10 Best Toilet Bowl Cleaners 2024 in the US

Of all the places in your home, the bathroom is the most challenging. The shower and bath can get an accumulation of soap scum, as a result of the combination of soap, minerals in the water, and oils from your skin. And it’s best to use special, dedicated products to keep your toilet clean and odor-free. There is an entire array of toilet bowl cleaners on the market that can help.

We’ll see that there are two main types of toilet bowl cleaners: there are products that are passive, that you place either on the toilet bowl or in the tank. They’re more preventative, to keep residue from accumulating in your toilet. And then there are more active products that work together with your toilet brush, breaking down organic material and disinfecting your toilet.

We’ll go through some of the best toilet bowl cleaners available today. They’ll make a very unpleasant part of cleaning your house a lot easier!

Looking over the Best Reviews Guide of the best toilet bowl cleaners, we see the following options:

• Disposable wand: As a variation on the standard toilet brush, Clorox makes a toilet brush with a disposable head. Each package of the Clorox ToiletWand Disposable Toilet Cleaning System has 6 refill heads. The shape and material of the refill head are more effective at scrubbing the toilet bowl than standard toilet bowl brushes. And 6 refill heads can last as long as two bottles of liquid toilet cleaner!

Clorox ToiletWand Disposable Toilet Cleaning System

• Gel: There are gel toilet bowl cleaners that you attach to the inside of the toilet bowl. Every time that you flush, the water dissolves some of the disinfectant gel into the toilet bowl water. An example is the Lysol Click Gel Automatic Toilet Bowl Cleaner. Each package contains 6 gel applicators, with each gel application effective for 2 weeks.

Lysol Click Gel Automatic Toilet Bowl Cleaner

• Tablets: There are also tablets of disinfectant that you put into your toilet tank. The tablets dissolve partially into the water in the tank, turning it blue. Over time, when you see that the toilet bowl water isn’t so blue anymore, you insert a new tablet of disinfectant. This is the method of the Vacplus Automatic Toilet Bowl Cleaner Tablets.

Vacplus Automatic Toilet Bowl Cleaner Tablets

• Liquid: There are liquid toilet bowl cleaners that you spray onto the toilet bowl, and then use a toilet brush to remove any residue. Liquid toilet cleaners usually have caustic ingredients, such as lye or hydrochloric acid. One such product is the Lysol Power Toilet Bowl Cleaner.

Lysol Power Toilet Bowl Cleaner

But there are also toilet cleaners that use natural ingredients. The Better Life Natural Toilet Bowl Cleaner uses lactic acid and citric acid, as well as other plant-based ingredients. You squirt it under the rim of your toilet, wait for 5-10 minutes for the solution to break down any organic material, and brush off the residue.

Better Life Natural Toilet Bowl Cleaner
 

Here are some of the impressions of customers regarding their choice of toilet bowl cleaner:

• Still have to brush: People who bought the Vacplus Automatic Toilet Bowl Cleaner Tablets said that it’s nice that it gives the water in the toilet a nice blue color. Each tablet will deodorize your toilet for 15 days, and you get 12 tablets in a package. But it’s not meant to substitute scrubbing the toilet with a brush. You’ll still have to do that on a regular basis.

• Products that are good for septic tanks and RVs as well: If you need to clean your toilet in a septic tank, you shouldn’t use a product that contains bleach or other harsh chemicals. This is because they rely on bacteria to break down waste. If you use chlorine bleach or acid-based products, you risk killing off these bacteria. Also, these harsh chemicals can leach into drinking water. Thus, it’s best to use environmentally-friendly cleaning products, such as the Better Life Natural Toilet Bowl Cleaner, or the Method Antibacterial Toilet Bowl Cleaner, which use citric acid or lactic acid. Also, if you want to clean the toilet in your RV, don’t use bleach-based products. They can dry out rubber gaskets and cause leakage over time.

Here are some tips and features of toilet bowl cleaners that may help you make a decision:

• Avoid combining caustic toilet cleaners with other products: Pay attention to any cautionary warnings on these toilet cleaners, and make sure that you don’t use them with other cleaning products. If the toilet cleaner you buy contains bleach (=sodium hypochlorite), make sure that they never come in contact with ammonia. Bleach and ammonia will form chloramines, which are very strong irritants for the eyes and respiratory system. Also, make sure that bleach doesn’t come in contact with acids, even acids as commonplace as lemon juice or vinegar. The mixture will release chlorine gas, which also is a very serious irritant.

• Number of treatments: Some of the dissolving tablets for keeping your toilet clean are very economical. For example, each of the Clorox Ultra Clean Toilet Tablets can maintain your toilet for up to 4 months! Since you get 4 tablets in a package, one package will last you for over a year!

Clorox Ultra Clean Toilet Tablets

Final Verdict

We went through some of the products on the market now for cleaning your toilet bowl. Some toilet bowl cleaners contain caustic ingredients like acids or bleach, while others rely on more natural cleaning substances. There are tablets, powders, gels, and liquids that are sure to be able to keep your toilet sparkling clean and odor-free!