Frigidaire vs KitchenAid dishwashers: an incident-report comparison

What this Frigidaire vs KitchenAid comparison is based on#

Two gaps on this page exceed 40 points. In a set where most brand pairs differ by single digits on most rows, that is worth stating before anything else, and it is worth stating alongside how much evidence sits behind each side.

KitchenAid contributes 360 CPSC SaferProducts incident reports filed between 2011 and 2026. Frigidaire contributes 103 over the same window. Both columns are shares of their own totals, and unlike some pairs in this set, both leading rows rest on substantial counts: 223 filings behind KitchenAid's top row, 46 behind Frigidaire's.

Two gaps, both large, both well evidenced#

The control board is named in 62% of the KitchenAid reports and 19% of the Frigidaire ones — 43 points. The heating element is named in 45% of the Frigidaire reports and 4% of the KitchenAid ones — 41 points the other way. Each brand's leading component is, in the other's column, either a secondary row or nearly absent.

What distinguishes this pair from a small-sample coincidence is that all four of those figures have real counts underneath them. A 43-point gap between 223 filings and 20 filings is not something a handful of extra reports would move, and the same is true of 46 against 16. Whatever produced the difference, it is not a rounding artefact.

The third disagreement#

Wiring or the power cord is the row that usually settles ties in this set, and here it leans the same way the board does: 15% of the KitchenAid reports against 4% of the Frigidaire ones, 11 points. That gives KitchenAid two of the top three rows and gives its column an electrical centre of gravity — board and wiring together account for more than three quarters of it.

Frigidaire's column has a different centre. Heat takes nearly half of it, and the board takes most of what is left. Wiring barely registers.

Those two centres also differ in how much of the column they leave over. KitchenAid's top three rows absorb so much of its corpus that everything beneath them is a rounding artefact of a large denominator: 360 filings, and the fourth-place row is 13 of them. Frigidaire's top two absorb a comparable share of a much smaller total, so its tail is short for the opposite reason — there were never many reports to distribute. Two different routes to the same flat bottom of a table.

What the tails are worth, and what none of it settles#

Both corpora thin out fast below the third row. The motor is 4% for KitchenAid and 1% for Frigidaire. The drain pump or hose is 1% against 2%. The thermostat or sensor is 1% in both, which the table records as no measured difference. On the Frigidaire side those rows are one or two filings each, so their apparent precision is worth less than the arithmetic suggests.

None of this ranks the two brands, and the size of the gaps does not change that. A share is a share of filings, filings arrive for reasons the database does not record, and no denominator of machines exists anywhere in it. What the page supports is a difference in what each record is about: a KitchenAid [dishwasher](/blog/repair-or-replace-dishwasher) that will not start or has lost its panel sits in the largest region of its own corpus, and a Frigidaire that will not heat sits in the largest region of its.

Frigidaire vs KitchenAid dishwashers: what the reports mention#

Both columns are shares of their own corpus, and the corpora differ in size. Frigidaire: CPSC SaferProducts incident reports for Frigidaire dishwashers, 2011-2026, n=103. KitchenAid: CPSC SaferProducts incident reports for KitchenAid dishwashers, 2011-2026, n=360. 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.

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.

KitchenAid dishwashers: the reported component split#

KitchenAid dishwashers — every share in this table is a share of: CPSC SaferProducts incident reports for KitchenAid dishwashers, 2011-2026, n=360.

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.