Abstract Among all sectors of refrigeration, one of the most affected by the latest international regulations is the domestic refrigeration. Although for it has been suggested some solutions, such as the construction of household refrigerator operating with the hydrocarbons, there remains the need to find a substitute for R-134a. With the aim of finding a simple implementation solution, in the present work, it is reported an experimental investigation carried out on a domestic no-frost refrigerator designed and built to operate with R-134a and for which a drop-in with R-152a has been realised. Different tests have been performed with the aim to identify the right charge of R-152a too. In line with the standard ISO 15502:2005 (2005), pull-down and 24 h energy consumption experiments have been run to evaluate the performance of R-152a as the drop-in replacement of R-134a in a domestic refrigerator. Also, a theoretical model has been proposed with the aim to give support to the observed energy change.