Non-Alcoholic Beer in Switzerland: Range, Rules and Prices

In Switzerland, alcohol-free means no more than 0.5 percent alcohol by volume. Article 2 paragraph 1 of the EDI Ordinance on Beverages (SR 817.022.12) caps the ethyl alcohol content of alcohol-free drinks at that figure, and Article 61 paragraph 1 of the same ordinance defines any drink above 0.5 percent by volume as an alcoholic drink. «0.0 %» is therefore not a separate legal category but a producer claim inside the same limit. The range is simpler than the beer market suggests: all seven chains in Rappn carry alcohol-free beer — including Migros, which sells no alcohol at all.

Last reviewed: August 2026.

Sources checked regularly. EDI Ordinance on Beverages (SR 817.022.12) of 16 December 2016, in the version consulted, status 1 July 2020, Art. 2, 61, 63, 65, 67 and 68, read in the official text on Fedlex. Swiss Brewers Association: the «Kennzahlen» (calendar year 2025) and «Biersteuer» pages on bier.swiss, retrieved on 3 August 2026. SRF Kassensturz of 20 August 2024 (blind tasting of alcohol-free lagers) and SRF of 18 October 2021 on «0 %» labelling. Migros press release of 16 June 2022 on the alcohol vote, watson.ch of 5 July 2022 and 1 April 2025, foodaktuell.ch of 18 March 2026. Range data retrieved on 3 August 2026 from ottos.ch, sortiment.lidl.ch, denner.ch, coop.ch, aldi-suisse.ch, aligro.ch and feldschloesschen.ch. Promotional prices are dated snapshots, not standing prices; what applies this week is live in the Rappn app.

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

What counts as alcohol-free beer in Switzerland?

The ordinance is unusually terse here. Article 67 defines alcohol-free beer as beer from which the alcohol has been removed, or in which the fermentation of the wort is steered so that no alcohol is formed. That names the two production routes you meet on the shelf: de-alcoholise after fermentation, or hold the fermentation back from the start. Article 68 additionally permits production from concentrate by re-dilution and requires, by analogy, the same conditions as for ordinary beer under Article 63 — water, grain, yeast and hops.

What is not in the ordinance matters just as much. For beer it knows the designations «Leichtbier», «Lagerbier», «Spezialbier» and «Starkbier», set by original wort content (Art. 65 para. 2), plus «low-carbohydrate beer» (Art. 65 para. 4). There is no «0.0 %» category. In practice: the only threshold you can rely on legally is 0.5 percent by volume; everything finer is the producer's own declaration.

One tax detail shows how seriously that line is taken. The Swiss Brewers Association states on bier.swiss that no tax is levied on beer with at most 0.5 percent alcohol by volume. Alcoholic beer pays, depending on original wort, CHF 16.88 (Leichtbier), CHF 25.32 (normal and special beer) or CHF 33.76 (strong beer) per hectolitre. Part of the price gap between alcohol-free and alcoholic beer is therefore simply tax law.

0.0 % or «alcohol-free»: what is the difference?

There are three situations. A beer printed «0.0 %» contains, per the producer, virtually no residual alcohol. A beer labelled only «alcohol-free» may contain up to 0.5 percent by volume. And in Switzerland both have exactly the same legal status: alcohol-free drink.

How dependable is the printed figure? SRF looked into this on 18 October 2021. According to that report, alcohol content only has to be declared on drinks above 1.2 percent, so alcohol-free beers sit below the declaration duty. The Cantonal Laboratory of Zurich described the «0 %» and «0.0 %» wording to SRF as a grey area, while considering deception unlikely. If you need genuine zero alcohol for medical or personal reasons, ask the producer directly — we are not a food-safety authority and offer no recommendation of our own here.

Alcohol-free beer at Denner

Denner is many people's first stop, because it treats beer as a category of its own and rotates it weekly. On 3 August 2026, denner.ch listed Feldschlösschen Bier Alkoholfrei Lager in a 24 × 50 cl crate at a shelf price of CHF 46.– with an announced promotional price of CHF 27.60 for the week of 6 to 12 August 2026, shown as 40 percent off. The same day, Denner's beer page showed two alcohol-free items from the Bilz brand: Bilz Panaché 0.0 % in a 24 × 33 cl pack and Bilz Stellare 0.0 % Arancia Rossa in a 6 × 33 cl pack, both reduced.

Two things are typical. First the spread: on that single crate, the gap between shelf and promotional price was CHF 18.40. Second the calendar: the promotion week runs Thursday to Wednesday, because Migros, Coop and Denner have all started their weekly promotions on a Thursday since 5 February 2026. Look on a Tuesday and you are seeing the week that is ending, not the one beginning.

Which chain has the widest range?

Honest answer: it depends what you mean by range. Count the listings in a webshop and the drinks specialists lead. Count the odds that your usual beer is discounted and the promotion rhythm decides. Count price per litre and own brands win. The table below is a dated snapshot from 3 August 2026, not a permanent state.

On the brand side Feldschlösschen sets the pace: on 3 August 2026 its own webshop listed, under «alcohol-free beers», the Alkoholfrei Lager and Weizenfrisch, the Panaché 0.0 % line, several Bilz 0.0 variants, Eve Litchi 0.0 %, Grimbergen Blonde 0.0 %, Super Bock 0.0 % and Valaisanne sans alcool — often the same house behind different labels.

And the honest part: it depends. Which chain has the lowest price for your beer this week depends on the pack format, the promotion rhythm and your canton — a guide cannot pin that down. That is exactly what the live view is for: in Rappn you see the current offers from the seven chains side by side, filterable by product, category, price and canton, with the price per litre. The guide explains the rules, the app answers for today.

Why does Migros sell alcohol-free beer but no ordinary beer?

Because the cooperative decided so in 2022. In its press release of 16 June 2022, Migros stated that the required two-thirds majority had not been reached in any of the ten regional cooperatives; rejection ranged from 55.3 percent No in Ticino to 80.3 percent No in Zurich. The same release announced the alcohol-free Migros beer «NON» from roughly 2023. It is brewed, per watson.ch of 5 July 2022, by the Schützengarten brewery in St. Gallen.

The effect is striking. foodaktuell.ch wrote on 18 March 2026 that alcohol-free beer is now among the best-selling beers in the Migros supermarket and that NON sales had risen by around 80 percent in the previous year. watson.ch put the whole Migros alcohol-free range at around 140 products in the largest branches on 1 April 2025. For your shopping, that makes Migros a serious address for alcohol-free beer even though you will find no alcoholic crate there. What it does to the rest of the beer landscape is covered in our guide to beer deals in Switzerland.

Which alcohol-free beer performs best in tests?

The most recent broad Swiss tasting comes from Kassensturz. In the programme of 20 August 2024, eleven alcohol-free lagers were judged blind by a five-person expert jury: beer sommelières Madlaina Galli and Angela Vögtli, beer sensory analyst Karin Stottele, brewery guide Jörg Lenski and food-technology lecturer Andreas Kilchör. No beer failed.

The winner was «Schützengarten Alkoholfrei» with a mark of 5.2. Second, at 5.0, came Lidl's Finkbräu Alkoholfrei, of which Kassensturz noted that it costs only a fraction — 39 centimes per 33 cl. At the bottom of the field, Feldschlösschen Alkoholfrei and Birra Moretti Zero scored 4.6 each. Also tested were Appenzeller Sonnwendlig and Leermond, Farmer, Eichhof 0.0, the Migros NON lager and Aldi's Karlskrone. The lesson is uncomfortable for expensive labels: two tenths of a mark separated first and second place, across a far wider price gap.

When is alcohol-free beer on promotion?

The weekly rhythm is more uniform than it used to be. Migros, Coop and Denner have started their weekly promotions on a Thursday since 5 February 2026. Aldi Suisse and Lidl Schweiz drop new offers on both Monday and Thursday. For alcohol-free beer that means Thursday is the day with the greatest overlap, and Monday is the discounter gap in between.

What a guide cannot tell you is how deep the discount goes. The Denner example above shows a move from CHF 46.– to CHF 27.60 within a single week; jumps like that make any printed price wrong within days. It is more useful to set a price watch on your beer and buy when the alert arrives. For alcoholic beer we have covered the price levels separately: beer prices in Switzerland.

How fast is the category really growing?

Clearly. The Swiss Brewers Association publishes calendar-year figures on bier.swiss under «Kennzahlen»: in 2025, 4,661,624 hectolitres of beer were drunk in Switzerland, of which Swiss breweries produced 3,631,516 hectolitres — and consumption of alcohol-free beer rose by nearly 14 percent year on year. The association does not publish a separate market share for alcohol-free beer on that page, so we do not quote one.

For scale: 1,091 breweries reported taxable output in 2025, and the industry paid CHF 101.8 million in beer tax — none of which falls on alcohol-free beer, which is exempt up to 0.5 percent by volume. Foreign trade in alcoholic beer came to 929,482 hectolitres imported from 94 countries and 32,381 hectolitres exported to 39 countries in the same year. Every figure in this section comes from the Swiss Brewers Association's Kennzahlen page, retrieved on 3 August 2026.

For the longer arc: on 1 April 2025 watson.ch quoted brewer Feldschlösschen with an alcohol-free market share of 6.1 percent in 2023, more than doubled since 2017, and said millennials and Generation X made up 78 percent of those consumers.

So what should you do? It depends

It depends first on why you drink alcohol-free. If it is taste and price, the 2024 Kassensturz test shows a discounter own brand can compete at the very top. If you genuinely need zero alcohol, «alcohol-free» alone is not precise enough, because the ordinance permits up to 0.5 percent by volume; then the producer's own figure is what counts. It depends next on format and canton: a 24-bottle crate is almost always cheaper per litre than a six-pack, but only if you drink it — and Otto's and Aligro are not equally reachable everywhere.

Next step: open the offers in Rappn, search for «alcohol-free» and filter by your canton. You see the running offers from the seven chains side by side, with price per litre, and you can set a price watch on your beer so you do not miss the next Thursday start. Rappn is free and is not paid by any chain.