Entry-price ranges in Switzerland: the shelves with no cheap option

An entry-price range only helps where it actually exists on the shelf. In September 2026 the range page migros.ch/de/brand/m-budget listed 521 M-Budget articles spread across sixteen sections: 64 in dairy, eggs and fresh ready meals, but only 9 in fruit and vegetables, 7 in baby and child products and a single one in wine, beer and spirits. At Coop, a product search for "Prix Garantie" on coop.ch returned 943 results the same month. These numbers do not say which chain is less expensive. They say which shelves have no entry step, and it is that gap, more than the shelf price, that inflates the till receipt.

Last updated: September 2026. Sources: the M-Budget range page on migros.ch and the "Prix Garantie" product search on coop.ch, both read in September 2026; the range page on aldi-suisse.ch and the category tree on sortiment.lidl.ch, September 2026; denner.ch, September 2026. Consumer sources: Bon à Savoir 06-2024 of 5 June 2024 (Sébastien Sautebin), Bon à Savoir 03-2023 of 15 March 2023 and 01-2023 of 18 January 2023 (Kevin Gertsch), Bon à Savoir 07-2023 of 5 July 2023 (Claire Houriet Rime); K-Tipp 01/2026 of 14 January 2026 (Markus Fehlmann) and K-Tipp 05/2023 of 14 March 2023 (Christian Gurtner). This guide deliberately quotes no weekly prices: they change every week.

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

How many entry-price articles are there really?

Fewer than the shelf impression suggests. Migros describes M-Budget on its own range page as "Grün, weiss, Tiefpreis", green, white, low price, and states there that prices are regularly compared by an independent market research institute and adjusted without delay where needed. Read in September 2026, that same page showed 521 articles. At Coop the product search for "Prix Garantie" returned 943 results in September 2026, but with no category facet, so no equivalent coverage map can be built from it.

For the order of magnitude, Bon à Savoir put the two ranges at "quelques 700 et 1500 articles" in its 06-2024 issue of 5 June 2024, that is roughly 700 M-Budget and roughly 1'500 Prix Garantie articles, against "plusieurs dizaines de milliers de produits", several tens of thousands of products in the two big retailers' full assortment. The two counts do not measure the same thing: ours are snapshots of a range page and a search box in September 2026, the Bon à Savoir figures are from June 2024. They point to the same conclusion all the same. The entry step covers only part of the assortment.

The coverage map, shelf by shelf

The table below is not a price list, it is an inventory: it shows how the 521 M-Budget articles were distributed in September 2026 across the sections Migros itself uses on its range page. The percentage column is our own arithmetic on that base.

The bottom four rows are the actual finding. If your weekly shop is built around fresh food, baby products or alcoholic drinks, in September 2026 you found almost no entry step in those sections and moved straight to the next tier or to a national brand. For the sections at the top the opposite holds: dairy, snacks, tinned goods and cleaning products are well covered, and the cheap variant is usually there.

What a missing entry price costs

The step up to the next tier is documented. Bon à Savoir wrote on 5 June 2024 (issue 06-2024, Sébastien Sautebin) that Qualité & Prix articles are 71% more expensive than Prix Garantie, while M-Classic costs 50% more than M-Budget. When the entry step is missing from a shelf, that is not a small surcharge: it is half to three quarters of a price tier more for the same product family.

The same editorial team also found that the budget lines are not immune to inflation: in issue 07-2023 of 5 July 2023 (Claire Houriet Rime), M-Budget crunchy muesli had risen 23% in a year and the Prix Garantie one 38%, measured on a basket of about forty products. An entry-price range is therefore a price level, not a price promise. To know what applies this week you have to look at current prices: Migros, Coop and Denner start their weekly promotions on Thursday, Aldi Suisse and Lidl Schweiz on Monday and Thursday, and Rappn shows the offers valid at that moment across all seven chains side by side. The head-to-head between the two lines is covered in M-Budget vs Prix Garantie.

At the discounters there is no second step down

At Aldi Suisse and Lidl Schweiz the own brand is itself the entry step: there is no separate budget line beneath it. The range page on aldi-suisse.ch reported 2'280 articles for the entire Swiss assortment in September 2026, with own brands such as Monarc, Le Gusto, Cucina, Almare, Bellasan, Happy Harvest and Bio Natura, and a "Tiefpreis" flag on the lowest prices. That is the other face of the same gap: if a product family is not among those 2'280 articles, there is no entry price there at all, neither low nor high.

For Lidl Schweiz, sortiment.lidl.ch publishes no total, but it does publish the category tree, from dairy and fruit through to baby, pet food and household, plus the Qualité Suisse line (September 2026). Denner carries the IP-SUISSE line alongside its own label (denner.ch, September 2026). For Aligro and Otto's we found no solid public assortment figure, so none appears here. The wider discounter comparison is covered in Discounters in Switzerland.

Entry price does not mean poor quality, except where it does

Quality has been tested separately from price. On 14 March 2023 (issue 05/2023, Christian Gurtner) K-Tipp reviewed 111 quality tests run over two years: the average grade was 4.57 for branded articles and 4.58 for own labels; brands won 54 of the 111 tests, own labels 57. A sample of 100 products found own labels on average 41% cheaper.

The review of the 2025 test year (K-Tipp 01/2026 of 14 January 2026, Markus Fehlmann) shows the same pattern: in 16 of 32 food and cosmetics tests at least one product from Aldi, Denner, Lidl or the M-Budget and Prix Garantie budget lines scored better than the most expensive product in the test, and the budget lines supplied the test winner six times against three times for the most expensive products. Named examples include the M-Budget all-purpose cleaner ahead of Meister Proper, Der General and Ajax, and Prix Garantie bean coffee graded "gut", level with a Starbucks coffee more than four times the price. The same review went the other way for balsamic vinegar, tomato purée and hazelnut chocolate spreads, where the cheapest products were rated inadequate because of problematic pesticides.

Bon à Savoir reached the same place on 18 January 2023 (issue 01-2023, Kevin Gertsch): M-Budget three-ply recycled toilet paper, CHF 3.25 a pack and CHF 0.27 per roll, was rated "Très bon (5.8/6)" there. The topic is developed in Own brand or brand.

Listed, but not on the shelf

A budget line can exist on paper and still be absent. That is exactly what Bon à Savoir documented on 15 March 2023 (issue 03-2023, Kevin Gertsch): the sample basket total jumped at Migros because certain M-Budget articles were not available on the shelves at the time of the store visit. The method of the Observatoire des prix is transparent: 53 everyday products, recorded every month simultaneously at four big retailers. In February of that year the least expensive sample basket was Aldi's, at CHF 129.75, down 3.9% on the previous month, against CHF 130.65 for the next one.

The same team gave availability a whole section in its 07-2023 issue, headed "Peu disponibles dans les grandes villes", meaning poor availability of the budget lines in the big cities. For a household that means the question is not only whether the cheap variant exists, but whether it is in your branch. Which own labels are actually worth switching to is reviewed in Best private labels in Switzerland.

How to check your own shelves

It depends on what is in your basket, and it can be worked out. Take your recent shops, mark every line for which you found no entry-level variant, then look up the unit price per kilo or litre for exactly those lines, not the pack price. For measurable goods that unit price has to appear on the shelf label anyway, it is simply printed smaller. Then compare the same line across chains, instead of hunting further down inside a single chain.

That is precisely what Rappn is built for. You build your weekly basket, you see the current offers from all seven chains side by side for each line, with the unit price next to the pack price and filtered to your canton, and you spot immediately which lines your usual chain has no cheap variant for. The app is free, no account is needed, and the ranking is not for sale.