Does the price disclosure duty apply to my trade?

Only if your service appears in Art. 10 para. 1 of the Price Disclosure Ordinance. Twenty-one sectors are listed, among them hairdressing, cosmetic studios and body care, garage servicing work, hospitality and hotels, taxis, courses, and the services of dentists and vets. Trades such as joinery or landscaping, plus accountancy and web design, are not listed. For goods, by contrast, the duty always applies, whatever your trade.

Is a from-price enough on the website?

Not if you are on the list. The SECO information sheet of 1 April 2025 for hair salons, barbershops and cosmetic studios states expressly that entries such as «beard trim: from Fr. 30.-» are not permitted. What is allowed is tiering by criteria, for instance by hair length, and an hourly rate where the price depends on time spent. If you are not on the list and advertise voluntarily, a from-price is fine, but you then have to describe exactly which concrete offer it refers to.

Does VAT have to be included in the price shown?

Yes. What is required is the price actually payable in Swiss francs, and passed-on public charges such as VAT plus any other non-optional surcharges must be included (Art. 10 para. 2 PDO for services, Art. 4 para. 1 PDO for goods). You may show shipping costs separately when selling goods, and visitor taxes separately in hospitality.

What about quotes and cost estimates?

The Price Disclosure Ordinance governs publicly disclosed prices and advertising, not the written quote you send to one particular client. The cost estimate in a contract for work is governed by the Code of Obligations: if an approximate estimate agreed with the contractor is exceeded disproportionately through no fault of the client, the client may withdraw from the contract (Art. 375 para. 1 CO). In practice: estimate generously and speak up early when it gets more expensive.

What happens if you breach it?

The cantons monitor compliance and report breaches, while SECO holds federal oversight (Art. 22 and 23 PDO). Anyone who intentionally breaches the price disclosure rules faces a fine of up to CHF 20,000 (Art. 21 PDO in conjunction with Art. 24 of the Unfair Competition Act). Negligence is also punished with a fine. Under Art. 20 PDO the duty rests with management, not with the person at the till.

Do prices have to go on your website? What the Swiss Price Disclosure Ordinance requires, and from whom · Guide

Whether you have to show your prices does not depend on your website. It depends on a list. The Swiss Price Disclosure Ordinance (Preisbekanntgabeverordnung, PBV, SR 942.211) covers all goods, but only those services enumerated in Art. 10 para. 1. If your service is in there, you must state prices. If it is not, you decide for yourself. Here is the answer for the most common trades, before I explain anything.

Trade	Prices required?	Legal basis	What to do in practice
Hair salon, barbershop	Yes	Art. 10 para. 1 lit. a PDO	Complete price list with fixed end prices in CHF including VAT. Tiering by hair length is fine, «from Fr. 30.-» is not.
Cosmetic studio, nail and foot care	Yes	Art. 10 para. 1 lit. d PDO	A fixed end price per treatment. Where the price depends on time, an hourly rate is enough.
Garage, car servicing	Yes, for servicing work	Art. 10 para. 1 lit. b PDO	Publish hourly rates and service flat rates. Selling the vehicle itself counts as goods under Art. 3 PDO.
Restaurant, hotel	Yes	Art. 10 para. 1 lit. c PDO	End prices including VAT, with quantities for drinks. Visitor taxes may be shown separately.
Taxi	Yes	Art. 10 para. 1 lit. f PDO	Publish the tariffs. SECO issues a dedicated 2025 information sheet for the taxi trade.
Dental practice	Yes	Art. 10 para. 1 lit. t PDO	Prices for the services offered. SECO information sheet from 2025.
Veterinary practice	Yes	Art. 10 para. 1 lit. t PDO	Prices for the services offered. A SECO information sheet exists.
Courses and training	Yes	Art. 10 para. 1 lit. m PDO	Course price including all non-optional surcharges, stating what it covers.
Joinery, interior fit-out	No	not in Art. 10 para. 1 PDO	Voluntary. But once a figure is on the page, Art. 13 PDO applies: it must be the price actually payable.
Landscaping and garden construction	No	not in Art. 10 para. 1 PDO	Voluntary, same rule for figures. My advice: an explained range beats silence.
Accountancy, fiduciary services	No	not in Art. 10 para. 1 PDO	Voluntary. For business clients the ordinance does not apply at all.
Web design	No	not in Art. 10 para. 1 PDO	Voluntary. I publish mine anyway, and I explain why further down.

How to read the table

Three sentences of context. First: the ordinance covers all goods, but not all services. The Swiss consumer protection foundation puts it plainly: the PBV applies to all goods, but not to all services, and the services that do fall under it are enumerated in Art. 10 para. 1. Second: that catalogue is exhaustive, 21 sectors from a to v. If your service is not in it, there is no disclosure duty, however customary published prices might be in your field. Third: the ordinance protects consumers, meaning private individuals buying for purposes unconnected with their trade or profession (Art. 2 para. 2 PDO). If you only serve companies, you are outside its scope anyway.

One clarification belongs here: I am not a lawyer. I build websites, which is why I keep running into this question. What binds is the text of the ordinance, and an individual case belongs with a professional.

What applies if you are on the list

Art. 10 para. 1 PDO then requires the price actually payable in Swiss francs, and always together with the offer. Passed-on public charges such as VAT and any other non-optional surcharges have to be included (Art. 10 para. 2). Since 1 July 2022 the ordinance states expressly that the price must be disclosed at the time and place of the offer, not shortly before the contract is concluded.

The clearest guidance is SECO’s information sheet of 1 April 2025 for hair salons, barbershops, cosmetic studios and body care. Four points from it save the most trouble in practice:

Fixed prices, no from-prices. The sheet says it verbatim: the prices given are fixed prices, and entries such as «beard trim: from Fr. 30.-» or «hair removal: from Fr. 20.- to Fr. 50.-» are not permitted.
Tiering is allowed. Short hair Fr. 50.-, shoulder length Fr. 55.-, long Fr. 60.- is exactly the right approach. Where the price depends on time spent, an hourly rate is enough.
Standard materials are included. Shampoo, hairspray, wax and cream belong inside the stated price. Only where the client can choose a more expensive special product does that product get its own price.
Accessible without asking. Prices have to be easily accessible and legible where clients normally are. Verbal information alone does not suffice.

For the website that means: the ordinance attaches to the offer, not to the medium. If someone can book a specific treatment with you online, the price belongs at that point and not at the end of the booking flow. For online business the consumer protection guidance is that the price actually payable may not appear only at the end of the ordering process, but has to be visible with the offer on the product page. My recommendation as the person building these sites goes further than the minimum: if you have to display the list in the salon anyway, put it on the site too. It answers the question new clients ask first. What else belongs on a salon site is in Websites for hair salons in Switzerland and on the hair salon page.

For your own trade there is usually a matching leaflet. SECO keeps its price disclosure brochures at seco.admin.ch, among them the 2025 practice guide and sheets on taxis, dental and veterinary services, hotels and restaurants, motor vehicles and notarial services. They are published in German, French and Italian.

Goods, briefly, because there the position is simpler

If you sell goods to private customers, the disclosure duty always applies, with no catalogue and no question of trade. Art. 3 para. 1 PDO requires the price actually payable in Swiss francs with every offer. That holds in the shop, in the window display and expressly in the online shop as well. Shipping costs may be disclosed separately (Art. 4 para. 1 PDO). If you are planning a shop and want to know what it costs and what else it involves, the figures are in What does an online shop cost in Switzerland.

When there is no duty: the question that actually matters

That settles the legal part, and for the joiner, the landscaper and the accountant the interesting question only starts here. You do not have to. Should you anyway?

What happens when you show prices

I can demonstrate this on myself rather than on an invented client story. My figures are open on my pricing page: a website from CHF 3,500, an online shop from CHF 9,000, hosting at CHF 19 a month, maintenance at CHF 79, hourly packages at CHF 800, 1,500 and 2,800. Web design appears in no catalogue. I would not have to do any of this.

What changed I report as experience, not as a measurement, because I never measured it cleanly. Fewer enquiries arrive. The ones that do arrive fit better. The conversation no longer opens with “so what does a website cost?” but with “from 3,500, what does that include?”. Someone with 800 francs in mind does not get in touch at all, which is the cheaper outcome for both sides. The price on the page works as a filter, not as a salesperson.

The downside is real and belongs in the picture: you give up a negotiating position, and your competitors read along. For me the benefit clearly outweighs that. For a business running almost entirely on referrals, the sum can come out differently.

When a fixed price is not honestly possible

A made-to-measure kitchen has no fixed price, and neither does a garden rebuild. The honest middle path is an explained range: a span, what drives it, and the point at which it gets more expensive. Three things matter here.

First, use your own numbers, from your recent jobs, not some market figure off the internet. Second, write down what moves the price. A range without an explanation looks arbitrary; a range with three cost drivers looks competent. Third, and this is widely missed: as soon as you name a figure, you are inside the ordinance after all, just at a different point. The PBV also covers advertising aimed at consumers for all goods and services (Art. 2 para. 1 lit. d), and SECO expressly counts websites as an advertising medium.

Two practical rules follow. Under Art. 13 para. 1 PDO the figure you name has to be the price actually payable, VAT included, and it must be clear which type and unit of service it refers to. And if you advertise a minimum price, SECO’s practice guide requires you to describe exactly which concrete offer the from-price relates to. So “fitted wardrobe from CHF 3,000” is not enough, while “fitted wardrobe, 2 metres wide, lacquered front, installed, from CHF 3,000” is.

A detail about the German word Richtpreis, a recommended or guide price, which I have used wrongly myself: under Art. 13 para. 2 PDO, manufacturers, importers and wholesalers may publish guide prices. A joinery selling directly to private clients is not in that group. Call it a range, an experience value or an approximate estimate instead, and describe carefully what the figure covers. What that means for a trade website more broadly is on the joinery page.

Who answers the price question if you do not

Demand for the number does not disappear because you decline to answer it. It just moves elsewhere.

An example I checked myself on 9 August 2026. The Swiss comparison portal ofri.ch publishes an analysis of 155 quoted prices for the job “garden maintenance”, as of 17 September 2025: low CHF 426, average CHF 740, high CHF 1,300. Anyone searching in Switzerland for garden maintenance costs finds, on that same day, almost nothing but advice and comparison portals in the leading results. Exactly one actual landscaping business appeared among the top hits, in ninth place.

It gets starker with kitchens. The same platform puts “install a kitchen” at CHF 900 to 3,150, based on 93 quoted prices. That is the installation, not the kitchen. Someone who reads that figure and then contacts a joinery arrives with an expectation that is off by an order of magnitude. You are the one who then has that conversation.

None of this is a reproach to the portals. They are filling a gap. It is an argument for naming and framing the number yourself, rather than leaving it to someone who does not know your business.

In closing

The duty binds only those listed in Art. 10 para. 1 PDO. Everyone else decides for themselves, and for most trade businesses an explained range beats silence. You can check your own position in three places: the ordinance text SR 942.211 on Fedlex for the binding list, currently in the version dated 1 January 2025, SECO’s leaflets for your trade, and the Swiss consumer protection guide for the short version. Enforcement sits with the cantons.

What a breach costs is not in the ordinance itself, it is in unfair competition law. Under Art. 24 UCA, anyone who intentionally breaches the price disclosure rules is fined up to CHF 20,000; if the breach is negligent, the penalty is a fine as well. I am not writing this to apply pressure, but because the question comes up regularly in conversations and few people know the answer.

I do not sell legal advice. What I do is the implementation on the website: a price list that stays readable on a phone, ranges that are explained rather than left bare, and booking flows where the price sits where the client expects it. If you are unsure whether your site meets that, write to me through the contact form. I reply within one working day (Mon to Fri).