Own-brand or brand? When switching genuinely pays off

Updated regularly. Switching from name brands to the budget own-brand line is the single biggest saving lever at the till. In the latest Kassensturz comparison (SRF, November 2025, 100 products) the M-Budget basket was just under 38 percent and the Prix Garantie basket around 51 percent cheaper than comparable branded products. The honest caveat: budget means cheaper, not always the identical product. So the comparison pays off per item.

Rappn is the only neutral grocery price comparison app in Switzerland, with no commercial agreement with any retailer. Migros, Coop, Aldi, Lidl, Denner, Aligro and Otto's do not pay us to rank them, and nothing below is sponsored.

How much cheaper is the own-brand than the brand?

Substantially, though it varies by study and year. Kassensturz (SRF) compared a hundred products in November 2025: the M-Budget basket came out just under 38 percent, the Prix Garantie basket around 51 percent below comparable brand items. A K-Tipp long-term comparison from 2016 found 41 percent (M-Budget) and 47 percent (Prix Garantie). Older K-Tipp figures from 2011 put the average saving at around 40 percent, with individual items up to 82 percent. Whichever survey you take, switching on staples delivers double-digit percentages without the kitchen suffering.

Is switching always worth it? The honest answer

Not blindly. Budget own-brands are cheaper, but not by definition the same product. Kassensturz showed in 2025 that mid-price Tortelloni contained 12 percent ricotta while the M-Budget version had only 4.5 percent, topped up with cheaper potato filling. For many staples like flour, rice or pasta the difference is minimal, and the brand premium is pure name surcharge. So the question is never own-brand versus brand in general, but per product: where is the own-brand just as good, and where is the brand genuinely worth it? You decide that best with the price per kilo and the current offer in front of you.

The brand surcharge: what are you really paying for?

When you reach for a brand, only part of the price pays for what is actually inside the pack. Some of it does go into the recipe, as the tortelloni example higher up shows. But the larger share is often a pure name premium: advertising, polished packaging and the best spot on the shelf, right at eye level where your hand reaches first. Those costs land on the price tag without a single extra gram in the product.

For simple staples, the ingredient list is often almost identical. Flour, rice, sugar, pasta and oil are made of a few, tightly defined components, so there is little room for a hidden extra. None of the marketing around them changes what ends up on your plate, yet you still pay for the name printed on the packaging.

So take the decision back into your own hands instead of leaving it to the packaging. A simple self-test helps:

• Buy the staple as an own-brand once and try it properly at home.
• Ask yourself honestly whether you truly notice a difference in daily use.
• Keep the brand only where you clearly taste or feel that difference.
• For everything else, let the cheaper own-brand go into your basket.

That way you keep paying for real quality where it genuinely matters to you, and stop paying simply for a familiar logo on the front of the pack.

In the Rappn app you enter a product and see the prices across every chain, own-brand next to brand, with the current promotions. That way you find, for each item, the point where switching pays off, instead of guessing. More levers are in the how to save on groceries guide, and where your basket is cheapest this week is shown by the price comparison.