What’s the Best Vacuum for Pet Hair?

We’ve updated this guide with more robot vacuum recommendations, and new promising pet-hair vacs we plan to test.

As any pet owner knows, even if you own a good vacuum, there always seems to be some pet hair around. So instead of asking ourselves what's the best vacuum for pet hair, we asked something more to the point: What's the best way to keep pet hair to a minimum in your home?

Any good vacuum—upright or canister, corded or cordless—will do an excellent job of picking up pet hair, on both hard floors and carpets. We’ve tested all these styles, using bagfuls of genuine cat and dog hair, and all our picks have excelled at the task. Some models with "pet" or "animal" in their name come with extra features or tools that help clean hair off a couch or prevent hair from tangling around the brush, for example, and they’re sometimes helpful (more on those later).

That said, no matter how good your traditional vacuum is, you’re unlikely to keep up with the rate of shedding—unless you have a vacuum that can work constantly. In other words, a robot vacuum is the best vacuum for pet hair.

This sturdy robot vacuum won't get bored or distracted, so it’ll do a better job keeping pet hair off your floors than anything driven by a human. The i3 is better than competitors at getting pet hair out of rugs, and its nimble nav system consistently and thoroughly cleans large spaces.

*At the time of publishing, the price was $300.

Any robot vacuum can keep up with pet hair, but the iRobot Roomba line is particularly noteworthy because of how durable and fuss-free the vacuums are for the money. The super-basic Roomba 694 or the Eufy RoboVac 11S are fine choices. But paying more for our top pick, the Roomba i3, will get you extra suction, a nimble navigation system, and tangle-resistant brushes that can make the life of a pet owner even easier. (The iRobot Roomba i3+ EVO includes the i3 EVO robot, plus a charging dock that automatically sucks the debris out of the robot and stores it in a disposable bag, which you’ll only have to change once a month.) The Roborock Q5 (or the Roborock Q5+, which has a self-emptying dock) is slightly easier to automate–for example, using Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, or Siri Shortcuts–and has a larger dustbin and longer battery life. It's not quite as good at cleaning as the Roomba i3, though, especially on carpets.

According to Cats International, a typical domesticated cat has 60,000 hairs per square inch of skin on its back (and as many as 120,000 per square inch on its belly). Each hair is shed two or three times per year. If you conservatively estimate that a typical cat has about 227 square inches of surface area (that's a 5-by-12-inch cylinder) and use the lower of the per-square-inch and hairs-shed numbers given above, that works out to at least 27,240,000 shed hairs per cat per year, or almost 75,000 per day.

Even if you vacuum daily, you can see the problem: By the time you vacuum again, 75,000 new hairs are coating your floor and upholstery. If you vacuum weekly, the number tops half a million.

Of course, not all cat breeds are alike—imagine the numbers for a Maine coon—and we haven't even attempted to figure out the number for a "typical dog." But the fundamental concern holds true: Most cats and many dogs shed continuously, and few pet owners can manually vacuum frequently enough to keep up.

That's why a robot vacuum is a particularly useful tool for pet hair. If you run one daily or at least a few times a week, it will keep your floors tidy pretty much all the time.

However, pet hair also has a way of clinging to furniture and embedding itself in thicker rugs—two places today's robot vacuums can't reach. At a minimum, you need a lint roller to get hair off your couches and chairs, if not a handheld vacuum (which can come in handy for all kinds of other jobs, too). And if you want to deep-clean your rugs, you need a more traditional vacuum, whether it's a plug-in or a cordless machine.

Any decent vacuum can clean up pet hair, so don't fret about this. The Shark Navigator is our favorite vacuum overall, and it's great whether you have pets or not. As a plug-in vacuum, it's a much better value for the money than a cordless machine.

*At the time of publishing, the price was $180.

Pet-oriented vacuums aren't always especially great at getting hair out of rugs, but some excellent models come in such variants, like this Dyson, which has an extra upholstery-cleaning brush. The V8 is cordless and especially convenient, but it costs a lot more than a plug-in over the short and long term.

*At the time of publishing, the price was $350.

When a vacuum includes "pet" or "animal" or "cat and dog" in its model name, that usually means it comes with a small brush attachment that helps get hair off upholstery, a brush roll that resists tangling, or (less commonly) an odor-reducing air filter, or some combination of those features.

All of those extras can be useful, though none of them actually make the vacuum better (or worse) at getting pet hair off the floor. Even the cheapest vacuums can pick up pet hair off a bare floor, and any vacuum that's good at getting dust out of rugs should also be good at digging pet hair out of rugs. Your best bet is to first look for a vacuum with all-around great cleaning ability—such as our favorite all-purpose upright, the Shark Navigator Lift-Away NV352—and then see if the company has any pet-oriented variations of that vacuum (Shark offers a special upholstery brush that you can buy separately).

Although our favorite cordless stick vacuum, the pet-agnostic Tineco S11, is a decent cleaner and a good all-around vacuum, our runner-up pick, the Dyson V8 Animal is better for this particular use. In our tests the Dyson just picked up more pet hair than the Tineco, particularly from carpets. We also found that pet hair was more likely to get wrapped around the Tineco's brush or jammed somewhere in the intake than with many other models. Plus, the Dyson comes with a mini motorized brush attachment that's great for getting hair off of upholstery.

One note about tangle-resistant brushes: They aren't all equally effective. We haven't tested them extensively, but we have found that the anti-tangle system in certain Shark vacuums seems to make the vacuum more prone to clogging. Vacuum Wars, the best vacuum-review channel on YouTube, has suggested that the brush on the Bissell IconPet cordless vacuum is one of the best (video) at avoiding tangles without causing clogs. All that said, the Dyson picks up much more pet hair than the Bissell, and it's easy to detangle any ol’ brush roll with scissors as long as you do it pretty regularly.

And here's an edge case to consider: If you have a lot of hairy pets, like four golden retrievers or a half-dozen long-haired cats, you might want to avoid bagged vacuums. Pet hair stuffs a bag pretty quickly, and the cost of replacements can add up over the years.

We plan to test several new models from Dyson that offer promising features and accessories for taming pet hair. The new Dyson Ball Animal 3 upright vacuum has the same anti-tangle and comb hair removal technology that Dyson's cordless stick vacuums use, and includes a pet grooming attachment, among other accessories. We also plan to retest the Dyson V8, which has been updated to include anti-tangle technology, and the new Dyson V12 Detect Slim, which has many of the same features as the V15, our upgrade cordless vacuum pick.

Bagged or bagless has no meaningful, direct impact on how much hair a vacuum can pick up. However, if you have several very hairy pets, bagged vacuums will fill up quickly, and the cost of new bags can become a burden. Bagless vacuums, on the other hand, have lower operating costs.

Plenty of vacuums are great at picking up pet hair, plenty of vacuums are great at filtration, and plenty of vacuums are great at both things. Several of our favorite vacuums, including the Shark Navigator line, the Dyson V7, and especially the Miele C2 or C3 (among plenty of others), will suck up a ton of pet hair and improve the air quality in your home. If you have severe allergies that cause serious quality-of-life problems, the consensus among experts is that you should choose a bagged, sealed-system vacuum with a HEPA filter. Such vacuums can also be excellent at cleaning pet hair (though their bags may fill pretty quickly if you’re using them to clean up after several hairy pets).

Tim Heffernan

Tim Heffernan is a senior staff writer at Wirecutter and a former writer-editor for The Atlantic, Esquire, and others. He has anchored our unequaled coverage of air purifiers and water filters since 2015. In 2018, he established Wirecutter's ongoing collaboration with The New York Times's Smarter Living. When he's not here, he's on his bike.

Liam McCabe

Liam McCabe is a former senior staff writer for Wirecutter, and has covered the wild world of appliances since 2011. After testing dozens of robot vacuums, he is neither worried about AI nor holding his breath for self-driving cars. He enjoys visiting factories and learning about regulatory loopholes, and has flooded our testing area only three times.

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