Toilet-Bowl Cleaner Buying Guide
The best toilet bowl cleaners are affordable, user-friendly, and, most importantly, effective at their intended purpose. However, with an entire store aisle dedicated to these products, it can be difficult to determine which ones are worth your money and effort.
To assist with your selection, Consumer Reports has evaluated a variety of toilet bowl cleaners—ranging from standard liquid and gel formulas from brands like Clorox, Lysol, and Seventh Generation, to sheet and tablet versions that dissolve in the water. The top-performing products in our evaluations removed the greatest amount of solid waste from a porcelain plate, helping to restore the bowl’s shine.
To begin, our experts create a proprietary sticky substance and dry it onto porcelain plates. We then proceed with the cleaning process: For each test, we apply the cleaner (as part of a water-based solution) to a soiled plate and use a mechanical rig to drag a toilet brush across the surface for 3 minutes, simulating a manual scrub. For solid sheet and tablet cleaners, we dissolve the product in water first.
We measure our results by analyzing how much white porcelain is visible before and after the cleaning process. This is determined by counting pixels in photographs taken during the test and is reflected in the bowl-cleaning score within our ratings. We also weigh the plate before and after cleaning to quantify the amount of solid waste removed, which is represented by the solid-waste-removal score.
Our testing does not evaluate a cleaner’s effectiveness at removing stains or limescale. It also does not verify specific manufacturer claims, such as whether a product is all-natural, nontoxic, antibacterial, or antiviral. We do include those claims in our ratings chart to assist your shopping, though. Because the assessment of a cleaner’s scent is largely a matter of personal preference, it is not factored into our scoring.
Traditional liquid and gel products typically come in a nozzle-tipped bottle, which allows for easy application around the rim of the bowl. Thicker gel cleaners often cling to the porcelain surface for a longer duration, which may provide increased stain- and grime-fighting capabilities. However, our testing shows that sheet and tablet cleaners are also effective. These are concentrated cleaning agents in solid form that dissolve once dropped into the toilet water. From there, you can scrub the bowl as you normally would.
If your home uses a septic system, it is best to choose cleaning products that do not disrupt the bacterial biome responsible for breaking down waste. Avoid overusing cleaners that contain harsh chemicals, such as bleach or ammonia, says Kathleen Halevah, who tests both toilet bowl cleaners and toilets in CR’s labs. CR’s toilet bowl cleaner ratings indicate which products are considered septic-safe.
