Best Carpet Cleaners of 2024 - Consumer Reports (2024)

Whether your carpet has accumulated stubborn grime, muddy paw prints, or red wine spills, a good carpet cleaner can come to the rescue.

Though you can rent heavy-duty carpet cleaners or hire a cleaning service, owning a carpet cleaner ends up being more affordable in the long run, assuming you use it at least a handful of times, and it’s definitely more convenient to have one on hand.

And because carpet cleaners have a range of settings and options to choose from—different brush attachments to varying hose lengths—you can choose a high-performing carpet cleaner from those we’ve tested in our labs that suits your home and your needs.

Best Carpet Cleaners

How We Test Carpet Cleaners

We put each carpet cleaner through a battery of cleaning tests in our lab—each model takes 3 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 how noisy they are—some are so loud that we recommend wearing hearing protection—and how easy they are to use. 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.

Is Buying a Carpet Cleaner Worth the Money?

How to Choose a Carpet Cleaner

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.”

Carpet cleaners can also clean more than just carpets: Many models can clean upholstery and things like pet beds along with carpets and rugs. Many models also have 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 carpet cleaners’ 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 carper cleaners with two separate tanks—one for the cleaning solution and one for dirty water—are more convenient to use. Some models even 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 well over 20 pounds. Make sure the weight of a carpet cleaner with full tanks is a weight you can manage.

Remember, too, that a carpet cleaner can’t go it alone. You’ll need a goodupright or canister vacuum cleanerto 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 foundbig 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.

Worst Carpet Cleaners

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 Power Scrub Elite Pet FH50251 leaves carpets fairly dry, it has a subpar cleaning performance, leaving more debris than many of the other carpet cleaners in our ratings. It does have some nice convenience features, 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. Additionally, the Hoover Turbo Scrub FH50138 scores similarly but costs less.
• One of the higher-performing Bissell models on the list of top carpet cleaners has “pet” in its name. So does the Bissell DeepClean Deluxe Pet 36Z9, but that’s where the similarity ends. Unlike the Bissell ProHeat 2X Lift-Off Pet 15651 mentioned above, the DeepClean Deluxe Pet is only so-so at cleaning and leaves a damp carpet behind. But it costs about the same as our top Bissell pick, proving that the price-quality relationship doesn’t always bear out.
• 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).