Househeating Pulse
EU Heat-Pump Market Intelligence

Comparison · 9 min read · Updated 2026-06-27

2026 Heat-Pump Market Index: Austria vs Switzerland on brands, prices and efficiency

A side-by-side look at two Alpine markets using EPREL data: which brands dominate, how listed prices compare, and whether one country is offering better efficiency for the money in 2026.

Austria vs Switzerland: the 2026 market snapshot at a glance

Austria and Switzerland sit in similar Alpine heating conditions, but the research corpus only provides country-level climate and tariff data for those markets, plus Europe-wide EPREL market aggregates. That means the registry-based side-by-side can be done for climate and household energy economics, but not for Austria-specific versus Switzerland-specific EPREL catalog size, brand concentration, prices, SCOP, type mix or refrigerant mix. The corpus simply does not include country-filtered EPREL listings for AT and CH.

What can be stated cleanly is the backdrop. Across the full indexed EPREL heat-pump universe, Househeating Pulse counts 60,989 listed models from 777 manufacturers as of 2026-06-27 (market_index_snapshot / Househeating Pulse · Market Index v1, computed from EPREL Public API). The average SCOP across that universe is 4.55, with average declared power of 9.3 kW and average outdoor noise of 61.3 dB (market_index_snapshot / Househeating Pulse · Market Index v1, computed from EPREL Public API). The catalog is led by air-to-water heat pumps, which account for 30,452 models, ahead of air-to-air heat pumps at 21,065 and heat-pump water heaters at 9,228 (market_index_snapshot / Househeating Pulse · Market Index v1, computed from EPREL Public API).

For the two countries themselves, Austria records 3,309.19 annual heating degree days and a mean January temperature of -1.64°C, while Switzerland records 3,593.39 annual heating degree days and a mean January temperature of -0.83°C (country_profile / Eurostat tariffs (band DC/D2 latest); NASA POWER 30y normal; EEA grid CO₂; subsidies captured manually from official programme pages). Switzerland is therefore the slightly colder market on annual heating demand, but not in January mean temperature alone according to this dataset (country_profile / Eurostat tariffs (band DC/D2 latest); NASA POWER 30y normal; EEA grid CO₂; subsidies captured manually from official programme pages).

That matters for installer context, but the core market-comparison questions on catalog breadth and value cannot be fully answered without country-sliced EPREL data. Readers wanting the broadest live catalog view can use the full heat-pump catalog, the 32-country comparison dashboard and the platform market index.

Brand concentration: who controls the Alpine catalogue?

The corpus does not contain Austria-only or Switzerland-only brand-share tables, so it does not record which brands dominate each national catalog. Any country ranking here would be fabricated, and should be avoided.

What the EPREL-wide market does show is a highly concentrated upper tier. Daikin Europe N.V. holds 24.05% of all indexed models with 14,668 listings (brand_share / EPREL Public API · brand-share aggregation). Mitsubishi Electric Europe B.V. follows at 9.14% with 5,575 models, and JOHNSON CONTROLS HITACHI AIR CONDITIONING EUROPE SAS, SUCURSAL EN ESPAÑA takes 8.54% with 5,207 (brand_share / EPREL Public API · brand-share aggregation). Together, those top three account for 41.73% of all indexed models (brand_share / EPREL Public API · brand-share aggregation).

The next group is materially smaller: Bosch Thermotechnik GmbH at 5.91% and 3,602 models, Ariston SpA at 4.29% and 2,618, and ATLANTIC SOC FRANCAISE DEVELOP THERMIQUE at 2.49% and 1,516 (brand_share / EPREL Public API · brand-share aggregation). Vaillant GmbH adds 1.96% and 1,195 models, while BDR Thermea Group B.V. contributes 1.52% and 925 (brand_share / EPREL Public API · brand-share aggregation).

That ranking is useful as a proxy for the brands most likely to appear in both Alpine markets, but it is not evidence of Austrian or Swiss concentration specifically. The country comparison requested here would need country-filtered brand listings from EPREL or a derived national cut in the corpus. Those data are absent. For broader manufacturer navigation, the brand index and leaderboards hub are the right internal reference points.

Prices: which market looks cheaper in EPREL-listed models?

The registry does not record Austria-versus-Switzerland price distributions in the supplied corpus. No median price, average listed price proxy, or country-level price ranking is available here.

That means the article cannot support the claim implied in the editorial angle — whether Switzerland’s smaller non-EU catalog buys lower prices, or whether Austria offers better value for money on listed equipment — because neither a Swiss catalog price series nor an Austrian one is present in the JSON block. The only defensible statement is that this comparison cannot be quantified from the supplied dataset.

This is also a reminder that EPREL itself is a product registry, not a retail pricing database. Product declarations can be inspected through the EU EPREL portal, but country-level price benchmarking needs a separate source or a price-proxy method that is explicitly captured in the corpus. It is not.

Efficiency trade-offs by type: where the SCOP advantage sits

Again, the corpus does not provide Austria-only and Switzerland-only average SCOP values, so it does not allow a numeric answer to which country has the higher average SCOP or by how much. Nor does it provide national type mix shares. Those two headline questions remain unanswered by the available data.

The Europe-wide type picture is still informative because it shows where efficiency tends to sit in the catalog. Across EPREL, water-to-water heat pumps have the highest average SCOP at 6.15 across 31 models (type_efficiency / EPREL Public API · type aggregation). Ground-source heat pumps average 4.77 across 213 models, while air-to-water heat pumps average 4.54 across 30,452 models (type_efficiency / EPREL Public API · type aggregation).

Two cautions matter for buyers and journalists. First, the highest-SCOP category is also tiny: 31 water-to-water models out of 60,989 total listings, or roughly 0.05% of the indexed universe if calculated from the raw counts (type_efficiency / EPREL Public API · type aggregation; market_index_snapshot / Househeating Pulse · Market Index v1, computed from EPREL Public API). Second, SCOP is not available in this dataset for air-to-air heat pumps or heat-pump water heaters, where the field is null in the type aggregation (type_efficiency / EPREL Public API · type aggregation). So any cross-type “average SCOP” statement is only partial.

If an Austrian or Swiss market were unusually skewed toward ground-source or water-source units, that could change the country average materially. But the corpus does not reveal whether that skew exists. Readers looking for absolute best-performing models rather than country averages should use the top SCOP leaderboard, plus the narrower air-to-water SCOP ranking and ground-source SCOP ranking.

Refrigerants and the efficiency stack: R290, R32 and the model mix

The refrigerant comparison has the same limitation: the corpus does not split refrigerant shares by Austria and Switzerland. It therefore cannot answer how much of each national market is dominated by R290 heat pumps versus R32 units, nor whether one country’s refrigerant mix aligns with higher average SCOP.

At the EPREL-wide level, however, the picture is unambiguous. Declared R32 refrigerant models total 13,935 listings (market_index_snapshot / Househeating Pulse · Market Index v1, computed from EPREL Public API). Declared R290 totals 537, with another 2 listed as R290A and 1 as R290a, for 540 propane-coded entries in all if those code variants are combined from the raw declaration table (refrigerant_universe / IPCC AR6 GWP table; EU Reg. 2024/573 phase-out schedule; EPREL declared codes). Standardised natural-refrigerant share across the indexed market is 3.27% (market_index_snapshot / Househeating Pulse · Market Index v1, computed from EPREL Public API).

That leaves R32 as the dominant declared refrigerant by volume in the observable catalog, while propane remains a small minority in absolute listing terms (market_index_snapshot / Househeating Pulse · Market Index v1, computed from EPREL Public API; refrigerant_universe / IPCC AR6 GWP table; EU Reg. 2024/573 phase-out schedule; EPREL declared codes). The reference table classifies R290 as a natural hydrocarbon with GWP 0, and R32 as an HFC with GWP 771 (refrigerant_universe / IPCC AR6 GWP table; EU Reg. 2024/573 phase-out schedule; EPREL declared codes). R410A, still present in 1,896 declared listings plus code variants, carries a GWP of 1,924 in the reference table (refrigerant_universe / IPCC AR6 GWP table; EU Reg. 2024/573 phase-out schedule; EPREL declared codes).

What cannot be shown from the corpus is any direct refrigerant-to-efficiency relationship. There is no SCOP-by-refrigerant table here. So while refrigerant choice may correlate with certain product generations or system architectures, the dataset does not support a claim that R290 listings are more efficient than R32 listings in Austria, Switzerland, or EPREL overall. For nomenclature and phase-out context, the internal refrigerants reference and the EU F-gas regulation are the relevant sources.

What the tariff environment means for running-cost competitiveness

This is the one Alpine comparison the corpus can answer directly for Austria, but only partially for Switzerland.

For Austria, household electricity is listed at €0.3272/kWh and gas at €0.1221/kWh (country_profile / Eurostat tariffs (band DC/D2 latest); NASA POWER 30y normal; EEA grid CO₂; subsidies captured manually from official programme pages). That gives an electricity-to-gas tariff ratio of 2.68 when dividing 0.3272 by 0.1221 (country_profile / Eurostat tariffs (band DC/D2 latest); NASA POWER 30y normal; EEA grid CO₂; subsidies captured manually from official programme pages). Against the break-even threshold cited in the brief, Austria sits below ~3.7, meaning the raw tariff environment is compatible with heat pumps beating gas on running cost, all else equal.

For Switzerland, both electricity and gas prices are null in the corpus (country_profile / Eurostat tariffs (band DC/D2 latest); NASA POWER 30y normal; EEA grid CO₂; subsidies captured manually from official programme pages). So the current household electricity-to-gas tariff ratio cannot be calculated from this dataset, and no claim should be made about whether Switzerland is above or below the ~3.7 threshold.

There is one additional cross-border signal worth noting. Switzerland’s grid intensity is 28.0 gCO₂/kWh, versus 89.0 gCO₂/kWh in Austria (country_profile / Eurostat tariffs (band DC/D2 latest); NASA POWER 30y normal; EEA grid CO₂; subsidies captured manually from official programme pages). That says nothing about prices, but it does indicate a cleaner electricity backdrop in Switzerland for electric heating operation.

Austria also has a recorded national support scheme in the corpus: “Raus aus Öl” with a maximum amount of €23,000 and a reimbursement cap of 75% of cost (country_profile / Eurostat tariffs (band DC/D2 latest); NASA POWER 30y normal; EEA grid CO₂; subsidies captured manually from official programme pages). Switzerland has no subsidy entries captured in this specific dataset snapshot (country_profile / Eurostat tariffs (band DC/D2 latest); NASA POWER 30y normal; EEA grid CO₂; subsidies captured manually from official programme pages). Readers comparing actual household economics should combine tariffs with grants in the payback calculator, subsidy calculator and Austria subsidies page.

The narrow answer to the running-cost question, then, is straightforward: Austria’s ratio is 2.68 and below the ~3.7 threshold (country_profile / Eurostat tariffs (band DC/D2 latest); NASA POWER 30y normal; EEA grid CO₂; subsidies captured manually from official programme pages). Switzerland’s ratio cannot be determined from the supplied corpus.

Sources

  • Househeating Pulse · Market Index v1, computed from EPREL Public API — snapshot 2026-06-27
  • EPREL Public API · brand-share aggregation — snapshot 2026-06-27
  • EPREL Public API · type aggregation — snapshot 2026-06-27
  • IPCC AR6 GWP table; EU Reg. 2024/573 phase-out schedule; EPREL declared codes — snapshot 2026-06-27
  • Eurostat tariffs (band DC/D2 latest); NASA POWER 30y normal; EEA grid CO₂; subsidies captured manually from official programme pages — Austria profile snapshot 2026-06-27
  • Eurostat tariffs (band DC/D2 latest); NASA POWER 30y normal; EEA grid CO₂; subsidies captured manually from official programme pages — Switzerland profile snapshot 2026-06-27

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