Super glue, chemically cyanoacrylate, is sold on the promise that a single drop can hold serious weight, and the packaging for nearly every brand makes some version of that exact claim. What the bottle does not tell you is whether that bond holds up under real torque and tensile force, or whether it is actually built for the material you are trying to fix in the first place, since plastic and steel do not behave the same way under a cyanoacrylate bond.
So a hands-on tester bought six super glue brands, including Elmer's, Gorilla, Krazy Glue, Loctite, Scotch, and a product literally named Super Glue, and put them through downward force, twisting torque, tensile strength, and plastic pipe bonding tests. One brand pulled dramatically ahead on plastic specifically.
Here is what the testing actually found, including where the data runs thin.
What the testing showed
Every result below comes from Project Farm's independent bench testing. You can watch the full breakdown on the complete super glue comparison, which tests bond strength on both steel and PVC plastic pipe.
The six glues went through a downward force test on a steel bolt joint, a twisting torque test on the same joint (starting at 10 inch-pounds and incrementing by 5 until failure), a tensile strength test using a pitman-arm-puller jig with 20-to-1 mechanical advantage, and a bond strength test on PVC plastic pipe using a sliding weight starting at 25 pounds.
Loctite dominated the plastic bonding test outright
The clearest, most confident result in this entire test is Loctite's performance on plastic. The tester's own closing summary leaves no ambiguity: "Regarding plastic, it's very clear that Loctite came out on top by a far margin." If your project involves bonding PVC or another plastic, this is the single strongest, most unambiguous finding in the whole video.
Steel bond data is thinner and incomplete across several brands
Unlike the plastic test, the steel bolt joint results (downward force and twisting torque) are not narrated for every brand in this video. Elmer's, Gorilla, and Krazy Glue have no stated downward-force or twisting-force results in the available transcript. Scotch is the one brand with a specific, recoverable tensile-strength figure: 59 Newtons, or about 13.3 pounds, which scales to roughly 266 pounds through the test's 20-to-1 mechanical advantage rig. That is a real, usable data point, but it means a full steel-bond ranking across all six brands is not available from this test.
The generic "Super Glue" brand and the original formula both got a callout
The product literally named "Super Glue," distinct from the broader product category of the same name, was specifically noted in the video's opening as claiming a single drop can lift a ton, the kind of marketing claim this whole genre of adhesive leans on. The test does not give a definitive pass or fail on that specific claim for this brand relative to the others.
No overall winner was declared across every test
This test did not crown one single brand as the best all-around super glue, and that is the honest takeaway to carry into a purchase decision. Loctite is the clear, confidently stated winner for plastic bonding specifically. The steel bond comparison, where data exists, is much thinner and does not support a confident overall ranking across all six brands.
How to read this for your own purchase
The single strongest, most reliable finding here is narrow but useful: if you are bonding plastic, Loctite has real, clearly stated testing evidence behind it. Beyond that specific use case, the data is honestly too incomplete across brands to support a confident universal recommendation.
If you are gluing PVC pipe, plastic housing, or another plastic material, the tested data points clearly to Loctite.
If you are bonding steel or metal, this specific test does not give you enough complete, cross-brand data to pick a clear winner. Look instead at a purpose-built metal adhesive like epoxy, which is formulated specifically for the mechanical loads steel joints experience, rather than assuming a general-purpose super glue is the right tool.
A few universal rules that apply regardless of brand:
- Match the glue to the material. Cyanoacrylate adhesives, super glue included, bond some plastics and metals far better than others, and the plastic-versus-steel gap in this very test shows how much that variable matters.
- Clamp time and cure time both matter for real bond strength. A joint that is disturbed before the glue fully cures will test weaker than the same glue given proper time, regardless of brand.
- A dramatic marketing claim ("one drop lifts a ton") deserves skepticism until it is backed by a specific, repeatable test, exactly the standard this comparison tried to apply.
Want to compare more of the adhesives that live in a garage drawer? Browse the rest of the adhesives, glue, and tape tests for epoxy, wood glue, and duct tape comparisons built the same way.