The best carpet cleaners you can buy

The Bissell Big Green Machine Professional Carpet Cleaner with dual 1.75 gallon tanks offers serious stain-removing power to tackle big jobs.

The Bissell Big Green Machine Professional Carpet Cleaner is a powerful carpet cleaner ideal for tackling cleaning jobs without having to rent a professional cleaner. This machine is equipped with an extra-large power brush, which scrubs and removes deeply embedded dirt and stains both as you push the unit forward and as you pull it backward, saving you time and maximizing efficiency.

With a cleaning path of 10.5 inches, it also allows you to quickly clean larger areas. When you pull the trigger on the handle, the cleaner sprays out a water-and-formula solution that the power brush scrubs into the carpet. According to Bissell, this carpet cleaner outperforms the leading rental carpet cleaner according to color reflectance and brightness of carpet fibers post-cleaning.

This Bissell Big Green Machine comes with a 25-foot cord and a 9-foot spot cleaning hose, allowing you to access tight spots like carpeted stairs. Its 6-inch-wide Tough Stain Tool allows you to spray and scrub stains in spots the main body unit can't access, like upholstery, pet beds, and more.

The flow indicator allows you to monitor and recognize when it's time to add water and detergent. This machine's large-capacity dual 1.75-gallon tanks allow you to clean an entire room before pausing to empty the dirty water tank and refill the clean water tank. Plus, the design of the cleaner, with an anti-tip wide base, helps to keep the machine stable.

While the Bissell Big Green Machine is powerful and similar to rental cleaners, it's compact enough to be stored away in a closet. This is one of the heavier carpet cleaners available, though, weighing 41 pounds.

The Spruce tested the Bissell Big Green Machine Professional Carpet Cleaner and gave it 4.2 out of 5 stars, saying, "If you like to maintain a strict carpet cleaning schedule and have numerous carpeted surfaces throughout your home, the Bissell Big Green Machine Professional Carpet Cleaner will give you top-tier results."

Pros: Offers powerful cleaning, long-reach hose makes cleaning stairs easy, strong enough to remove deep stains, two generously sized tanks allow for longer cleaning between refills

Cons: A little bulky, heavy when filled with water

The Hoover PowerDash Pet Carpet Cleaner is lightweight and powerful, and while it's full of features, it's still offered at a highly affordable price.

If you're living in an apartment or small house and only have occasional carpet cleaning needs, you don't want a large, bulky carpet cleaner taking up valuable storage space. The Hoover PowerDash Pet Carpet Cleaner is compact, has an upright design, measuring 15.2 inches by 10.1 inches by 43.5 inches. It offers a 10-inch cleaning path and can hold up to half a gallon of clean water at a time, yet weighs only 12.5 pounds.

This cleaner is equipped with many valuable features that make it efficient and easy to use. One of its more efficient features is the HeatForce, which applies hot air to the carpet that you're cleaning to speed drying. It also has an antimicrobial SpinScrub Brush System, a patented system that is treated with antimicrobial materials. As the brushes rotate and clean dirt from the carpet, these antimicrobial materials help to keep odor and bacteria from developing in the brushes and in the carpet cleaner.

The dual tank system is easy to fill, empty, and rinse and keeps the clean water separated from the dirty water for more effective cleaning. One of the most convenient designs is the low-profile foot, which allows you to fit this carpet cleaner underneath furniture to access stains almost anywhere.

The Hoover PowerDash Pet Carpet Cleaner has an overall rating of 4.4 out of 5 stars on Amazon based on more than 2,800 reviews. One reviewer, Patty A. Selock, gave it 5 stars, saying, "I run dog services, boarding and daycare, out of my home. You can imagine my carpet sees high traffic regularly and potty accidents on occasion from the puppers. Love this Hoover! Holy moly! It picks up a CRAZY amount of deeply embedded debris, dirt, stains, and hair."

Pros: Compact upright design saves space, lightweight, low profile foot allows you to clean underneath furniture and tight spaces

Cons: Smaller water reservoir requires frequent filling, some users found the cleaner doesn't pick up enough water

The Dupray Neat Steam Cleaner utilizes the pressure of steam to offer chemical-free sanitization that can be used on floors, grout, and so much more.

The Dupray Neat Steam Cleaner brings the power of steam cleaning to your home at an affordable price. In just seven minutes, this unit heats steam to 275 degrees, allowing you to quickly get cleaning. This low-moisture steam works on all surfaces, including floors, furniture, mattresses, ceramic and tiles, grout, and even car interiors. It's more than just a carpet cleaner, and its versatile design makes it suitable for use throughout many areas in your home.

This steam cleaner cleans, disinfects, sanitizes, degreases, and deodorizes without using chemicals, relying instead on the cleaning power of pressurized steam. According to This Old House, steam cleaning can loosen dirt and kill threatening substances like dust mites, bacteria, mold, and allergens. Additionally, the hot steam dries quickly. Because this cleaner uses just water, you also don't have to worry about buying (or running out) of cleaning products.

You can operate the Dupray Neat Steam Cleaner with just tap water, and it offers up to 50 minutes of continuous cleaning time. This 18-piece kit includes everything you need to do a full-house cleaning, including a rectangular floor tool, three microfiber pads, a window tool, two extension tubes, one lance, one microfiber cloth, one triangular tool, one triangular tool microfiber bonnet, five nylon brushes, one brass brush, and one AddFresh Fragrance Disc.

The unit weighs just 9 pounds and is on wheels, so you can roll it through the house. It also features a 16-foot power cord and a 6.5-foot steam hose, allowing you easier access to hard-to-reach spaces.

The Dupray Neat Steam Cleaner has a 4.5 out of 5-star rating on Amazon, based on more than 800 reviews. Good Housekeeping positively reviewed this cleaner, giving it a score of 85 out of 100. They said, "The Dupray Neat Multi-Use Steam Cleaner boasts impressive cleaning prowess, scoring nearly full marks across the board on all of our tough cleaning tests. We were especially satisfied with its window cleaning ability, blasting away embedded dirt effortlessly, drying fast and leaving the glass shiny and smear-free."

Pros: Chemical-free cleaning, steamer operates on just tap water, heats up in seven minutes, works on multiple surfaces, backed by a two-year warranty, up to 50 minutes of cleaning time

Cons: No suction or vacuum function, steam can be dangerous so careful handling is needed, need to continuously hold down a button to operate steam function

Weighing under 5 pounds, the Bissell Pet Stain Eraser Portable Cordless Carpet Cleaner is compact, versatile, and easily portable.

Rather than lugging out a heavy carpet cleaner, the Bissell Pet Stain Eraser Portable Cordless Carpet Cleaner gives you cleaning power that's easily portable. Weighing only 4.6 pounds, this little cleaner can go just about anywhere, meaning it can clean stains on carpeted stairs, upholstery, area rugs, and vehicle interiors. It's cordless and battery-powered, further adding to its agility, and makes cleaning stains an easy, fast process.

This carpet cleaner may be small, but it still does a great job of cleaning up stains. Just spray the cleaning solution, use the built-in scrubber, and then suction the cleaner and stain out of the carpet. You can store the cleaning solution right in the machine, so it's always ready to go. The fully charged battery offers up to 15 minutes of use, and recharging takes about four hours.

This Bissell Pet Stain Eraser Cordless Carpet Cleaner is a go-to in my house. I can tuck it away in a closet until I need it. I particularly like that I can fit it underneath furniture like tables, making it easy to clean up small messes on my rugs without having to move any furniture.

This is a convenient little cleaner that I've had for years, and I continue to be pleased with its performance. If I could change one thing, I'd upgrade it to include a power scrubbing option, but that would also likely make it heavier, so it might not be the wisest choice.

Like our top pick, this carpet cleaner also made Good Housekeeping's "Best Carpet Cleaners to Buy in 2019" list. Good Housekeeping says, "The Bissell Pet Stain Eraser is a super easy-to-use (and compact!) carpet stain remover as well as a dry and wet vac. Not only is it cordless, but the battery lasted 18 minutes in our tests. That's surely enough time to get out those stubborn stains. We applied grape juice and coffee to white carpet and the Eraser removed them easily. It even got rid of stains that had been there for over a month!"

Pros: Cordless and lightweight design; ideal for removing pet stains; built-in scrub brush; versatile enough to use on carpets, upholstery, and auto interiors

Cons: Requires recharging, doesn't include any power scrubbing features, limited capacity means it's best for small jobs