5 Best Carpet Cleaners of 2024, Lab-Tested and Reviewed

The five top-performing carpet cleaners, below, all feature large tanks, moving brushes, and a long hose. CR members can also see our full carpet cleaner ratings of more than 30 products.

We put each carpet cleaner through a battery of cleaning tests in our lab—each model takes three days to test. Our engineers soil large swatches of off-white nylon carpet with red Georgia clay. We then run a cleaner over the carpet for four wet cycles and four dry cycles, simulating how you’d clean a particularly dirty spot on a well-trafficked carpet. Then we repeat the test on two more swatches. A reliable carpet cleaner will remove the embedded dirt and grime without leaving behind a trail of water and a soggy carpet.

We also rate carpet cleaners on ease of use and how noisy they are—some are so loud that we recommend wearing hearing protection. In our full ratings, members can access the results of all our tests and additional information about each model, including hose length, the amount of carpet it cleans with each tank, and its weight when filled and when empty.

To better understand whether it’s worth it to buy your own carpet cleaner, you might consider how often you plan to clean your carpets, then compare the cost of buying one against the cost of renting one or hiring a carpet cleaning service. Though the initial cost of buying a carpet cleaner can be higher than a one-time rental or service—our carpet cleaner recommendations range in price from about $100 to a little over $500—it ends up being more economical to own a carpet cleaner after a few uses.

First off, take stock of the layout of your home and the areas you’ll be cleaning. If you live in a one-story house, for instance, you might not need a model with a particularly long hose. “On the other hand, if you have carpeted stairs, you want a carpet cleaner with a long hose, so you can reach up the steps,” says Larry Ciufo, who oversees Consumer Reports’ carpet cleaner tests. “You don’t want to put the cleaner on the top step and tug on the hose; the machine could barrel down on top of you.” Another option, Ciufo says, is to get a portable carpet cleaner for the stairway.

Carpet cleaners can also clean more than just carpets: Many models can clean upholstery and things like pet beds and rugs. Several models also include more than one type of brush or attachment, with different brushes designed to help with different types of messes, from embedded dirt to liquid stains and spills.

You should also consider a carpet cleaner’s tank setup. Some have one tank with two chambers, one for fresh cleaning solution and the other for dirty water. But our testers have found that carpet cleaners with two separate tanks—one for the cleaning solution and another for dirty water—are more convenient to use. Some carpet cleaners also have dispensers that add the cleaning agent to clean water so that you don’t have to measure out a full tank of solution every time.

The weight of a carpet cleaner also matters. Carpet cleaners on their own, with empty tanks, weigh between 10 and 20 pounds; filling the tanks can bring the total weight to well over 20 pounds. Make sure you can comfortably move and manage a carpet cleaner when its tanks are full.

Remember, too, that a carpet cleaner can’t go it alone. You’ll need a good upright or canister vacuum cleaner to suck up loose debris before using a carpet cleaner. This ensures that you’re not wetting the carpet with excess dust or dirt, creating a bigger mess.

Finally, don’t select a carpet cleaner based on brand name alone. In our tests, we found big differences among models from the same brand. While Bissell models hold several spots near the top of our rankings, for example, one of its models is also in one of the lowest spots.

Although their names might look similar to the ones that sit near the top of our ratings chart, these machines land at the bottom.

• While the Hoover Turbo Scrub FH50138 leaves carpets fairly dry, it has a subpar cleaning performance, leaving more debris than many of the other carpet cleaners in our ratings. It’s also among the loudest we test. It does have some nice convenience features, however, such as separate tanks for clean and dirty water, a hose that’s more than 8 feet long, a carrying handle, and brush attachments. But bells and whistles don’t make up for poor performance in our tests.
• Two Bissell models sit atop the list of carpet cleaners that CR tests, but the brand also makes one of the worst-rated models in our ratings. The Bissell ProHeat Essential 1887 offers middling cleaning performance, but its below-par drying and inconvenient tank setup (it doesn’t have separate tanks for solution and dirty water) hold it back. It has a slightly longer hose but is a touch heavier (20 pounds when empty) than Bissell’s other options despite its significantly smaller coverage area of 32 square feet. You can get better performance from this brand for less cost.
• Another carpet cleaner with “pet” in its name that can’t compete with other models by the same brand is the Hoover SmartWash Pet Complete FH53000PC. This model struggles with both cleaning and drying. But it does have a carrying handle, separate tanks for clean and dirty water, and a long hose (29 feet).