Staff writer Sabine Heinlein has been a journalist for more than two decades. She obsesses over how to remove cat drool from her velvet couch and hairballs from her heirloom rugs.

For this guide, we’ve done the following:

• Since 2016, we’ve tested 29 portable carpet cleaners—including six new models in 2023.
• We spent more than 40 hours researching portable carpet cleaners, scouring the websites of manufacturers and The Carpet and Rug Institute for guidance and advice.
• We spoke with a professional rug cleaner, the manager of a carpet store, and an engineer who designs carpet cleaners, as well as with representatives from several carpet cleaner companies.

If you’re faced with a lot of tough food stains or unpleasant wet messes (cough-cough, fishy hairballs) on your rugs, couches, or car seats, a portable carpet and upholstery cleaner may be a useful tool.

Also known as spot cleaners, most portable carpet and upholstery cleaners have a spray trigger on the handle that, when pressed, releases a dose of cleaning solution. The brush tool agitates the stain and works in the solution, suction extracts dirt and water, and airflow funnels the mess into the dirty-water tank.

You may already own some or all of the tools that can mimic the action of these machines. A little dish soap and hot water on a rag (for simple stains, like from food) or a heavy-duty cleaning solution and a scrub brush (for tougher stains) usually work as well as a spot cleaner. For stains with difficult dyes or tannins, including Fanta soda or red wine, the built-in suction mechanism of a portable spot cleaner can keep the stain from bleeding into surrounding fibers. But it doesn’t necessarily clean any better.

A portable spot cleaner isn’t an effortless miracle tool—it requires some prep work and elbow grease. First, check the tags of the item you’re cleaning to see if it’s safe to use one of these machines on it. Ask a professional if you’re in doubt. Then, you need to haul your spot cleaner out of storage, fill it with water and formula, and plug it in. Weighing between 10 and 14 pounds, these machines aren’t exactly lightweight. And you need to put nearly as much physical effort into scrubbing away stains as you would using a rag or brush. When you’re done, you have to drain both water tanks, rinse the dirty-water tank and hose, wrap the cord, and put it all away.

Drawbacks aside, the nastier the mess—think bodily fluids and semi-solids—the more thankful you may be for a machine that can spray the filth with detergent, scrub it out, and suck it away while keeping your hands somewhat removed from anything gross. (Note, though, that flushing out the hose and dirty-water tank after cleaning will likely expose you to the crud you’re trying to avoid.)

Portable spot cleaners are designed for individual stains and messes. If you want to brighten up or de-grime an entire carpet, consider an upright carpet cleaner. Or, for better results, hire a professional cleaning service.

In our most recent round of testing, we tried six carpet cleaners. Here’s how we evaluated them:

Cleaning performance: We cut a piece of white polyester carpet into six squares, one for each carpet cleaner. We then soiled each square with a carpet’s worst enemies: oils (Nutella and peanut butter), dyes (Gatorade, Coke, and Fanta), tannins (red wine and coffee), and yard dirt. (We skipped urine: In our recent upright carpet cleaner tests, it was the easiest substance to remove.) Using a knife, we worked yard dirt, Nutella, and peanut butter deep into the fibers.

After letting the muck dry overnight, we assigned each carpet square to a cleaner. We mixed each brand’s cleaning formula with 110 °F water, sprayed the stains with the cleaning solution, and let that sit for a few minutes. We extracted as much of the solution (and stain) as possible, and then we scrubbed the carpet vigorously, alternating between spraying and extracting, until we saw no further improvement; this took about 10 minutes.

We repeated the tests on white, organic-linen upholstery fabric stuffed with wool batting to see how the machines might handle couches and cushions. (We discovered that many cushion cases and upholstery fabrics are now stain-resistant, which is why we chose the untreated linen.)

After 24 hours, we compared the results, paying attention to the severity of leftover stains. We rated each small stained square on a scale of one (hardly any difference) to five (completely cleaned). Then we added up each spot cleaner’s scores and compared them.

Drying time and carpet appearance: A good carpet cleaner should not leave the carpet or cushion saturated with water and soap. Depending on an item’s thickness and material and the room temperature, the surface should fully dry within two to 24 hours.

We let the test squares dry overnight and then felt how damp they remained. We also inspected their appearance, looking for fibers that were refreshed and even, rather than chewed up.

Design and operation: No spot cleaner is really comfortable to use, particularly if a stain requires you to crouch on the floor and scrub for several minutes.

We took note if a machine’s main cleaning tool was comfortable to hold for an entire cleaning session, and we assessed the sensitivity of the spray trigger. We looked out for machines that felt heavy or awkward to use and noted if they had carrying handles, which is a plus. We also considered how convenient it was to fill and clean the water tanks; the most user-friendly ones are designed with flat bottoms so you can set them down.

We examined whether or not the hose was long and flexible enough to provide a decent cleaning radius, and we noted if it stored easily. We also assessed a model’s cleaning attachments and how easily and securely they snapped on and off.

As for noise, all of the portable carpet cleaners we tested were uncomfortably loud.

Reliability, customer service, and warranty: Portable carpet cleaners aren’t especially durable. Amazon reviews complain about broken spray triggers, leaks, and cracked hoses. We focused on the models that have the best (or least-worst) reliability, as well as good customer service. Most spot cleaners come with a one- or two-year warranty.

Though no portable carpet cleaner can magically erase every type of stain, the Bissell Little Green Portable Carpet Cleaner 1400B did a respectable job, and it’s among the most reliable and affordable spot cleaners available. If you’re occasionally faced with food stains or gross messes, this machine will help you clean up.

It has good cleaning power. Though it is far from perfect, this model received the highest overall scores over two rounds of testing. It removed Nutella, peanut butter, caramel syrup, yard dirt, red Gatorade, and Fanta soda better than its competitors. But, like all of the machines we tested, it struggled with blue Gatorade, red wine, and coffee. (It still significantly lightened those stains, however.) If you have darker-colored or patterned carpet or upholstery, you might be satisfied with the results.

It’s easy to clean. Bissell recommends cleaning the hose and the machine after each use to keep grime from building up and causing odors. This model comes with Bissell’s HydroRinse Self Cleaning Tool, which makes cleanup less of a hassle: Attach the HydroRinse tool to the hose, fill the clean-water tank, turn on the machine, and press the trigger to flush it.

It’s comparably light. At 9.65 pounds, the Little Green 1400B was the second-lightest spot cleaner in our latest round of testing. So it should be a bit easier to schlep this model out of storage when you need it.

It’s more reliable than most. The Little Green 1400B seems to be the most reliable (or the least-faulty) model in the category. Several Wirecutter staffers have owned it for years and love it. (They particularly laud its ability to clean up cat puke.) On Amazon, the spot cleaner has an overall rating of 4.5 stars out of five across more than 75,000 reviews.

Bissell has excellent customer service. Should you encounter a problem, Bissell offers the option to text, email, or chat. We contacted its customer service via chat when we couldn’t find the self-cleaning hose tool that was supposed to come with the model. A representative responded within a minute, offering to send us the tool free of charge.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

Its tanks have an awkward design. The tanks lack carrying handles, and they have rounded bottoms, so it’s impossible to set them down in the sink. The line for measuring formula is at the bottom of the clean-water tank, so you have to add the formula first and the water second, which we found counterintuitive. The tank lacks measuring lines for the doses of cleaning solution needed for smaller cleanups.

It’s a bit clunky, and its hose is rigid. Despite being relatively lightweight, the Little Green 1400B is notably larger and clunkier than other models we tested, and its hose is less flexible, so it’s trickier to maneuver.

It comes with one no-frills brush tool. The Little Green 1400B comes with one 3-inch cleaning brush. It is sufficient for most situations, but it requires more manual scrubbing action than the larger brush on our also-great pick, the Bissell Little Green Pet Pro Portable Carpet Cleaner 2891.

In our tests, the Bissell Little Green Pet Pro Portable Carpet Cleaner 2891 didn’t clean quite as well as our top pick, and it costs a bit more. But it’s considerably more versatile and comfortable to use. If you frequently face easier-to-clean fresh messes from pets or kids, this model is the most convenient choice.

It cleans almost as well as our top pick, and it’s more comfortable to use. In our upholstery test, this model performed as well as our top pick. But it lagged behind slightly when tackling Fanta, red wine, and peanut butter on carpeting. However, with its larger scrubbing tool, flexible hose, and well-designed tanks, the Little Green Pet Pro 2891 was more comfortable to handle than any of the models we tested.

It comes with three efficient tools. In addition to its 3-inch stain brush, the Little Green Pet Pro 2891 has a pet tool, which is slightly larger and has hard rubber knobs in addition to bristles. With the pet tool, it took us about half the time and effort to clean up an equal amount of stains as it did with our top pick’s single brush tool.

This model also includes a crevice spray tool, which comes in handy when tackling stains in tight corners or between car seats. If you’re in need of additional cleaning muscle, you may want to consider Bissell’s Little Green Pet Pro Exclusive Bundle, which includes a turbo brush. (We haven’t tested this tool, but we imagine it has the potential to take some strain off your hand and wrist.)

But it lacks a hose-cleaning tool. Though hose-cleaning tools are convenient for cleaning the machine after use, you can use several easy techniques to flush the hose without one. You could also separately buy Bissell’s HydroRinse Self-Cleaning Tool, which comes with our top pick.

It has a nifty tank design. The water tanks on this model are twice the size of our pick’s tanks. And they have useful handles and flat bottoms, so you can set them down when you’re filling them. We like that the tank specifies the amount of cleaning formula in ounces, in addition to having a fill line for it. This makes it easier to calculate how much formula to add to the water for large jobs (a full tank takes 2 ounces) and smaller cleanups, preventing waste.

But it’s a bit heavy. At 13.25 pounds, the Little Green Pet Pro 2891 was the heaviest spot cleaner we tested. This didn’t bother us much since you don’t have to hold up the machine while cleaning. It may be a consideration, however, if you’re hauling it out multiple times a week.

It comes with a better warranty than most. The Little Green Pet Pro 2891 has a two-year warranty.

If you want a spot cleaner from a brand other than Bissell: The Kenmore SpotLite Portable Carpet Spot & Pet Stain Cleaner Vac will do the job. It scored slightly higher on our carpet-cleaning test than our also-great pick, and beat it by a whisker on coffee and red-wine stains. But we found the SpotLite vacuum a bit clunky and its hose inflexible. (Note: Kenmore’s trial-size cleaning solution comes with the machine, but it can’t be purchased online. A Kenmore spokesperson told us that any cleaning formula can be used with the machine.)

The Bissell Little Green ProHeat Portable Carpet Cleaner 2513G keeps clean water warm as long as the machine is plugged in, which in theory should help it clean better. Oddly, it didn’t perform great in our tests.

And we ultimately decided against trying out the Bissell Pet Stain Eraser Cordless Portable Carpet Cleaner 20037 and the Bissell Pet Stain Eraser PowerBrush Plus Portable Carpet Cleaner 2837. Both models have more complaints about leakage than is expected for this category, and their water tanks are tiny.

Although it’s light and easy to handle, the Dirt Devil Portable Carpet & Upholstery Spot Cleaner scored the lowest in our cleaning tests, and its clean-water tank is minuscule.

Due to its ability to tackle red wine better than all of its competitors, the cordless Hoover Onepwr CleanSlate Cordless Spot Cleaner scored half a point better in our cleaning tests than our also-great pick. Its rigid hose, however, is hard to maneuver. And though one of its two brush tools is too tiny for most stains, the other is too large for small jobs. The machine’s spray trigger also kept coming loose, causing major leakage.

We’ve tested steam cleaners in the past, and some of them damaged the fabric we tested them on.

Steam cleaners have internal heating elements that force hot water through a pressurized nozzle, so it comes out as steam. Ideally, the steam helps lift soil and stains from the fabric, and you can then wipe them away with a brush, cloth, or towel. Steam cleaners don’t use cleaning formulas, and they don’t soak fabrics, but we can’t recommend them in this context.

The steam cleaners we tested—the Wagner 915E On-Demand Steamer, the Steamfast SF-275 Canister Steam Cleaner, and the McCulloch MC1275 Canister Steam Cleaner—all performed abysmally: They permanently damaged the couch cushions we tried to clean, yet they didn’t remove any of the stains.

Empty and rinse the hose and dirty-water tank after every use. If you leave wastewater in the dirty-water tank, gunk may build up and start to smell. Be sure to flush out the machine regularly. Some models, like our top pick, include a hose-cleaning tool, which can be bought separately. A tool like this isn’t strictly necessary, but we found it to be handy.

Handle the hose gently. Although we haven’t come across any complaints of our picks having hoses that break easily, vacuum and spot-cleaner hoses in general are prone to cracks. Keep this in mind when you tug and pull on the hose as you clean.

Consider the cleaning formula. If you don’t have any cleaning formula on hand to use with our picks (which are made by Bissell), you may be able to use non-Bissell cleaning products or DIY formulas. We have tried using diluted laundry detergent in Bissell machines in the past, and it didn’t break them. Without more information, however, we can’t fully endorse the use of non-Bissell cleaning products.

Sarah Bogdan, Liam McCabe, and Tyler Wells Lynch wrote previous versions of this guide. This article was edited by Ingrid Skjong and Courtney Schley.