Best Dish Soaps

Dawn is the dish soap brand my mom has used for as long as I can remember and arguably the most well-known name in the dish soap business. In our evaluations, it took the longest amount of rinsing under a faucet to rid a kitchen sponge of any signs of dish soap, an average of 2 minutes and 12 seconds. It also produced lots of thick suds on our sponge and in our sinks. When I washed eight dishes covered in ketchup and chicken tikka masala in a 3-liter bucket of warm water with half a tablespoon of dish soap, the amount of suds before and after washing remained unchanged. 

The scent of Dawn dish soap can best be described as clean. No fruit, flower, or food is similar to its scent. My hands did not feel dry after washing dishes without rubber gloves with this dish soap. The handle on the side of the 56-ounce bottle was very convenient when trying to dispense soap from the heavy container. Dawn also offers an unscented and dye-free version.

*Based on Target price at time of publication.

The basil scent of Mrs. Meyer’s dish soap was totally different from that of any other dish soap I’ve ever used. It’s light and herbaceous, and it was my favorite of the dish soaps I tried. On its site, the manufacturer says this soap is “inspired by the garden,” both in its scents and “plant-derived” ingredients. The average amount of time it took to rinse this soap from a sponge was almost on a par with Dawn dish soap. Also, like Dawn, it produced rich suds. Even after washing eight dishes, there were enough suds in a bucket of water to continue doing dishes with it, though they were not as plentiful as they were before I began doing dishes.

The 16-ounce bottle was easy to lift and dispense soap from. This scent and all the others from the brand are also available in a 48-ounce bottle that can be used to refill the smaller bottle.

*Based on Amazon price at time of publication.

This dish soap produced long-lasting suds every time we used it. A soapy bowl of water had as many suds post dishwashing as it did before doing the dishes. The 32.5-ounce bottle used in our evaluations was light enough to lift and dispense easily, even without a handle.

Like most of the other soaps that don’t model their scents after any particular food or plant, Palmolive’s smell is hard to describe as anything other than clean. One thing to note: This was the only dish soap I tried that made my hands feel dry.

*Based on Amazon price at time of publication.

Gain tied with Mrs. Meyer’s and Palmolive for the second place position in our evaluations—on its own a great feat, but considering it also costs 24 cents per ounce less than Mrs. Meyer’s, it’s pretty impressive. A soapy bowl of water showed little difference in suds after washing dishes, and the time it took to rinse a sponge holding 1.2 grams of dish soap in it was among the middle of the pack—about half as long as it took to rinse Dawn out of a sponge.

The scent of this dish soap was very strong. It wasn’t totally unpleasant to me, but for someone sensitive to overpowering smells, it could be too much.

*Based on Amazon price at time of publication.

In color, similar to Dawn, Amazon Basics’ dish soap got through our test dishes without losing all its suds in a bucket of water. The time it took to rinse it from a sponge was as long as four other dish soaps. It’s available only in a 50-ounce bottle with no handle, so it was my least favorite to dispense. Once I finally managed to lift the heavy container, I could easily control how much dish soap was dispensed by the length of my squeezes. 

Like many others, Amazon Basics’ scent is clean and reminds me of the laundry detergent my grandma uses or a lathered-up bar of Irish Spring Original Clean bar soap.

*Based on Amazon price at time of publication.

I have used Nellie’s Dish Butter for well over a year now. It isn’t inexpensive, but when I looked for an alternative to plastic bottles, it was my favorite dish bar. In our evaluations, it rinsed out of a sponge in just 31 seconds, but it cleaned eight dirty dishes without needing to rub the sponge over the bar like I had to do with the Grove Collaborative Hand & Dish Bar Soap, below. When I dipped the sponge into a bucket of warm water, it actually made the water sudsy, which I did not see with the other dish bar. 

It has a pleasant, herbal smell that was overpowering when I washed dishes. There’s no indication of the amount of soap in each bar anywhere on the bar’s packaging, but when I reached out to Nellie’s, a brand representative told us: “The Dish Butter is hand poured, so the weighted [sic] may vary. We have our machines set to pour 175 grams. It tends to pour a little higher, therefore the customer gets a little more product.”

*Based on Amazon price at time of publication.

Though the packaging of this dish soap boasts the claim “2x the suds” vs. Dawn Platinum, we didn’t find this to be the case in our testing. Nonetheless, the suds produced in a bowl of water were as rich as most of the other sudsy dish soaps we tested and remained so after washing eight dirty dishes with the soapy water. It cleaned messes off dishes well, had a pleasant scent, and didn’t dry my hands out. The 38-ounce bottle is comfortable to pick up, turn on its side, and dispense soap from. It is a great dish soap—like the other two dish soaps we tested from Dawn, but in a head-to-head comparison, I didn’t notice any significant differences between its performance and the others from the brand.

At 28 cents per ounce (based on the price at the time of publishing), it is the most expensive of Dawn’s three liquid dish soap products we tested.

*Based on Amazon price at time of publication.

The last of three dish soaps tested from Dawn, Dawn Platinum, is as good as the others. It produced rich suds in warm water, cleaned dishes easily, and was as easy to dispense as the brand’s Ultra and Platinum Plus PowerSuds. Its smell is identical to Dawn Ultra—a clean, bright smell that does not linger on dishes. I didn’t notice any dryness on my hands after washing a sink full of dishes.

*Based on Amazon price at time of publication.

Method’s dish soap had a very light lime scent that I enjoyed and a pump that made it the easiest of the dish soaps to dispense. Unfortunately, its consistency was noticeably more watery than any of the other dish soaps we tried, and it produced far fewer suds in a bucket of warm water. It still cleaned dishes well.

*Based on Target price at time of publication.

This dish soap was the most expensive (38 cents per ounce) of the 12 products we tried. The suds it produced were weak, and by the time we finished washing eight dishes with it, the suds were almost completely gone. It smells of pear-flavored candy—sweet with a bit of a sour note.

*Based on Amazon price at time of publication.

Although many of these products are available unscented, Seventh Generation Free & Clear Liquid Dish Soap was the only one that comes only as fragrance-free. It didn’t have the chemical-like smell that I’ve often noticed with other fragrance-free cleaning products. Though there was a healthy amount of suds in a bucket of water before we started washing dishes with this soap, by the fourth plate the suds had gone pretty flat. If I actually had been doing my dishes, I would have added more soap to the water by then. Rinsing this soap from a wet sponge took an average of just 49 seconds—the least amount of time required for any of the liquid dish soaps.

*Based on Target price at time of publication.

Right off the bat, this bar’s lack of suds when I rubbed a wet sponge on it was noticeably different from Nellie’s Dish Butter. After washing four dirty dishes with this dish soap, I had to wet the sponge and rub it over the soap bar again to get through the last four plates. When I dipped the soapy sponge in a bucket of warm water, no suds transferred from sponge to bucket. Its lime and ginger scent is hard to discern because it is so light.

*Based on Grove Collaborative price at time of publication.