explicit: washing your dishes ecologically means giving up neither cleanliness nor shine, and it can even save you money. The weighting at the time: cleaning power 40 percent, shine and stains 20 percent, chemical analysis 20 percent, biodegradability 20 percent.

In 2017 the ecological products in the Kassensturz panel came out weaker than the conventional ones, according to the test report. And the FRC test of 4 March 2025 concludes on its eight all-in-one tablets that the advantage goes to the classic products rather than the ecological tablets, with OEcoplan, the ecological line at Coop, plus Sun and L'arbre vert closing the field. Two things follow: an eco label is not a performance promise, and a single test is never the last word.

All-in-one: when salt and rinse aid are still needed

All-in-one tablets promise to combine detergent, regenerating salt and rinse aid in one piece. On 4 March 2025 the FRC put eight of them through three wash cycles with standardised soils of egg yolk, burnt milk, a starch mixture and dried tea, looking for an opaque film and for the shine on glasses. On one product the packaging asks, in small print, for salt and rinse aid to be added anyway, which contradicts the all-in-one claim.

For you that means the back of the pack decides whether an all-in-one tablet really is enough in your machine. The FRC also notes that the information on composition remains patchy. The most transparent product according to the FRC was Tandil, the Aldi Suisse own brand.

When dishwasher tablets go on promotion

Tablets are a classic promotion product, and the rhythm is the one that runs across the whole range. Migros, Coop and Denner start their weekly Aktionen on Thursday, Coop since the week of 21 January 2025, Migros and Denner since 5 February 2026. Aldi Suisse and Lidl Schweiz publish two waves a week, on Monday and Thursday. Because the discount almost always lands on the bulk pack, a promotion moves the price per cycle far more than it does on a small pack.

Prices change every Thursday, and Rappn shows the ones that apply now. You can also set a price alert on your brand instead of leafing through flyers every week. The same mechanics apply to laundry detergent tests, where the sum runs per laundry wash instead of per dishwasher cycle.

So which tablet should you buy?

Answered honestly: it depends on your machine, your water hardness and your local shelf, and no recent test crowns a product that wins everywhere. What the tests show together is more modest and more useful: a tablet at 10 or 19 Rappen performed well across several rounds, a step up to 64 Rappen bought no matching jump in performance, and the chains own-brand tablets finished in front more than once. So pick a product that scored well in one of these tests, then decide on the price per cycle.

You do not have to work that price out yourself: open dishwasher tablets in Rappn, compare the current offers from Migros, Coop, Aldi Suisse, Lidl Schweiz, Denner, Aligro and Otto's in your canton, and read the unit price next to the pack price. The app is free, available in four languages and usable without an account. From here, carry on to cleaning and laundry products and to the best private labels in Switzerland.