Online Shopping in Switzerland: The Best Places to Grab a Bargain
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Online shopping in Switzerland is convenient, quick and offers many different options for Swiss residents. In this blog post, I’ll be covering some of the main places you can buy products online, and how you can get the best deals for your hard-earned CHF.
All of these portals allow you to easily use your bank card (I use Zak for the Visa Debit Card, reviewed here) making it easy and seamless to buy online.
🎁 Reader Bonus: I’ve partnered with Zak to bring Investing Hero readers (that’s you!) a 50CHF welcome bonus when you open a free account. No strings attached and no BS. Just use the code HEROCH to claim your 50 bucks.
Let’s start with the marketplaces.
Ricardo
Founded in 1999, Ricardo was one of the early Swiss marketplace pioneers and now has over 150 employees across Switzerland.
In my view, they are essentially the ‘eBay of Switzerland’, as eBay itself is relatively underused here.
Ricardo is a great place to get a used deal due to the volume of listings, with open ended auctions & ‘buy now’ options on most listings. I find Ricardo particularly useful for used winter items (e.g. Skis, sledges etc) and furniture.
Much like eBay, everything is handled through the platform (e.g. messaging, payment) making things pretty straight forward. It’s also a good option if you want to sell items too, the process of which is simple and straightforward.
Tutti
Tutti is another heavy-weight in the marketplace area, and also very popular in Switzerland – particularly in the German speaking parts.
Unlike Ricardo however, there is no ‘auction’ for product listings, the prices are fixed. This enables for even better deals at times, as you avoid bidding against others – but you have to be quick to grab the best deals.
If you are looking to sell items, Tutti is also a great option as the listings are free.
Anibis
A shout out to all my blog readers in the French part of Switzerland – Anibis is for you. Similar to Tutti, it’s very active with thousands of listings for used items but has a bigger audience for the French part of Switzerland. Be sure to check it out if you are based here.
Another option for the French part is PetitesAnnounces.ch, which offers a very basic ‘no frills’ interface – but is packed with listings across various categories.
No online shopping blog post would be complete without mentioning Facebook. My advice here is to avoid the larger Swiss groups, and look up your local town and join these instead.
Not only will you keep up with local news and events, you’ll be able to see sellers of used items right on your doorstep, meaning quick and easy collection. On the other hand, depending on where you live the quantity and quality of used listings can differ significantly.
Forums
When I say forums, I’m talking specifically about the EnglishForum.ch – which has an active audience and many items for sale.
In particular, tech gadgets & furniture within the Zurich area are very common – so there is no shortage of deals to be had.
You can also post your own ‘Items wanted’ which is visible to all forum members if you are looking for something specific.
AliExpress
Like Facebook, we can’t not talk about Aliexpress when we talk about online shopping in Switzerland.
In particular, Aliexpress is great for many small items – USB cables, phone chargers and the like. Basically, for random little widgets and small bits you need for around the home, Aliexpress is worth a look.
If you don’t mind the wait (typically 4-6weeks) on the postage they are great deals and you can access the manufacturing powerhouse of China very cheaply.
If you really can’t wait – you can pick up decent products from China from the Swiss shop Apfelkiste.
Book Depository Switzerland
Amazon doesn’t operate in Switzerland, so you have to generally go through Germany or France – which often pumps up prices and wait times for orders.
Enter Book Depository Switzerland.
I prefer Book Depository in Switzerland for books over Amazon as they offer free postage, and there are no import taxes.
They also have a great selection of English books and the prices are very competitive with regular promotions and offers.
Pro tip: add books you want to your account wish list, and every so often you’ll get emailed a 10% voucher code from Book Depository to purchase them. Nice.
If you want to cross check prices for books, it’s worth using BuchSuch, which will crawl the major sites and give you the latest prices – a nifty addition to the deal hunters toolbox.
Galaxus
One of the biggest portals in Switzerland, Galaxus is a huge hub for basically anything you ever need to buy. They have hundreds of partners, including big name retailers in Switzerland, so you’ll often find what you need here.
Everything is translated in English too which is pretty rare – so that’s an added bonus if you aren’t a native speaker.
Galaxus have a nice feature where you can view the price history of an item, so you can see the fluctuations over time – which could indicate a good or bad deal on the item.
Galaxus also own the Digitec portal, which is more focused on electronics and B2B, and generally the prices are the same – but it’s always worth checking for any differences (e.g. for a new TV) on the two platforms.
For purchases over 50 CHF, postage is also free – so it’s worth crossing that threshold to avoid unnecessary postage costs.
Pro tip – As many Swiss companies list their products on Galaxus, you can take advantage of this free delivery offer for items over 50 CHF on Galaxus – which isn’t the case when purchasing directly.
Here’s an example with Pfister.
Directly from Pfister, the ‘Postversand gratis’ is only available for items over 100 CHF, so you’d have to pay extra for postage buying this chair:
However, the same chair supplied by Pfister, at the same price, can be purchased through Galaxus for free postage …
And the item is still delivered to you on the same Pfister delivery truck.
In short, make sure to cross check on Galaxus before you purchase as each supplier will have different delivery rates.
Top Preise
Finally, for the hardcore deal hunters out there its worth running the product through Top Preise to identify the best price online.
They operate on an affiliate basis, so might not always get the best deals on top – and they often exclude postage costs, but it’s worth checking through before making a transaction.
This site is particularly useful for electronics (e.g. smart phones, TVs, power tools etc) as shown in the screenshot below – an iPhone 13 mini ranges from 796 CHF down to 699 CHF with Interdiscount – which is quite a range.
You can also see price history to work out when the price will likely drop further, and by how much, around key events such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Online transactions
Not all of the portals mentioned above support credit and debit card transactions. For those that don’t (e.g. Ricardo, Tutti and Facebook) you’ll need your Swiss bank account setup, and either use a bank transfer or pay in cash. If both parties bank with Zak, using Zak Instant is painless and super fast.
For everything else – credit or debit cards are widely used. If you are banking with Zak for example like me, this makes the process very quick and easy to setup and pay for your purchases using your Visa Debit card.
Whenever you see the Visa sign – you can use your Zak card.
More broadly, the Visa Debit card itself has pretty high adoption here, particularly for online shopping Switzerland, which you can read more about here.
Online shopping Switzerland: Closing thoughts
That concludes my top places for your online shopping needs in Switzerland. I hope you found them useful, and are able to put some of the tips and pointers into your next online purchase.
Thanks for reading, and good luck finding an online shopping deal!
Mr. IH
🎁 Reader Bonus: I’ve partnered with Zak to bring Investing Hero readers (that’s you!) a 50CHF welcome bonus when you open a free account. No strings attached and no BS. Just use the code HEROCH to claim your 50 bucks.
About me
I’m a British expat who’s been living in Switzerland for the last 10 years. I’m a digital marketing professional by day, and anonymous investing blogger by night. I cover investing basics, robo advisor reviews and epic how to guides. You can call me ‘Mr. IH’ for short, and read more about me here.
