Looking up a GEAK: why you will not find one by address
Short answer: you cannot look up someone else's building energy certificate. The national database is not public by regulation, the certificate search needs the full certificate number rather than an address, and exactly one canton — Lucerne — publishes a per-building register. This page explains the rule behind that, cites a source for every claim, and shows which energy facts an alpflo brief does carry for any Swiss address.
This page explains the access rules of a register. It is not energy, legal or tax advice. For an assessment of your building, engage a certified GEAK expert.
Why this search almost always comes up empty
Before a purchase, the first thing people look for is the energy certificate — and they find nothing. That is not a data gap but a deliberate rule: the GEAK belongs to the owner, not to the public. Knowing that stops the search and points you at the one place that can answer.
The national database is deliberately not public
Every issued GEAK is recorded centrally. But section 9 of the Verein GEAK usage regulations, in the version of 1 January 2026, describes that collection expressly as a central, non-public database and enumerate the permitted recipients exhaustively — among them the owner, the competent authorities and the certified experts. Tenants and otherwise interested third parties have, under the same regulations, no right of inspection. Nothing is missing an interface here: the disclosure is regulated, and withheld.
Source: GEAK usage regulations, 1 Jan 2026 (geak.ch, German) · Glossary: GEAK / CECB
What the certificate search does — and does not do
A public search does exist, but it answers a different question. The GEAK certificate search verifies a certificate you already hold: it requires the full certificate number including the version suffix and returns a handful of fields. There is no search by address, no search by the federal building identifier (EGID) and no bulk extract. With only an address you get nowhere.
Mandatory does not mean published
Several cantons require an energy certificate. Vaud has required one since 2017 on the sale of an existing residential building and on replacing a heating system with a fossil-fuelled one; Fribourg and Jura require one on transfer too, and Neuchâtel and Valais on heating replacement. None of those cantons publishes the resulting register. An obligation therefore produces certificates but no public lookup — as a buyer you receive the certificate from the seller, not from a database.
Lucerne is the one published exception
One canton keeps a genuine public per-building register: Lucerne. Its dataset of public building energy certificates contains only certificates issued from 1 January 2019 onwards and released for publication by the owner — roughly 5,300 buildings. Jura additionally publishes a list of 91 buildings, every one of them cantonal or communal property. Those two published datasets are the only ones alpflo can query at all, and only the Lucerne one covers private building stock. Every other canton publishes nothing (survey of 3 August 2026).
Source: GEAK public register (Canton of Lucerne), opendata.swiss
How small that slice is
Verein GEAK reports roughly 207,100 issued certificates as at 31 December 2025. Publicly available are the ~5,400 from Lucerne and Jura, about 2.6 per cent. Against Switzerland's roughly 1.8 million existing residential buildings, a brief therefore carries an energy class for only a fraction of addresses. That is why our own sample brief shows this row in the not-resolvable state rather than with a rating.
Source: GEAK statistics (geak.ch, German) · Sample brief: what the GEAK row really looks like
As the owner, you can obtain your own certificate
If it is your own building, the route is open. The usage regulations list the owner among the permitted recipients; the association's office releases an existing certificate against proof of ownership, normally a land-register extract. If none exists yet, a certified GEAK expert draws one up, and many cantons subsidise that.
Source: GEAK usage regulations, 1 Jan 2026 (geak.ch, German) · Guide: reading and ordering a land-register extract
What an alpflo brief shows instead, for any address
Outside Lucerne we cannot supply an energy class — so we claim none. What a brief does carry for every Swiss address: the heat generator and energy source recorded in the Federal Register of Buildings and Dwellings for both heating and hot water, each with the as-of date of the register entry, plus the year built, the building volume and the modelled roof solar potential. Those are reported or modelled figures, not measured efficiency — and the brief says so on the row.
Source: Federal Register of Buildings and Dwellings (FSO) · Guide: a register value is not the truth
The four honesty states
Every field in an alpflo brief carries exactly one of these states — outside Lucerne the GEAK reads not resolvable, never none recorded.
Confirmed in an official Swiss register. Direct source.
Register queried; nothing on this parcel. The absence is documented.
Derived from a model or an API: real, but not directly from the register. Please verify.
Hit an edge case. Stated honestly at the boundary, never silently discarded.
Common questions about looking up a GEAK
Can I look up the GEAK for any address?
No. Outside the canton of Lucerne there is no public per-building register, and the national database is not public under the usage regulations.
I have a certificate number — what can I do with it?
You can check in the GEAK certificate search whether the certificate is valid. The search works only with the full number; by address you will find nothing.
A GEAK is mandatory in my canton. Does that make it public?
No. An obligation produces certificates, not a public register. Vaud, Fribourg, Jura, Neuchâtel and Valais impose one — none of them publishes the register.
Does no GEAK mean a poor building?
No. It usually means nobody commissioned one, or the canton publishes nothing. alpflo reports that as not resolvable rather than estimating a class.
Start with the public sample brief — with the GEAK row exactly as it appears in 24 cantons, no signup. Then create your own brief for a Swiss address in the app.
No subscription · 49 CHF per brief · the sample brief stays free.