The Best Multipurpose Spray Cleaners

We’ve recommended this cleaner for a decade, and it’s still the best we’ve tested. Its basic bottle design and simple trigger made it easy to hold and spray. Its nozzle dispersed a large amount of product that covered a lot of ground. We chose its lavender scent for testing and found it soothing but not stifling, and we liked that the fragrance lingered lightly to indicate cleanliness without being bothersome. (Other scents have the same cleaning ingredients and should perform the same.) Most important, this spray aced each cleaning test, completely coating and dissolving every mess and rendering stains easy to scrub away. It deposited virtually no streaks or residue and consistently left surfaces clean and dry.

This spray is a potent antibacterial version of our longtime favorite. It contains citric acid, a relatively safe antimicrobial that killed germs just as effectively as more traditional brands in our tests. Antimicrobials such as this spray are helpful to have on hand when family members are sick or you’re handling raw meat or eggs in your kitchen. This product packed a powerful cleaning punch, saturating and breaking down every mess we tested it with. It very rarely left behind any streaks or residue. The bottle is simply designed and easy to use, and its relatively compact size fits into tight spaces well. Testers were split on its scent, which some found pleasantly herbal but others found somewhat acrid.

We really liked this spray bottle, which had a large handle that made it easy to grip and a nozzle that powerfully sprayed the product over a wide area. The formula did a great job breaking down oil, sauce, and other messes. Best of all, it left almost every surface dry and clean-feeling, with only minimal, faint streaks in a couple tests. While some testers loved this product’s mild floral scent, others found it almost imperceptible and wished for a slightly stronger fragrance.

This spray received full marks in scent and bottle design. Its lemon-verbena essential oil fragrance, a hallmark of the brand, was among our favorite scents in the lineup. Testers also loved how small and nimble the bottle was, which made cleaning the interior of our microwave and other tight corners easier. Its sudsy lather clung to stains well and helped power away most messes. But this spray occasionally left streaks and oily residue behind, which cost it performance points.

This spray was the most consistently effective of the traditional quat-based antimicrobials we tested. It cleaned messes on every surface well, easily dissolving tough stains and breaking down oils. Its mild scent was a pleasant standout among the antimicrobial products, but a few testers found it acrid and off-putting. It occasionally left streaks behind, and its bottle was bulky and unwieldy.

This antibacterial spray uses thymol, a botanical disinfectant derived from thyme. Thymol is less of a respiratory irritant than the quats found in other antimicrobial sprays. It also doesn’t require rinsing after disinfecting, according to the manufacturer, a feature we found convenient. We also liked that the bottle dispersed a lot of product over a wide radius per spray. It was an inconsistent performer, however, that excelled at cleaning on sealed granite and hard plastic but left residue and streaks on stainless steel and wood cabinets. It also didn’t clear away cooked-on sauce as easily in our microwave tests. Its scent was strongly reminiscent of thyme, which some testers felt neutral about, but others deemed unpleasantly “medicinal.”

This popular spray performed inconsistently throughout our testing. It excelled at loosening hardened, dried-on stains on stainless steel and in the microwave but didn’t always clean oily messes effectively. It also left residue and streaks on most surfaces. Its bottle was somewhat bulky, and its scent was controversial: Some liked it and some hated it, deeming it acrid and sharp.

This product cleaned well on the majority of our testing surfaces and did an especially good job saturating and loosening dried tomato sauce. But it left behind streaks and residue in a few tests, and its tall bottle was somewhat cumbersome. Most testers were also put off by its scent, which was unnaturally fruity and sickly sweet. As one tester put it, it was “better left to a hospital ward.”

This spray performed well on every mess, dissolving oil and tomato sauce in a thick lather of suds. It left behind small patches of residue on Corian counters and in our microwave but left the other surfaces clean and dry. We liked that its pleasant lemon scent indicated that we had cleaned but wasn’t noxious or stifling. But we disliked its nozzle, which dispensed the solution in a narrow stream. Instead of saturating a wide area with a few sprays, we had to aim directly at stains and work harder to cover the same amount of space. The nozzle also kept spraying for multiple seconds after we stopped pumping the trigger, which made it hard to predict where the liquid would land.

This spray is advertised as a bleach-free alternative to its popular brand’s marquee products. Every tester recoiled from its acrid, antiseptic scent, which was especially cough-inducing in smaller spaces. It cleaned basic messes well and even cut through dried tomato sauce effectively, but it left streaks and residue every time we used it. Its bottle was boxy and awkward to maneuver.