The Best Laundry Detergent

Laundry detergent has to simultaneously attract and repel dirt, then rinse away without damaging your clothes, your washer, your skin, or the environment. After doing 85 hours of research, examining 782 stain swatches, running 456 pounds of laundry, testing 42 different detergents, drenching bar towels in more than a cup of melted bacon fat, and analyzing laundered fabric with a UV/Vis spectrometer, we’ve chosen Tide Ultra Stain Release Free Liquid as our top pick. In our tests, it was simply the best overall detergent, great at getting out seven types of stains and the pervasive smell of bacon grease. Its price, roughly 27¢ per load, is among the highest of the detergents we tested, but 100 percent worth it (we think).

While other detergents were great at removing either stains or smells, Tide Ultra Stain Release Free Liquid excelled at both, making it the best detergent for any normal load of laundry. It’s also fragrance- and dye-free, so it will clean your clothes without any smell and won’t break the bank doing it. This strain of Tide is only available at Target, so if you don’t have one near you and don’t want to buy it online, Tide Plus Bleach Alternative HE Liquid is our runner-up choice.

Tide Plus Bleach Alternative HE Liquid was actually better at getting out stains than our top pick, but only half as good at removing odors (still, it did better than most of the other detergents we tested). It does have a scent, while our top pick is scent-free. Specifically, it was excellent at getting out coffee, wine, and lipstick stains, but not as effective as our main pick at removing blood stains. It is a bit cheaper, costing about 24¢ a load vs our top pick’s 27¢ per load.

And if you want something greener, something cheaper, or something super duper on smells, we’ve got picks for those, too.

In our tests, the most effective “green” detergent (one that uses mostly plant-based ingredients and avoids certain others) was Method 4x Concentrated Laundry Detergent. It did well at coffee and wine stains, but was much wimpier than all the other top detergents at everything else. Although it does contain optical brighteners, it’s marketed as a green detergent. That said, there is no evidence that green detergents are better for the environment than conventional ones (see Green detergents). Method 4x Concentrated is not tested on animals and comes in five fragrances. It’s also cheaper than our top Tide picks, costing about 20¢ per load.

If you’re on a serious budget but still need a very effective detergent, try Costco’s Kirkland Ultra Clean liquid, which placed well overall in our latest round of tests. It performed very well with our panel of odor testers, actually banishing smells better than our top Tide. It was just as good at getting out blood and beef fat stains, and for many other stains it finished in the top half of the contenders. It wasn’t quite as good as the top Tide at tackling coffee, lipstick, grass, or chocolate stains, but at only 13¢ per load, it’s a pretty smashing deal. If you don’t have a Costco nearby, you can get this detergent online, too, but at a pretty ridiculous markup.

An odor pick is new for us, but we wouldn’t be doing it without good reason. Tide Plus Febreze Sport far and away won our smell tests, getting rid of the bacon grease smell even from the swatches that were completely saturated with the stuff. This detergent does have a scent, but there was no trace of the funk below it. While it wasn’t the best at stain removing, it did finish in the top half. It actually beat all the other detergents at removing chocolate stains, and also did well with grease-based stains, such as lipstick and beef fat. It is a tiny more spendy than our top pick at 28¢ per load, but if stinky laundry is your main issue, go with this detergent. It’s worth it.

Why you should trust us

We interviewed a plethora of experts for this guide, including detergent formulation expert Keith Grime, R&D consultant and former vice president of Procter & Gamble; Brian Grady, the director of the Institute for Applied Surfactant Research at the University of Oklahoma; Dr. Richard Antaya, the director of pediatric dermatology at the Yale University School of Medicine; Dr. Erin Warshaw, chief of dermatology at the Minneapolis Veterans Affairs Medical Center and co-director of the Occupational & Contact Dermatitis Clinic; Jack English, principal scientist with Procter & Gamble Fabric Care; and Cara Bondi, who was the research and development manager at Seventh Generation. I also toured the testing facility at Procter & Gamble in Cincinnati, and drooled over its very fancy electron microscope.

We also looked at every laundry detergent guide found on the Internet and took a few into special consideration: Good Housekeeping’s laundry detergent picks, the favorites from Consumer Reports, and Grist’s review of green laundry detergents. While these reviews are detailed and useful, none of them test how well laundry detergents remove odors. We do.

I’m a PhD chemist with a working background in textiles, plus a longtime knitter. In short, I know chemistry, and I know textiles and fibers. I’m also married to a chef who doesn’t notice when he’s bleeding on things and a mom to two (formerly) cloth-diapered kids. Read: I’m a scientist who’s used to having to get out a lot of stains, and I do a lot of laundry.

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