The Best Carpet Cleaners of 2023

The Bissell ProHeat 2X Revolution is one of our favorite carpet cleaners. It’s an upright vacuum-style design with a motorized brush head and an internal tank that dispenses water and detergent as you’re cleaning.

This is specifically a carpet cleaner for pet owners, with an attachment hose that has a filter on it to prevent debris like pet hair from clogging up the system. Though it’s loud and tricky to store, we reviewed the 2X Revolution and absolutely loved it. We think it's the best carpet cleaner you can own and we think you'll love it just as much as we do.

Read our Bissell ProHeat 2X Revolution Pet Pro review

The Hoover Smartwash is similar to other upright carpet cleaning machines, but its design automatically mixes detergent based on how you're moving the cleaner. When you push it forward, it cleans; pull it back and it'll suck up water to dry it. That's not a unique feature, but it does work great, and makes the whole process quite simple.

We’ve tested a previous version of this upright and we loved it. It does an exceptional job cleaning your carpet, and though it’s loud and takes up a lot of closet space, it’s a worthy addition to your cleaning routine, especially if you have messy kids or pets.

Use this premium, powerful hand tool to reach into anything from tiny cracks in your boat to an entire carpet in your living room. It has a three-gallon tank capacity and powerful dispenser, making it easy to remove difficult stains and dirt in your carpet.

To access those hard-to-reach spots, utilize the four-inch wide hand tool, as well as the 15-foot hose for cleaning the other side of the room. What's more, this carpet cleaner can heat up to 200 degrees to clean the deepest stains in your rug.

The Bissell Little Green Pro Portable Carpet Cleaner is a hand-held, portable carpet cleaner that is designed to tackle small stains (especially pet stains) with a design that you can carry all-around your home.

It is relatively quiet, doesn’t take up much space, and it’s easy to work with. It won’t take on the large messes or clean an entire carpet, but if you’re generally concerned with a few smaller stains, this is the carpet cleaner to get.

Read our Bissell Little Green Pro Portable Carpet Cleaner review

The Bissell Big Green allows for professional carpet cleaning—with two massive internal tanks, a huge 9-foot attachment hose, and a legendary cleaning ability. There is probably no carpet cleaner with a bigger following than this one, with rave reviews from over 12,000 customers online.

The reviews are really eye-opening, especially from people that tried other, less-powerful carpet cleaners. Even making a second pass over previously cleaned areas, this cleaner picks up so much more debris, hair, dirt, and grime. One reviewer said that this Bissell Big Green professional carpet cleaner was one of the best purchases they’d ever made, and it’s easy to see why.

The Hoover PowerDash Pet is a compact carpet cleaner that has an upright design, but a relatively narrow cleaning path. It’s more affordable than some of the other cleaners on our list, and it’s ideal if you want to clean spot stains and occasionally want to tackle a larger area. It’ll take some time, for sure, but it can clean tough carpets and remove lots of pet stains and odors with ease.

The main complaints from reviewers came down to the small size of the internal tanks. If you’re trying to clean anything other than a small area, you’re going to need to plan to refill and empty the internal tanks repeatedly.

The Bissell TurboClean PowerBrush is another lightweight, compact and upright carpet cleaner that is designed to tackle small area rugs, carpets, and spot stains. It has a dual clean water tank design so you’re not cleaning with dirty water, but the tanks are just over a half gallon so they tend to fill up quickly, as with other compact uprights.

Reviewers highly recommend this cleaner, with thousands of 5-star reviews that show just how clean this can get your carpets. It may be small, but it’s still a powerful cleaner that can get the job done without weighing you down.