CV checks in German, French and Italian — which tools?

What each tool can do — checked 4 September 2026

Every cell comes from the vendor’s own page, from its sitemap, or from a run we made on 4 September 2026. "Not stated" means the vendor’s page does not say — never a guessed No. RadarJob and arbeit.swiss are described below rather than tabulated: one is French-only, the other is a checklist rather than a checker.

What a check costs

Prices from each vendor’s own pricing page, read 3 and 4 September 2026. Resume Worded’s pricing page answered 404 in a real browser too, so no figure is printed for it.

The trap is not your CV — it is the advert

People arriving in Switzerland usually worry about the wrong half. An English CV is normal here, especially in Zurich, Zug, Basel and Geneva. The advert is the part that switches language on you: in our index 54.5 per cent of Zurich postings are in English and 43.6 per cent in German, while in Geneva it is 57.4 per cent English against 40.9 per cent French.

Move one canton outward and the balance flips. Outside the French- and Italian-speaking regions, 55.2 per cent of postings are in German and 35 per cent in English. So the same job hunt sends you at a German advert on Monday and an English one on Wednesday — and an English-only checker can only help on Wednesday.

That is why the language question is not about your comfort. It is about whether the tool can compare your CV against the text of the job you actually want. If it cannot read the advert, the number it gives you is about your document in the abstract, not about your chances at that employer.

1. SwissJobs.app — a check against one specific advert, in four languages

What it is: upload your CV or paste it, then pick a posting from our Swiss job index or paste an advert. You get seven sub-scores (ATS and keyword match, hard skills, soft skills, motivation, environment fit, unique selling point, outcomes), an overall figure, plus a Swiss section graded on its own: the permit line, the CEFR levels, the photo.

What it costs: the first check needs no account. The free account allows 5 a day and 10 per rolling week, then 7 days of full access, then CHF 15 a month or CHF 95 a year, cancellable monthly.

Who it suits: anyone applying to a Swiss employer with a dossier that is not in English — and anyone applying to a German or French advert with an English CV, which is the case this tool was built for. We ran three anonymous checks today, one German, one French, one Italian: 56, 52 and 55 out of 100, each report written in the language of the page, each naming the permit line, the CEFR levels and the photo separately.

Where it stops: it is the slower route. If you only want to know whether a machine can parse your file, a plain ATS check answers that in thirty seconds. Ours wants the advert — and it scores lower, because it measures against that one job rather than against an average.

2. Jobscan — the most thorough scanner, in one language

What it is: the best known ATS scanner. Resume against job description, a Match Rate, a long list of missing hard skills, plus notes on the employer’s applicant tracking system.

What it costs: a free account with five scans a month; USD 49.95 monthly or USD 89.95 quarterly — about CHF 40 and CHF 73 at the European Central Bank reference rate of 3 September 2026.

Who it suits: English applications, and it is genuinely better than us at pure keyword work. If you are applying to an international employer in Zug or Geneva against an English advert, this is the sharper instrument.

Where it stops: at the language, and the vendor says so. Its support article "Can I use Jobscan in a language other than English?" answers "Currently, Jobscan is only available in English." For a German advert that is not a limitation but the end of the road.

3. Resume Worded — a fast score with an explicit language limit

What it is: one upload, a Relevancy Score, more than thirty individual checks and line-by-line rewriting suggestions.

What it costs: the score is free. We print no subscription price: the pricing page answered 404 in a real browser, and copying a stale figure from someone else’s comparison would be worse than printing nothing.

Who it suits: English CVs, particularly in consulting, pharma and tech, where its bias towards quantified achievement lines matches what those recruiters read.

Where it stops: printed above its own upload box — "English resumes in PDF or DOCX only. Max 2MB file size." That single sentence decides the question for a German, French or Italian dossier before you upload anything.

4. cvswiss.ch ATS check — free, no signup, German and French

What it is: a dedicated page with an upload box for PDF or DOCX that returns a score plus strengths and weak points. The page says "no signup required" and that holds — no email, no account.

What it costs: nothing for the check. The CV builder behind it starts at CHF 15 a month, or CHF 5 for a single CV.

Who it suits: anyone who wants a two-minute verdict on whether a document passes as a Swiss CV. It is Swiss-made and hosts data in Switzerland, which is a real argument for people who care where their dossier sits.

Where it stops: there is no field for a job advert, so it cannot tell you which words from the posting you are missing. And there is no Italian version of this page — the Italian side of the site is CV pages and a blog.

5. careerkit.me — free, no signup, and it takes the advert

What it is: a free tool that gives a CV score on its own and an ATS score when you also paste a job description. Its own FAQ states plainly that it is completely free and needs no signup.

What it costs: nothing for the checker; USD 2.95 a month or USD 129 once for lifetime access above it, with the free plan capped at three PDF exports.

Who it suits: German and French speakers who want a keyword comparison without paying and without an account. The German and French versions are fully localised, not a shell around English text.

Where it stops: its pages never say which language a CV may be in, and we did not test it, so we do not claim either way. Italian is effectively absent, and no Swiss-specific criteria are named.

6. RadarJob Test ATS — French only, and free

What it is: a free ATS test from a Romandie job-alert service. Upload a PDF or paste the text, optionally paste an advert, and it returns a score out of 100 plus the points to fix. Its page states the file stays in your browser.

What it costs: the test is free; the job-radar service around it is CHF 39 a month.

Who it suits: anyone applying in Geneva, Vaud, Neuchâtel, Fribourg or Valais with a French dossier. It is the only checker on this page that is built specifically for the French-speaking market.

Where it stops: French only — there is no German or Italian version — and its wider service watches jobup.ch and jobs.ch rather than offering the check as a standalone product.

7. ChatGPT, Claude and other assistants — the only universal answer on language

What it is: not a checker but a language model. You give it the CV and the advert and it answers what you asked, in any of the four national languages.

What it costs: free tiers exist; you will need an account.

Who it suits: any language the specialised tools skip. In Italian, an assistant plus our check is realistically the whole field.

Where it stops: there is no fixed rubric behind the answer. Two runs on the same document can rank different problems first, because the output follows your prompt rather than a criteria list. Swiss specifics — the permit line, CEFR levels, the photo, Arbeitszeugnisse (the Swiss employer references) — appear only if you ask for them. And your dossier goes to a third party whose data handling you should check before you paste.

8. arbeit.swiss — the free official reference

What it is: not a tool but the ground truth. SECO, the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs, publishes what a Swiss application dossier consists of — in German, French, Italian and English, with the same structure in each version.

What it costs: nothing, and nobody asks for your email.

Who it suits: people who have just arrived and need to know what they are being judged against before they are judged: which documents belong in the dossier, how Arbeitszeugnisse are ordered, how long a CV may be.

Where it stops: a checklist grades nothing. It cannot tell you whether your dossier fits one particular posting. Read it first, then run a check — in that order.

Which one to pick

English CV, English advert, international employer: Jobscan for keyword depth, Resume Worded for phrasing. Both beat us at that narrow job, and both stop working the moment the advert is not in English.

English CV, German or French advert — the commonest situation for people who have just moved here: SwissJobs.app, because the check reads both sides and reports in your language.

Just a quick free number on the document itself: cvswiss.ch or careerkit.me in German and French, RadarJob in French.

An Italian dossier: our check or an assistant. Every other tool on this page either has no Italian check page or no Italian at all.

And whatever you pick, read the arbeit.swiss list once first. Half the findings a checker reports are things the official page told you for free.