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 (120+ states, from Germany to Brazil to China)? One apostille from the Swiss chancellery and you are done. Not a party (UAE, Qatar, Vietnam, Thailand…)? The full consular chain applies.
One authority, one certificate, standard 1–2 business days in Switzerland, CHF 140 + VAT with us (CHF 120 from the second document). 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.