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After testing more than 20 popular liquid dish soaps, we can confidently say that they all “work.” But they’re certainly not all created equal and the best dish soap works a lot harder and faster to clean dishes so you don’t have to. Beyond its cleaning power, though, the best dish soap is ideally somewhat eco-friendly and has a tolerable, if not pleasant, smell. This year we tested a few new products against our old winners, and we have an updated top pick that pretty much checks all those boxes.
Generally speaking, liquid dish soaps fall into two categories: Conventional and eco-friendly. Eco-friendly dish soaps are usually (though not always) cruelty-free, meaning the manufacturer doesn’t test on animals, and feature more plant-based ingredients. But in actuality, the best eco-friendly dish soaps are really more eco-friendly-ish, since like the big-name brands, they’re also owned by multinational corporations that, by the nature of their size alone, take actions that are not the most eco-friendly. As with conventional dish soaps, all the “eco friendly” ones we recommend come in plastic bottles.
It should be noted, too, that like conventional dish soaps, the best “eco-friendly” dish soaps contain sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS), a plant-derived surfactant that helps to release messes from surfaces. Consumers often get worked up about the inclusion of SLS in cleaning products, and while it can sometimes irritate sensitive skin, according to a 2015 study, SLS is “readily biodegradable,” and its use in cleaning products "does not introduce unnecessary risk to consumers or the environment.”
With that in mind, here are the best eco-friendly-ish and conventional dish soaps to buy in 2024. Keep reading to learn about why we updated our top picks for both categories, how we tested, and what other dish soaps didn’t make our top three.
The best liquid dish soap: 9 Elements Liquid Dish Soap
If you want an eco-friendly-ish dish soap that cleans as well as the conventional brands, we recommend the lemon-scented 9 Elements Liquid Dish Soap. It has fewer ingredients than our previous top pick (Seventh Generation), and that usually correlates with fewer preservatives and harsh chemicals, which also means fewer potential irritants for those with allergies and sensitive skin. In our testing, this soap degunked and degreased dishes just as well as conventional dish soaps like the original blue Dawn. In some cases, we found that it started working as soon as it made contact with a mess, before any scrubbing took place.
Relatively new to the market, 9 Elements was launched in 2018 by Procter & Gamble (the same parent company as Dawn). The name comes from the concept that each product contains nine ingredients or fewer. If you’ve spent any time reading the labels on cleaning products, you know that’s a fairly low number, but this brand makes it work by using vinegar. Vinegar is a natural degreaser and cuts grease and grime as well as many harsh chemicals.
At the time of publishing, 9 Elements is pricier than our other top picks, but not by much, and because it has a thicker consistency than nearly all of the soaps we tested, you’re less likely to waste soap every time you squeeze it onto your sponge. It also comes in a bottle that’s stored with the spout on bottom, so you just have to pick it up, squeeze out a little, and set it back down on the counter—no pulling a cap or flipping a bottle every time you need to reload your sponge.
The issue with using vinegar as a household cleaner, as you are undoubtedly aware if you’ve ever tried it, is that it stinks. And while you can mask the smell with essential oils, a dish soap that contains as much vinegar as 9 Elements does isn’t going to smell as nice as something without it. This dish soap doesn’t smell terrible, and the lemon is a nice touch, but it’s not the most pleasant smelling dish soap you can buy (if you want that, we recommend picking up a bottle of Mrs. Meyers, which also cleans like a champ, but it’s much runnier and contains more ingredients and preservatives than the 9 Elements or Seventh Generation). But with respect to 9 Elements, we got used to the smell quickly.
This dish soap is also available as a dish spray, and like the liquid soap, we found the spray to be incredibly effective. That said, the vinegar smell was less tolerable in a spray format because it was being shot into the air with force.
Another great eco-friendly liquid dish soap: Seventh Generation
If you like an eco-friendly product that does its job well, has an unscented option, is competitively priced, and goes the distance on ethical issues, go for Seventh Generation.
During multiple rounds of dish-doing, this plant-based product effectively powered through our greasy pots and pans. We were able to hand-wash dirty dishes and glassware using a reasonable amount of the soap, which worked well and efficiently whether it was applied directly on the sponge or sudsed up in a bowl of warm water before using. Dishes and glassware washed and rinsed cleanly, quickly, and easily with no residue left behind.
Seventh Generation, as a company, prides itself on transparency and ingredients are legibly listed on all product packaging. The dish soap comes in light pleasing fragrances (we’re partial to the Lemongrass & Clementine scent) as well as a hypoallergenic “Free & Clear” formula. It’s also very nice to know that Seventh Generation does not test its products on animals.
Until we squeezed a bunch of dish soaps in a line next to each other, we hadn’t realized quite how runny most dish soaps are, and Seventh Generation is no exception. While the thin consistency makes it easy to pour out of the bottle, we think it makes it too easy—which means you’re likely to squeeze out more than you need every time you turn the bottle upside down. So while this is an affordable option, you’re likely to run through it much more quickly than our top pick.
This dish soap is also available as a dish spray, and while it did a decent job at washing our dishes, it didn’t outperform the 9 Elements or Dawn Powerwash dish sprays.
The best conventional dish soap: Dawn Platinum Dishwashing Liquid
If you simply want the dish soap that cleans better than any other dish soap—all other factors be damned—Dawn Platinum Dishwashing Liquid is the best dish soap for you.
This blue Dawn dish soap is very similar to the original Dawn Ultra formulation, and it’s easy to confuse the two when shopping. The big difference is that the Platinum formula contains a few more surfactants than the original, which did help Platinum outperform its predecessor in our scrub test this year.
In fact, it was, hands down, the best grease-fighter of our bunch; a little goes a long way, and the Refreshing Rain scent is nice on the nose and mild, though, it’s clearly not naturally scented.
In earlier product testing, we were concerned about the fact that the parent company, Procter & Gamble, was still testing on animals, but according to the brand’s own website, it has eliminated that practice, “unless required by law.”
The fact that Dawn is the only soap used by the International Bird Rescue Research Center to clean birds after oil spills lends further cred to its reputation as both an excellent and mild degreaser. But it does contain both synthetic fragrance and dye.
Dawn’s Powerwash was also the top-performing dish spray when we tried a bunch of them last year.
How we tested liquid dish soaps
When we first tested liquid dish soaps in 2019, we collected 15 different contenders to use at home for an entire month. In addition to washing dishes with them as needed, we put each through a series of controlled tests. These included hand-washing heavy-rimmed baking pans days after roasting vegetables on them (read: there were lots of good crusty bits to clean up after), scrubbing stuck-on milk solids from a saucepan, and clingy chia seeds from spent cereal bowls; attempting to remove tea stains from mugs; and cleaning oily salad dressings from our favorite serving bowl. Before too long, the winning dish soaps (and a few close runners-up) began to emerge. We pitted the finalists against each other to wash our dirtiest dishes and landed on two clear winners.
When we retested liquid dish soaps in 2024, we put the previous winners (plus a few conventional close seconds) to the test against new-to-market options and again used them all to hand-wash our everyday dishes over the course of many weeks, noting their effectiveness, scent, packaging, and more. We used our finalists to clean designated sections of our Breville Joule Oven’s crumb tray, which had a thick and even coating of truly baked-on-gunk. We squeezed them onto a greasy plancha—hours after making pancakes and eggs on it—to observe the consistency and grease-fighting power of each. Then we browned shallots in an enameled cast-iron braiser, added balsamic reduction at the end to really gunk it up, and let it cool before scrubbing designated sections with our finalists.
What we looked for
Undoubtedly, a quality dish soap should efficiently and easily cut through grease on pots and pans. We kept this top of mind as we worked through the lineup, finding many of the contenders powered through grease well, but a few were extra powerful.
Not all dish soaps are created equal when it comes to residue-free rinsing (even a little residue on plates can leave a soapy taste). Dish soaps that left washed items residue-free after a warm water rinse gained points.
There are generally two styles of washing dishes by hand with dish soap. The first is the sponge method, which (if you have never used a sponge before) works like this: apply dish soap to a sponge; scrub the things you want to clean; rinse. The second is the dish tub method: squirt dish soap into a plastic tub or bowl of warm water, then agitate. Use the mixture to wash dishes, then rinse.
Many dish soaps work well either way, but some only work well one way. Those in the latter camp tend to list specific instructions on the label. We found this a bit limiting. We also docked Dish soaps if we frequently needed to add more when cleaning via the sponge method. Some products went a longer way than others.
For dish-doers that like scented soaps, there are a lot of alluring options out there. Personal preferences are, of course, highly subjective, so we liked soaps that offered a variety of choices. While we couldn’t test every scent made by every brand that we tested, we did pay attention to the smell of each soap, noting what we liked and didn’t. Products that had heavy chemical scents were immediately eliminated.
Extra points went to widely available products with competitive price points.
Brands that go the distance for the planet while making our dishes sparkle got a boost.
Other liquid dish soaps we tested
Dawn Ultra Dishwashing Liquid (known, unofficially, as “Original Dawn” or “Blue Dawn”) has a following of brand-loyal dish-doers for good reason. But like our top conventional pick, Dawn Platinum, the original Ultra formulation contains questionable ingredients. Plus, this one doesn’t quite clean as well as the Platinum.
We’re big fans of Mrs. Meyers Clean Day products. Many of us use the dish soap at home because we love the fresh garden-themed scents, like lemon verbena, geranium, mint, honeysuckle, lavender, basil. But the ingredient list is longer than other “natural” brands, and the consistency is runny compared to our top pick.
Like most products from this Target house brand, we found the Everspring dish soap to be just… fine. The scent is nice yet subtle, but like the hand soaps, the dish soap clogs at the spout with repeated use.
We really loved the idea behind this sustainable dish soap from Grove Co., and we loved the lemon eucalyptus scent even more. Annoyingly, though, it’s hard to get everything you need from most major retailers so unless you buy a starter pack directly from Grove Co., you have to buy the refills (nicely packaged in aluminum) and the pump bottle/top separately.
Dr. Bronner’s Sal Suds Biodegradable Cleaner gained traction as an exceptional grease fighter with a remarkably squeaky-clean rinse and a strong spruce and fir scent. We prefer it more as an all-purpose cleaner, though, we plan to keep it by the sink in the winter months when the pine feels more seasonally appropriate.
Planet Ultra, a coconut-oil-based, limited-ingredient, fragrance-free, biodegradable soap that’s tough on dishes and also safe for use as both a fruit and veg wash and pet shampoo, won us (and its many Amazon fans) over for its extremely gentle formula. But while it’s a great choice for dish-tub/soak-style cleaning, it’s less effective when used on a sponge. You’ll get clean dishes eventually, but you’ll have to work harder for them.
Another not-so-effective brand was Puracy, one of the few, if only, sulfate-free dish soaps (which can be good for people with allergies or sensitive skin). Made by an Austin, Texas–based company that prides itself on environmental and community give back, but its product was not nearly as tough a cleaner as our top-tier picks above. (Plus: It’s pricey.)
Ecover’s Pink Geranium Liquid Dish Soap smells lovely and is biodegradable and nontoxic; it’s also a less effective dish soap (requiring frequent sponge reload) and is very pricey for a dish cleaning product.
ECOS Dishmate Dish Liquid disappointed both in smell (there was nothing carrottop-like about the carrottop scent) and performance; the biodegradable/hypoallergenic/dye-, paraben-, phosphate-, and phthalate-free formula was gloppy and didn’t live up to its “a little goes a long way” promise.
Thrive Market Dish Soap had a pleasing light lavender scent, but it is pricey, isn’t great at fighting grease, and has a sticky/tacky consistency that requires extra scrubbing power to work as an effective cleaner. You’ll also need a Thrive Market membership to get it.
We found Method Dish Soap overly perfumed, and the pump-style dispenser was unnecessarily complicated and leaky.
The Ajax Ultra Super Degreaser (Lemon) didn’t cut grease as well as many of our other conventional contenders, and while the label boasts “100% real citrus extract,” that is preceded by a small “with,” and the soap still smells like chemicals.
Joy Ultra (Lemon) is a bright budget option. Unfortunately, it’s also egregiously chemical-y scented.
Palmolive Ultra Strength Liquid Dish Soap is also highly scented (though, it is safe to use as hand soap).
Gain Ultra is yet another dish soap that’s egregiously chemical-y scented. Perhaps that “Aroma Boost” isn’t really necessary?
And last but not least is egregiously chemical-y scented Clorox’s Ultra Concentrated Dish Soap.
Keep cleaning with the best dishwasher detergent and the best dish soaps for hand-washing.
We’re home cooks just like you—and we bring a home cook’s perspective to all of our rigorous testing. But unlike you, we have an extra 10 hours a day to spend geeking out over kitchen tools because it is literally our job. We don’t only use our recommended products in controlled settings, we bring the best ones into our own kitchens to help us put dinner on the table on a Wednesday night for our families, or to throw a dinner party for 12. When we recommend a product, you should trust that we’ve used it—a lot—just like you will. Read more about our testing process and philosophy here.
