People lose weeks to this single confusion. The rule fits in one sentence: Hague member → apostille; non-member → consular chain. Everything else follows from it.
Look up the destination country. Party to the Hague Apostille Convention (130 States Parties, from Germany to Brazil to China)? One apostille from the Swiss chancellery and you are done. Not a party (UAE, Qatar, Egypt, Thailand…)? The full consular chain applies.
One authority, one certificate, standard 1–2 business days in Switzerland, CHF 140 + VAT with us (CHF 120 per document from two documents). No embassy is ever involved.
Chancellery legalization, federal over-legalization where required, then the destination’s embassy in Switzerland — each stamp building on the previous. Count 7–14 extra days and embassy fees that vary by country; we quote them flat, in writing, first.
The apostille is always affixed in the country that ISSUED the document — never at the destination, never by an embassy. A Swiss document for Spain is apostilled in Switzerland; a Spanish document for Switzerland, in Spain. Getting this backwards is the single most common cause of lost weeks.