Which Laundry Detergent Brand Wins?
We compared 12 laundry detergent options head to head. Tide came out on top. See the measured results, the runner-up, the budget pick, and a link to the full test video.
Tide
Price shown in test: $15 for 84 oz (64 loads, 23 cents per load)
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Arm & Hammer
Price shown in test: $14 for 1.3 gallons (128 loads, 8 cents per load)
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Arm & Hammer
Price shown in test: $14 for 1.3 gallons (128 loads, 8 cents per load)
Affiliate link. We may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.
The measured results
Every number below is read straight from the test. Scroll sideways to see all measurements. Products are listed in the order they finished.
| Product | Graphite/oil stain rank (original 6-stain test) | Mustard stain rank | Soy sauce stain rank | White brightness/color protection rank | Red shirt dye transfer rank | Cow manure hot wash (qualitative) | Gear oil stain rank (post-manure retest) | Overall average finish | Tomato juice rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1Tide$15 for 84 oz (64 loads, 23 cents per load) | 1st place, best in the lineup | 1st place | tied 5th place (with Molly's Suds and Seventh Generation) | 6th place, some stain transfer to unstained areas | 8th place | probably the best so far | 1st place, stain almost totally removed | 3, declared overall winner | not tested |
| 2Arm & Hammer Plus OxiClean (stain fighters formula)$14 for 1.3 gallons (128 loads, 8 cents per load) | 2nd place, just ahead of Tide Pods | 7th place | 3rd place, beat nine more expensive brands | 5th place | 3rd place | made a lot of progress but still work needed | 6th place | not tested | 1 (best possible rating) |
| 3Gain Oxy Boost$16 for 1.2 gallons (154 loads, 10 cents per load) | not tested | 2nd place | tied 9th place (with Persil) | 3rd place | 4th place | did not perform quite as well as Arm & Hammer | 3rd place | 3.7, explicitly stated third-place overall finish | 2 |
| 4Persil ProClean$24 for 82.5 oz | not tested | not tested | tied 9th place (with Gain) | 1st place, best at keeping shirt bright white | 1st place, best color preservation | did not perform quite as well as Tide | 2nd place | not tested | 2 |
| 5Amazon Basics$17 for 82.5 oz (110 loads, 15 cents per load) | not tested | 13th place, worst | 2nd place | 4th place | 5th place | still in pretty bad shape | 7th place | not tested | 2 |
| 6All Free & Clear$22 for 82.5 oz, described in transcript as 20 cents per ounce | 6th place, barely ahead of Biokleen | 10th place | 1st place, best in lineup | 8th place | 7th place | a lot of manure stains left | 4th place | not tested | not tested |
| 7Molly's Suds$38 for about 160 oz (two packages, 240 loads combined, 16 cents per load) | 13th place, worst; struggled to lighten stain | 4th place | tied 5th place | 7th place | 12th place | a lot of manure stains left | 8th place | not tested | not tested |
| 8Seventh Generation$15 for 40 oz (53 loads, 28 cents per load) | 11th place | 8th place | tied 5th place | tied 10th place (with ECOS) | 9th place | still looking pretty dirty | 10th place | not tested | not tested |
| 9ECOS$27 for two containers (200 oz total, 200 loads, 14 cents per load) | 10th place | 11th place | 12th place | tied 10th place (with Seventh Generation) | 6th place | even dirtier than Biokleen | 12th place, worst | not tested | not tested |
| 10Biokleen$35 for 1.2 gallons (300 loads concentrated, 12 cents per load) | 9th place, barely edged out the plain-water control | 9th place | 8th place | 13th place, worst | 11th place | still pretty dirty | 11th place | not tested | not tested |
| 11Tide Pods$28 for 93 (unit dropped by captions; likely oz or count) (112 loads, 25 cents per load) | 3rd place | 12th place | 4th place | 2nd place | 2nd place | did better than average | implied 5th place (narrator says it barely outperformed Arm & Hammer's 6th place finish, but does not state an explicit ordinal for Tide Pods) | not tested | not tested |
| 12Tyler Glamorous Wash$21 for 16 oz (6 loads, $3.50 per load) | 12th place | 3rd place | 11th place | not individually ranked; narrator says it leaves a strong perfume smell rather than a bright white finish | 13th place, worst | dirtier than most of the other brands | 9th place | not tested | not tested |
How it was tested
- six common household stains on white cotton shirts (egg/protein, motor oil with graphite, coffee, mustard, tomato sauce, soy sauce), extra small cold-water top-loader wash
- graphite/motor oil stain removal rank (from the six-stain test)
- mustard stain removal rank
- soy sauce combo stain removal rank
- white brightness/color protection rank on unstained fabric
- egg stain removal (described qualitatively, not individually ranked)
- tomato juice stain removal (rated on a numeric scale, not ranked 1st to last)
- coffee stain removal (rated on a numeric scale, not ranked 1st to last)
- red cotton t-shirt dye transfer/color protection rank
- cow manure stain and odor removal, hot water wash (qualitative only)
- gear oil stain removal rank on manure-soaked shirts (separate retest after the manure wash)
- overall average finish/ranking across all tests
“And the Tide liquid laundry detergent came out on top with an average finish or rating of three.”
Data notes and caveats
12 detergent brands plus a plain-water control across roughly a dozen distinct stain/odor sub-tests; only the top 3 overall finishers (Tide, Arm & Hammer, Gain) were given an explicit average-finish ranking by the narrator, so products 4 through 12 in this file are listed in transcript introduction order, not a stated overall rank, and each product's individual sub-test placements are preserved in its results/notes instead. The plain-water control (no detergent) is excluded from products[] since it is not a purchasable brand, but it notably beat several real detergents in multiple sub-tests (8th on the original oil stain, 6th on mustard, 12th on soy sauce, 10th on dye transfer), which is worth surfacing as a caveat. Two price strings have caption ambiguity and are flagged rather than corrected: All Free & Clear's per-unit cost is stated as "20 cents per ounce" (breaks the per-load pattern used elsewhere) and Tide Pods' price sentence drops a unit ("$28 for 93"). Meta chapters have their own typos versus the description (BioClean for Biokleen, EOS for ECOS, Puril ProClean for Persil ProClean) but still map one chapter per product.