SwissJobs.app or CVMaker — which CV builder works for Switzerland?

Feature comparison

As of 4 September 2026. "not stated" means it could not be read on their own site — not "does not exist". Our rows come from the code (lib/stripe/trialConfig.ts) and from walking the live flow, not from marketing copy.

Pricing side by side

As of 4 September 2026. "not stated" means it could not be read on their own site — not "does not exist". Our rows come from the code (lib/stripe/trialConfig.ts) and from walking the live flow, not from marketing copy.

A catalogue built for one country, measured against another

CVMaker’s British site is the largest of its network and it is genuinely well stocked: 485 published pages, 190 occupation CV examples, 120 guidance articles. If you are writing a CV for a job in Manchester, that is a good library, and the sample text in each example is more than most builders give you.

We took the 190 examples, kept the 150 that name an actual profession rather than a format or a life stage, and matched them against the live English-language adverts in our own index — 3 September 2026, apprenticeships and internships excluded, with deliberately generous patterns. They cover 72.8 per cent. That is the best score of any of their four catalogues, and it is worth saying plainly: for an English-language search in Switzerland, their categories mostly land.

The same count shows what a national catalogue is. Thirty-seven of those 150 entries currently match nothing advertised in Switzerland at all — «HGV driver», «exam invigilator», «shelf stacker», «postperson», «GP», «civil service», «early-career teacher». These are British job titles and British institutions. Nobody here advertises for them, because the roles are named differently or the institution does not exist.

Run the same test on their other catalogues and the gap widens fast, because the catalogues are far smaller. Their French example page shows 11 professions and misses 80 per cent of French-language Swiss adverts; the Italian one shows 15 and misses 90 per cent. The Italian subset is small — a few hundred adverts — so treat that figure as a direction, not a measurement.

What a Swiss dossier contains that a CV template does not

This is where the distance matters most for a reader outside Switzerland, because a Swiss application is not a resume with different spelling. It is a dossier, and it is assembled to a local convention that no international builder models.

Four things go in that a British or American template has no field for. Arbeitszeugnisse — written employer references, issued at the end of every job, which Swiss recruiters look for first and which are attached to the application rather than summarised in it. A permit line: if you are not Swiss or an EU/EFTA national already resident, the category you hold or need (B, C, G) belongs in the personal details, because it decides whether an appointment is possible. Language levels stated on the CEFR scale — B2, C1 — rather than «fluent», because that scale is what the advert itself uses. And workload as a Pensum in per cent, since a great many Swiss roles are advertised at 60, 80 or 90 per cent rather than full time.

Two more things differ in the opposite direction. A photograph is conventional here rather than discouraged, which surprises readers arriving from the UK and Germany. And a two-page dossier is the ordinary case here; the one-page rule that British advice repeats is a British rule, not a universal one.

A template cannot supply any of this, because a template is a shape. It is the content model that has to know about it, which is why we build the document from the advert and inside the Swiss convention rather than offering a Swiss-looking layout.

What signing up actually requires — relevant if you are still abroad

A practical point for anyone planning a move: neither tool asks for a Swiss address or an AHV number to open an account. That is not true of every service aimed at this market — some job portals and most benefit-side services do require Swiss registration — so it is worth stating that this particular decision is open to you before you arrive.

What does differ is the currency you are billed in and what you can take away. CVMaker bills in pounds on the British site and euros on the continental ones, and the download is behind the subscription: their own help page states that downloading your document as a PDF requires an upgrade. So the free tier lets you write the whole thing and then stops at the file.

Our stopping point is in a different place, and we checked it today rather than describing it from memory. The editor opens with no account at all — an anonymous request returns a finished Swiss-format document. What needs an account is saving your work and generating a version against a specific advert; both refuse an anonymous request. So: write and look for free, keep and download with a free account, and pay only when you go past the free allowance.

On money over a year, the arithmetic is worth doing before the introductory price expires. CVMaker’s British intro is £2.95 for seven days and then renews at £21.99 a month; twelve months on that plan is about CHF 288 at the reference rate above. A year with us is CHF 95, or CHF 180 if you pay monthly and never take the annual plan. The gap is not a trick of the exchange rate — it is a different price point for a different product.

Where CVMaker is the better answer

If your search crosses borders, CVMaker’s network is a real advantage and we have no answer to it. Twenty-nine country sites means the guidance you read, the sample wording and the market articles are written for the country you are applying in. We cover Switzerland and nothing else. For a frontalier applying in both France and Geneva, or a graduate applying in London and Zurich in the same month, that matters.

If the obstacle is the writing rather than the tool, their paid service — send in what you have, receive a rewritten CV within 24 to 48 hours — is something we do not offer at any price.

And if you want visual variety, a designed template gallery beats what we do. Our design side is 54 combinations counted in the code today: 2 layouts by 3 fonts by 9 accent colours, mixed freely. That is flexible, but they are variations of one Swiss format rather than 54 distinct designs. For a portfolio-adjacent field — graphics, architecture, advertising — a gallery is the right tool and we are not it.

One thing we would push back on, gently, is the headline claim. Their German site promises an 87 per cent increase in your chances of being hired; their French site promises 65 per cent for the same product. Two different numbers for the same claim on two of the same company’s own sites is a reason to treat both as marketing rather than measurement — which is also why every number on this page names where it came from and when we looked.

The short version

Take SwissJobs.app when the adverts you answer are Swiss and you want each one to get its own version, inside the Swiss convention, in German, French, Italian or English, exported as PDF or Word without a watermark.

Choose CVMaker if you are applying in Britain, Germany, the Netherlands or another of its 29 markets, or if you want a person rather than a tool to write the document.

Choose neither, for now, if you have not yet read a Swiss advert end to end. The single most useful hour before either tool is reading five adverts in your field here and noticing what they ask for that a British posting never would — the permit question, the language level, the Pensum. Once you have seen that, the choice between these two answers itself.