Bosch vs Frigidaire dishwashers: an incident-report comparison

What this Bosch vs Frigidaire comparison is based on#

Two collections of incident reports sit behind this page and nothing else does. The first is what was filed with the CPSC SaferProducts database against Bosch dishwashers between 2011 and 2026: 303 reports. The second is the same kind of filing against Frigidaire dishwashers over the same window: 103 reports. These are submissions — from owners, from agencies, from manufacturers — and each has been read for which component it names. No sales figure, warranty claim or service ticket enters the count anywhere.

Why 303 against 103 is not the comparison#

The gap between those two totals is the first thing a reader wants to weigh and the one thing that cannot be weighed here. A corpus grows with the number of machines in the field and with how readily their owners file, and this database records neither. Frigidaire's 103 reports could describe a smaller installed base, a quieter set of owners, or a quieter machine, and nothing in the data separates those three explanations. The totals are therefore context for how firmly each column can be read, not a score to be compared.

What does survive the size gap is the shape of each corpus: which components its own reports gather on. That ranking is internal to one brand, which is why it stays legible even when the two brands have very different amounts of evidence behind them.

Where the two corpora part company#

Read that way, these two are not variations on a theme. Frigidaire's reports gather on the heating element — 45% of the 103 name it, and nothing else in that column comes close, with the control board a distant second at 19%. Bosch's reports gather at the other end of the machine entirely. Wiring or the power cord leads at 29% of 303, the control board sits a close second at 28%, and the heating element is very nearly absent at 1%.

That inversion is the widest measured distance on the page, 44 points on the heating element alone, and it does not stand by itself. Wiring or the power cord runs 25 points the other way, 29% of the Bosch corpus against 4% of the Frigidaire one. The control board is the only component both sets of reports concentrate on at once, and even there the two columns are 9 points apart.

What the rest of the table is worth#

Below those three rows the numbers thin out quickly, and thin numbers deserve to be read as thin. The motor is named in 2% of the Bosch reports and 1% of the Frigidaire ones. The water valve or line runs 1% against 2%. The drain pump or hose runs 0% against 2%. On the Frigidaire side each of those shares rests on one or two filings out of 103, which is precisely why the smallest of them carry the one-report noise marker instead of being presented as differences.

Used as repair planning rather than as a ranking, the two large concentrations are the part worth carrying away. A Frigidaire [dishwasher](/blog/repair-or-replace-dishwasher) that has stopped heating, or produced heat where it should not have, lands squarely where that corpus already sits. A Bosch that is dead at the cord or at the board lands where its own corpus sits. Neither observation says anything about how often either machine reaches that state, because the machines that never produced a report are not counted anywhere on this page.

Bosch vs Frigidaire dishwashers: what the reports mention#

Both columns are shares of their own corpus, and the corpora differ in size. Bosch: CPSC SaferProducts incident reports for Bosch dishwashers, 2011-2026, n=303. Frigidaire: CPSC SaferProducts incident reports for Frigidaire dishwashers, 2011-2026, n=103. A difference no larger than one report on either side is marked "within one-report noise".

About the corpus: these are CPSC SaferProducts reports — incidents someone chose to report, not units sold — so the shares on this page are shares of the reports and never a failure rate. The corpus is weighted toward safety events: 12,007 of its 20,581 records (58%) are fire, smoke, burn or melt reports, which over-represents the components that burn and under-represents the ones that merely stop working.

Bosch dishwashers: the reported component split#

Bosch dishwashers — every share in this table is a share of: CPSC SaferProducts incident reports for Bosch dishwashers, 2011-2026, n=303.

Shares of reports, not failure rates — see the corpus note above.

Frigidaire dishwashers: the reported component split#

Frigidaire dishwashers — every share in this table is a share of: CPSC SaferProducts incident reports for Frigidaire dishwashers, 2011-2026, n=103.

Shares of reports, not failure rates — see the corpus note above.

How to use these numbers#

What this comparison can settle: which components the reported incidents of each brand actually concentrate on, for this appliance. What it cannot settle: which brand fails more often. That would need units sold, and no public source states it. Use the component split to plan for the repair each brand is most reported for, not to rank the two.