What is the best tool for logging my RAV job-search efforts?

The tools compared directly

As of 4 September 2026. Every figure for another tool comes from that tool's own site; "n/s" means it was not readable there — not that the feature is missing. Our row comes from the code and from walking the live flow.

Recording and submitting are two different acts

Most comparisons of this topic go wrong in the same place: they treat the monthly proof as a tidiness problem that a better app solves. It is an administrative act with a deadline. You may record efforts anywhere you like. You may submit them in exactly two places, and the clock runs to the 5th day of the following month.

So a tool is worth what it saves you at the moment of transfer, and that depends on how close its fields sit to the official ones. Per application the form wants: date, company with address, contact person with phone number, job title, whether the RAV assigned you the vacancy, the Pensum (full-time, or part-time as a percentage), how you applied (by letter or electronically, in person, by phone) and the result — still open, interview, hired, or rejected with a reason. A three-column tracker covers maybe half of that.

Two obligations are routinely missed. The duty to search begins before unemployment does — the form names the notice period and fixed-term contracts explicitly. And the paperwork itself is part of the duty: copies of applications and rejection letters must be kept and produced on request. A tool that only counts rows meets half the requirement; one that keeps the documents meets more. Each entry below therefore carries the same four things in the same order — what it is, what it costs, who it suits, and where it stops.

Job-Room

What it is: the «Arbeitsbemühungen» eService on job-room.ch, the platform of the Swiss public employment service. You record as you go, close the month and press submit; the proof then sits with your RAV, with no paper, no email and no postmark. If the advert is on Job-Room itself, one action carries its details straight into the proof.

What it costs: nothing. The eService is part of the unemployment insurance you have been paying contributions into.

Who it suits: anyone already registered with an RAV who holds an AGOV login, an AHV number and the eight-digit Personennummer. If you have those three, record here and nowhere else — a line created inside the official channel never has to be transferred anywhere.

Where it stops: no registration, no access — and the first weeks of a Swiss job search often happen before registration. Backdating is capped at six months, future dating at five days, and submission cannot be undone. It is also not an application manager: no reminders, no stages from saved to offer, no place to store your dossier. Add the language problem above: with the interface in English, this specific eService still shows German.

The official form «Nachweis der persönlichen Arbeitsbemühungen»

What it is: the paper original, unchanged since the September 2019 edition. Two pages, 14 application rows, roughly 200 fillable fields in the PDF version, an attachments line and the insured person's signature on the back. Underneath sit the legal consequences in plain words, including suspension of benefit entitlement for up to 60 days where efforts are judged insufficient.

What it costs: nothing. Download, fill in on the computer, print, sign.

Who it suits: anyone without Job-Room access yet, anyone whose adviser asks for the form specifically, and anyone who would rather hand the office a signed sheet than a click. Zurich names four routes for handing it in — online, by email to your adviser, by post, or in person.

Where it stops: you type every line yourself, every month, and nothing reminds you of the 5th. And it does not exist in English. If English is your working language, you will be filling in a German, French or Italian government form — which is a good argument for keeping your own records in a tool that speaks your language and translating once, deliberately, rather than every month under time pressure.

SwissJobs.app

What it is: a Swiss job search with an application overview in four stages — saved, applied, interview, offer. Anything you save from the job feed is already there with company, role, link and date; anything you applied to elsewhere gets a manual entry. The interface runs in German, French, Italian and English, which matters here because the official form does not.

What it costs: the overview is free and needs only an email address, no card. The application tools next to it — a CV per advert, a match check against a specific posting, a motivation letter — cost CHF 15 a month or CHF 95 a year, with seven days free.

Who it suits: people applying to Swiss adverts who do not want to write the same details twice. Because the overview sits inside the job search, half the line is filled the moment you save an advert, and the company name and job title arrive in the spelling the office will later see. It is also the only tool here that holds the advert and the dossier in one place, which is what the keep-your-paperwork obligation actually asks for.

Where it stops, stated plainly: we submit nothing to the RAV and we do not produce the official proof. There is no PDF export of the monthly proof today and no auto-fill of Job-Room. At month end you copy the lines into the eService or the form yourself. If removing exactly that copying step is what you want, Easy JobRoom does it and we do not. If you want no account at all, Awaso is the better answer.

Easy JobRoom

What it is: a Swiss add-on from developer Farid Rehila — a browser extension for Chrome, Edge and Firefox plus apps for iOS and Android. It imports applications from LinkedIn, Indeed, jobup.ch and jobs.ch, groups them by month, and the extension fills in the Job-Room proof. Its own claim is specific enough to quote: fill in your twelve Job Room proofs in two minutes, one click and done.

What it costs: free for six applications and three auto-fills, then CHF 7 a month, CHF 15 for three months or CHF 25 for six — a little over CHF 4 a month on the six-month plan. It is the only tool on this list you can pay for at all.

Who it suits: people sending double-digit numbers of applications a month who experience the retyping, not the searching, as the real burden. If you already search on LinkedIn and Indeed rather than Swiss boards, this saves the most.

Where it stops: it is explicitly not official. The provider writes that Easy Job Room «is an independent service — not affiliated with the RAV or Swiss unemployment insurance», and nothing entered in the app reaches the authorities by itself; submitting stays your job. In the Swiss App Store on 28 August 2026 it stands at 4.2 out of 5 from 27 ratings, version 2.5.0 released 5 August 2026, iOS 15.1 or newer, 97.9 MB. Worth noting for an English-speaking reader: the store listing declares English as its only language, while the website runs in four.

Awaso

What it is: a private Swiss information portal for jobseekers with a job-search-efforts tracker attached. Date, company and type of contact per entry, a monthly target preset to ten, and a button that saves the proof as a PDF before the 5th of the following month.

What it costs: nothing. The site advertises «100 % kostenlos» and «Ohne Konto» — free, no account. Only CV templates are paid, from CHF 10.

Who it suits: anyone who wants neither an account nor an app but does want a clean, signable sheet at month end. It is the shortest path from «I applied» to a piece of paper.

Where it stops: data lives «ausschliesslich lokal in Ihrem Browser». That is privacy-friendly and simultaneously the weakness — no second device, no phone alongside the laptop, and clearing browser storage loses the month. Its fields are narrower than the official form's; contact person and Pensum are missing. And it is German-only, so it does not serve the Romandie, Ticino, or you if German is not a language you work in.

jobs.ch

What it is: not an RAV feature but status tracking inside your own jobs.ch account. Under «Meine Bewerbungen» each application sent through jobs.ch gets a status — in conversation, rejected, or offer received — and you can change it at any time.

What it costs: nothing; a jobs.ch account is enough.

Who it suits: people who in practice apply almost exclusively through jobs.ch and want to see where things stand without opening another tool.

Where it stops: it records only what passes through jobs.ch. Direct applications on an employer's own site, phone enquiries and speculative applications never appear — and those count towards your monthly total too. There is no export, no field for contact person, Pensum or reason for rejection, and no deadline reminder. Useful as a memory aid, too narrow on its own as the basis for the proof.

A spreadsheet

What it is: Excel, Google Sheets or LibreOffice Calc, one row per application. Set the header row once to match the official form's columns exactly and month-end becomes mechanical copying rather than archaeology.

What it costs: LibreOffice Calc and Google Sheets nothing, Excel via a Microsoft 365 subscription. The free option is sufficient for this.

Who it suits: anyone who genuinely wants to own the data, works offline, or has a situation no product anticipates — interim earnings, two part-time roles at once, applications across two language regions. A spreadsheet bends to any special case; an app does not.

Where it stops: nothing reminds you, nothing imports, nothing fills anything in. A spreadsheet is exactly as good as your discipline, and it is the reason so many monthly proofs get reconstructed from memory on the 4th. In exchange it is yours forever and still works when a provider shuts down.

Who should pick which

Registered with an RAV and holding Job-Room access: record there, continuously, on the day you apply. A line created directly in the official channel never has to be transferred, and that is the only real time saving on this entire list. Applying mainly to Swiss adverts and wanting a collection point that pre-fills the line: SwissJobs.app, free. Wanting the Job-Room form filled in automatically and willing to pay for it: Easy JobRoom. Wanting neither account nor app but a PDF: Awaso, German only. Facing special cases no tool models: a spreadsheet.

Not on the list but findable: MatchMyCareer advertises an RAV companion in four languages but states on its own pricing page that it is «currently in a limited alpha phase» and publishes no prices. A tool without a public price or open access cannot honestly be ranked against the others — it is named here so you know why it is missing.

And the sentence that overrides everything else: no tool on this list replaces submission. Efforts arriving after the 5th day of the following month cannot be taken into account unless there is an excusable reason, and someone judged not to have made sufficient efforts to find suitable work can be suspended from benefit entitlement for up to 60 days depending on fault. An app that reminds you is worth a great deal. An app that leaves you feeling the job is done is dangerous.