Basic Check instead of Multicheck Gewerbe: what changes from May 2026

One sentence on the provider’s own site is still missing from most advice pages in the Swiss index: the Multicheck Gewerbe is being discontinued for the 2026/2027 test period and replaced by the Basic Check. The change takes effect from May 2026. For part of the apprenticeship applications this alters which certificate is available at all. For another part nothing changes, although the opposite is often written online. This article separates the two.

First, what these tests are for

In Switzerland most young people leave lower secondary school at about 15 or 16 and apply for a Lehre, an apprenticeship: three or four years leading to the federal EFZ qualification, or two years leading to the EBA. The apprentice is employed and paid by a company, the Lehrbetrieb, and spends one or two days a week at a vocational school. This is the route most Swiss school leavers take, and it is not a fallback for weaker pupils. It leads to protected professions, it can be combined with the Berufsmaturität, and that opens the universities of applied sciences and, through the Passerelle exam, the regular universities.

Getting an apprenticeship works like getting a job. The young person writes applications to companies, is invited to a Schnupperlehre, a taster placement of a few days, and is chosen or not chosen. Many companies want an aptitude test certificate alongside the school report. That is what the Multicheck and the Basic Check are: commercial products, bought by the applicant, sat at a test centre under supervision, with an identity check and a certificate in one person’s name. No education authority sets them and no school marks them.

Two consequences follow, and both matter below. Because the test is a product and not an exam, the provider decides its versions, its prices and when a version is taken off the market. And because education in Switzerland is a cantonal matter, with 26 cantons and no national school system, what a school says about these tests differs from one canton to the next, while the tests themselves are the same everywhere.

What exactly is being discontinued, and what expressly is not

One single version is being replaced: the Multicheck Gewerbe, the version for the skilled trades and crafts. The other versions stay. The position most often reported wrongly concerns the technical Multicheck, which the provider lists under the name Multicheck TEK. That one is being developed further, not replaced. Anyone aiming at a technical apprenticeship therefore plans on unchanged.

The overview page at gateway.one currently shows eight bookable versions: Attest (for the two-year EBA apprenticeship), Detailhandel und Service (retail and service), Gesundheit und Soziales (health and social care), ICT, Media und Design, Pharma und Chemie (pharmaceuticals and chemistry), TEK (technical trades) and Wirtschaft und Administration (business and administration). The German names are kept here because those are the names on the booking page. The Gewerbe version can no longer be selected there, and the former detail page for it returns a 404 error. Which professions it covered in detail can therefore no longer be looked up at the provider. We do not carry a second-hand list of them here.

basic-check.ch leads to gateway.one: it is the same provider

Anyone opening basic-check.ch arrives at gateway.one through a permanent redirect. Basic Check and Multicheck therefore come from the same company, gateway solutions ag. That appears on almost no ranking advice page, and yet it explains several things at once: why both procedures use the same test period from the end of May to the end of May, why both are booked through the same user account, and why replacing the Gewerbe version works as smoothly as it does. This is not a change of provider but a change of product inside the same house.

For you as an applicant that means, in practice, no second account, no second booking platform and no different test centre operator.

What the Basic Check costs and how long it takes

The Basic Check costs CHF 100. That is the final amount payable in Swiss francs, with no further charges. The provider gives the duration as roughly 2.5 to 3.5 hours, depending on the modules chosen. Anyone who sits only the core module finishes sooner than someone who adds three optional modules.

On price, the same reflex pays off as with the Multicheck: many training companies hand out vouchers that cover the full amount, and individual municipalities and cantons offer financial support. Ask first at the company you want to apply to and at the regional careers guidance service, the Berufsberatung, before paying yourself. Every canton runs one.

Core module and optional modules

Choosing the modules is the real novelty compared with the Multicheck, which is tied to an occupational field. Instead of booking a ready-made version, you assemble the profile yourself. Someone heading in a direction where French counts adds the language module. Someone aiming at a craft apprenticeship picks the technical one.

From which class the Basic Check is intended

The provider pitches the content at the curriculum as it stands at the end of the 8. Klasse, in the HarmoS count the end of the tenth school year. The 8. Klasse is the second-to-last year of compulsory lower secondary school, and pupils in it are roughly 14. The test is taken from that year onwards. Sitting it earlier means meeting material that has not been taught yet, and that shows up in the result without saying anything about the person. The test period runs from the end of May to the end of May the following year. One repeat is possible within a cycle.

Basic Check and Multicheck side by side

The most important difference between the Basic Check and the Multicheck is not the price but the cut: one is occupation-neutral and lets you choose the modules, the other is fixed to an occupational field.

What occupation-neutral means in practice

Occupation-neutral does not mean empty of content. It means the questions are not cut to one occupational field but to the school-level and cognitive groundwork used across many professions. The advantage falls to everyone whose choice of profession is not yet settled. With the Multicheck you had to decide on an occupational field before booking, and anyone who changed direction afterwards faced a second test and a second bill.

The drawback is the flip side of the same thing. An occupation-neutral certificate tells a company less about how someone copes with the typical demands of that particular profession. What that means for an application is decided in the end by the company, not by the test provider. So ask specifically which certificate is expected.

Which statements are not currently secure

Two points circulate online that we deliberately leave open here. First, there is talk of Basic Check versions called “Standard” and “Praxis”. That split does not appear on the provider’s current page, which describes the model of a core module plus optional modules. We follow the provider’s page and date the position: 13 September 2026.

Second, there is no publicly available information on how Basic Check results are reported on a scale and how a value relates to an earlier Multicheck result. As long as the provider publishes nothing on this, no conversion key can be given, and pages that quote one did not get it from the source.

What to do, depending on when you apply

How booking works

The Basic Check is booked through the same platform as the Multicheck, that is, through a user account at gateway.one. The process has four steps: create an account, assemble the modules, choose a test centre and a date, pay or redeem a voucher code. The certificate appears later in the same account for download.

Two things are worth settling before you click “book”. First the voucher code: if one exists, it is entered during booking and is not credited afterwards. Second the choice of modules, because it determines both the length of the test and what ends up being reported on the certificate. For the exact cancellation and rebooking terms of the Basic Check, the booking confirmation is what counts. With the Multicheck a deadline of 72 hours before the appointment applies; whether it is identical for the Basic Check does not emerge from the publicly available information.

Three questions to ask the training company before booking

The change in May 2026 affects not only applicants but companies too, and not every company has updated its job adverts. If one still says “Multicheck Gewerbe”, that is not bad faith, it is last year’s text. A short phone call settles three points at once.

First: which certificate do you expect from applicants for the apprenticeship year I am aiming at? Second: is there a voucher code, and how do I get one? Third: which optional modules make sense for this profession, or is the core module enough? The third question is worth asking above all because it is the only one where an occupation-neutral test leaves you a real choice. A company that trains a craft will name the technical module, a company with customer contact more likely the language modules.

What does not change cognitively

The change affects the cut and the brand, not the demand. A core module with German, mathematics and cognitive skills tests the same groundwork as the school-material part of the Multicheck: how quickly a task is grasped, how many intermediate steps stay in the head at once, and how reliably that holds up across two hours. The part explicitly labelled cognitive skills uses item formats that come very close to a matrix test: a pattern, a rule hidden in it, a new case to which the rule has to be applied. How items like that are built is explained in understanding matrix reasoning.

Anyone preparing is therefore not preparing for a brand but for an item format and for school material. What works and what does not is set out in preparing for the Multicheck. All the procedures placed side by side are in the overview of aptitude tests for an apprenticeship.

If you want to know how this type of question feels before you sit in a test centre, our free test takes 25 minutes. It gives an orientation value, not an aptitude certificate, and it replaces none of the tests described here.