For this guide, we talked to three OB-GYNs: Dr. Jen Gunter, Dr. Leo Han, and Dr. Alyssa Colwill. We interviewed Jackie Bolen, who runs a menstrual cup review site (and earns affiliate commission as part of Amazon’s affiliate marketing program). We spoke with more than 30 people who use menstrual cups. We also watched a whole lot of YouTube reviews of the cups we tested, and we read through a stack of scientific papers on how people use cups, how cups compare with tampons, how they can be cleaned properly, and more.

The community of menstrual cup users is very vocal, and as part of our research we read through several comprehensive blogs and websites that reviewed and discussed the ins and outs of every menstrual cup model we could find. We also read hundreds of reviews on Amazon for more than four dozen cups, including cups we wound up not testing. And because using a standard medical-model vagina wouldn’t really simulate the stretchiness and hug of the real thing, we invested nearly 12 hours in trying to build the most functionally realistic model possible.

If you get a period, you can probably use a menstrual cup or disc. Unlike pads or tampons, which absorb your flow, a menstrual cup or disc, once inserted into your vagina, catches and contains menstrual fluid. Using a cup or disc requires removing it when it’s full, pouring out the fluid, and then washing the cup before reinserting it. Typically you might empty the cup a few times a day.

Like most things that are period-related, what you choose to use comes down to your own personal comfort. Cups and discs do come with a learning curve. But they offer a number of advantages:

They’re wallet- and eco-friendly. A reusable cup or disc is a plus for your wallet and for landfills. The average person who menstruates spends between $60 and $120 a year on pads or tampons, and those products typically wind up in the trash. (Before you feel any additional and unnecessary period shame, know that in the grand scheme of your personal waste, menstrual products are just a small sliver.) You can use a menstrual cup again and again for years, eliminating that waste and ultimately saving money. Following the US government’s reclassification of menstrual products such as pads, tampons, menstrual cups, and period underwear as qualified medical expenses in 2020, you can now use health-care flexible spending account (FSA) or health savings account (HSA) funds to buy them.

You need only one. An additional advantage of the menstrual cup over pads and tampons is that you need to carry only one with you, not a handful. This makes cups popular among backpackers and other travelers.

They hold more fluid. Menstrual cups can hold up to an ounce of fluid at a time, so they can handle far more than even the heaviest-duty tampons.

They’re no more leaky than other options. Some people worry that menstrual cups leak, but a 2019 literature review found that reports of leakage with cups were either the same as or less frequent than with pads or tampons.

Some menstrual cup makers and advocates also claim that using a cup eliminates the risk of toxic shock syndrome. That is not true, and there have been at least five confirmed cases of TSS in people using menstrual cups. It’s also challenging to study the true risk of menstrual cups because they are still used by a relatively tiny slice of people, and TSS is so rare. “There’s no reason to think that the risk would be lower or higher than with tampons, and unless we get a lot of case reports we’ll never know,” said OB-GYN Jen Gunter. Think about it this way: Survey-based estimates vary, but only around 0.3% to 1.6% of people who menstruate use cups. And the chance of getting TSS is less than 1 in 100,000. As a result, trying to study TSS from menstrual cup use is especially hard because it means studying something that could show up in only a tiny sliver of the population. So if you’re switching to cups purely out of fear of TSS, don’t. TSS risk aside, though, you shouldn’t leave any cup in for more than 12 hours.

The dealbreaker for most people when it comes to menstrual cups and discs is the learning curve. “The first few times you change it, you might want to do that where you don’t worry about leaving it like there was a serial killer in there,” said Gunter. “I’m good at taking things in and out of vaginas, and the first time it was like, whoa!” It may take a while to get used to inserting and removing a cup or disc, and even for pros, using one involves handling your menses more than you do with pads, tampons, and some period underwear. Some people I talked to said they came to really appreciate and enjoy emptying a cup or disc as a way to better understand their own bodies, but that might not be something you’re into.

We’ve considered nearly every reusable menstrual cup available. Most menstrual cups perform just fine, but the best one for you depends on your anatomy. Apart from size and shape, there are a few things that differentiate cups from one another.

Like tampons, menstrual cups should be easy to insert and remove and reliably keep the blood in instead of letting it get all over your clothing. They should also be easy to clean and last for years without getting smelly or breaking down. (In this guide we use the term “blood” colloquially to refer to the stuff that the cup is catching. Of course, what cups actually hold is menstrual fluid, which is made up of blood, vaginal secretions, cervical mucus, and tissue from the endometrium.)

Some other, less important choices you’ll wind up making about your menstrual cup concern factors such as the cup’s color, its texture, and the shape of its stem. Mostly, these things don’t matter all that much. A lighter-colored cup will stain more easily, and cups that have a lot of ridges, bumps, holes, or raised text can be a bit harder to clean (although we haven’t found that to be a big deal for any of the cups we’ve tried). A few cups come in black, and though it might be enticing to pick something that looks sleek, we recommend going for a lighter hue, as we’ve found that black cups make it hard to see any residue that still needs cleaning, especially inside the cup.

Almost all menstrual cups are made out of medical-grade silicone. This is a material found in everything from feeding tubes to catheters. Medical-grade silicone is a type of polymer that is FDA approved for use in applications like menstrual cups, meaning that it hasn’t been shown to have any adverse effects on the human body. Some cups, including the MeLuna models we recommend, are made of thermoplastic elastomer (or TPE, a type of plastic that is a bit cheaper to manufacture than silicone), and one cup, The Keeper Cup, is made out of natural gum rubber, a type of latex—so avoid it if you’re allergic to that.

Menstrual discs have one key thing in common with menstrual cups: They catch menses. Otherwise, they’re very different products. Until just a couple of years ago, menstrual discs were mainly available only in disposable forms. But now you can find several reusable options, including two that we recommend.

A note on price: You can find menstrual cups that are really cheap, but menstrual cup reviewer Jackie Bolen says to steer clear of those. A handful of companies advertise $4 or even $1 menstrual cups, but they are sometimes not made of medical-grade silicone, and in most cases it’s unclear what specifically they are made of. I found several reviewers who said that when they boiled these cheaper cups to sterilize them between uses, the material deteriorated quickly.

Since 2016, we’ve tested more than 40 different menstrual cups and discs. We haven’t always tested every cup across its available sizes.

Folding

First, we tested how easy it was to fold each cup for insertion. You can learn about a bunch of folding methods that you can use to insert your cup (video). The key is to make the cup small enough that it’s comfortable to insert but not to fold it so intricately that it can’t pop open once it’s inside. We tried to fold every cup into five different folds; some cups were easy to fold into all the various shapes, while others were a little more tricky.

Insertion and removal

We also tested how easy each cup was to insert and remove. To evaluate this factor as objectively as possible, we had to figure out a way to simulate a vagina. Plenty of medical models show the anatomy of the vagina, but they’re all made of rigid plastic. As a result, a medical model can work for illustrating how a cup works, but because the model is a single, set size, many cups can’t open up inside because the model can’t stretch to accommodate them. Menstrual cups work because the vaginal canal stretches around them—it’s that hugging that allows a cup to catch fluid and keeps the cup from leaking.

The vagina is a pretty incredible thing: It’s soft and stretchy but also firm, and it returns to its original shape after stretching. Simulating that, it turns out, is actually pretty difficult, and I will now take a small detour to tell you how difficult it is.

My first stop was Home Depot, where I bought a variety of silicone tubes. But they were all either too narrow or too rigid to work well.

Then I looked to sex toys, because plenty of masturbatory aids purport to simulate real vaginas. The challenge, I discovered, was that most of them were encased in some kind of rigid and opaque plastic for the user to hold, which meant that I wouldn’t really be able to tell if a cup had opened inside, because I couldn’t see what was going on in there.

So I then turned to the wild world of DIY masturbators—and let me tell you, there are a lot of YouTube videos about that topic (generally SFW). Many of them had the same problem that the commercial versions did, as it was impossible to see what was going on inside the various tubes. But I did try to re-create a few: Instead of a Pringles can and sponges, for example, I used a clear water bottle and bubble wrapping. The way most of these videos and online guides describe this setup, I have to say, seems extremely untenable for masturbation; unless you glue the sponges (or, in my case, the bubble wrapping) to the sides of the canister or water bottle, you can’t reliably get things in and out without everything coming undone. And in my case, gluing plastic to plastic was actually a lot harder than I’d imagined—even with special plastic epoxies, the bubble wrapping was constantly separating from the water bottle after a few insertions and removals. So that method was out.

Then I tried a DIY masturbator that involved either one bag of water or several bags of water tied together. This setup simulated the stretchiness of the vagina pretty well, but the water moved around enough inside the bags that I could never get the cups in and out without incident. Several times my homemade vagina exploded water all over my kitchen.

After the third or fourth water bomb went off, I decided to change tactics. Maybe I was too focused on the stretchiness aspect, and I should’ve just found something that could simulate the shape and lined that with something soft like bubble wrapping. Some videos online show how to use a Champagne flute type of glass to simulate the vagina, so I went to the local thrift store to buy a whole bunch of different flutes. As it turned out, finding one that was the right width and shape was very hard. None of the glasses I bought worked.

Eventually, I was desperate enough that I wandered around Target with a couple of menstrual cups in my pocket, trying to subtly fit them into things. Thankfully, no one called security, for which I really wouldn’t have blamed them. In the end, it was the store’s travel-size toiletries section that came to my rescue. There, I found some reusable silicone tubes that I cut the bottom off of and turned into my makeshift vaginas. These tubes were stretchy enough to simulate a vagina, returned to their original shape, were soft and easy to work with, and could fit all the menstrual cups I had to test.

I used a bit of water-based lubricant to get the cups in and out of the travel-container vaginas, and once I established how to insert them, I put a bit of colored water into each cup to see how easy it was to remove the cup without a spill.

The menstrual cups we had trouble folding in the earlier test were indeed hard to insert and remove in this test, as well. Some cups are made of a smoother silicone than others, and we found that the cups with the very plasticky silicone required more lube going in and out of the tube. I spilled the most trying to remove the Lumma cup, as it caught on the silicone, and I had to yank a bit more to get it out. But most cups were easy to insert and remove, and once inserted, they opened up without much trouble.

Cleaning

We tested how easy each cup was to clean. Most cups have little air holes that are meant to help you more easily “break the seal” on a cup before removing it, but those holes can be difficult to clean. And many cups have little volume labels or logos etched into them, all of which can accumulate blood in their nooks and crannies. For this test, we used pig blood mixed with egg whites to get as close to the consistency and staining power of actual menstrual fluid as possible. (An aside: Explaining to a butcher that you’re going to use the blood they’re special-ordering for you to test menstrual cups is a fun way to spend 15 minutes.)

In the end, all the cups we tested were easy to clean, but those with writing did require a bit more scrubbing and attention to detail.

If you’re just starting out using a menstrual cup, and you’re not sure what you like or even how large or small your vaginal canal is, we recommend Cora’s The Easy-Does-It Cup, which has a few unique, subtle design features that make it a great choice for first-time cup users.

It has an indent in the side to help you fold it and keep it folded. And rather than being bell-shaped, the Cora cup has more of a kidney-bean-shaped bottom with grippy rings that are easy to hold on to. As we found in our tests, this design makes removal easier, since the cup is shaped to be pinched.

The Cora cup is made of the same soft silicone that so many cups are, and it’s easy to clean. It holds slightly less volume than some of our other picks, so if you have a heavy flow, you might find yourself emptying it more. This cup comes in two sizes.

We really like MeLuna cups in general because they are so customizable. Unlike most cups, which come in only two sizes, MeLuna cups come in a whole bunch of sizes and styles. You can build your perfect cup, picking from two firmness levels, three handles (stem, loop, and ball), eight sizes (the company even has a size calculator if you’re not sure what to get), and three colors.

We tested a handful of firmness, handle, and size combinations, and they were all easy to insert and remove because we could fold them in all sorts of ways thanks to their hitting the sweet spot of firmness and thickness. They were also easy to clean. In our tests the MeLuna cups didn’t leak at all, though any cup can leak depending on your vagina shape and how the cup is inserted.

The MeLuna Classic lands in the middle of the size range we tested. You can choose from wider, narrower, deeper, and shorter MeLuna cups, but if you’re just trying to figure out what works for you, the MeLuna Classic generally falls right down the middle and is a good place to start. Unlike most menstrual cups, which are made of medical-grade silicone, the MeLuna cup is made of medical-grade thermoplastic elastomer (TPE).

You can get the MeLuna Classic in four sizes, from small to extra large; the small cup holds up to 10 milliliters, and the extra large cup holds up to 42 milliliters. It’s better to pick a size that is comfortable but might require more frequent emptying than to choose one that has a big volume but is uncomfortable to wear.

The MeLuna Classic also sits right in the middle of the pack when it comes to firmness. And because MeLuna offers a firmer option (the MeLuna Sport), if you find that the Classic fits okay but doesn’t always pop open against your vaginal canal, you can switch to the Sport model without having to gamble on whether your new cup’s shape is right for you.

In addition to a cloth carrying pouch, MeLuna cups come with a small brush that can be helpful for fine-detail cleaning.

If you know that you have a low cervix—that is, when you’re on your period, you can reach your cervix by inserting your finger just past the first knuckle—the MeLuna Shorty might work for you. MeLuna offers the shortest cups we can find, with an entire Shorty line for those who have a particularly low cervix. The Shorty is shorter than most tampons, so if you’ve ever had trouble inserting tampons and felt like they were too long or large, this cup could work for you. It has all the same attributes we like about the MeLuna Classic.

If you know that you have a long vagina (per the finger test we mentioned earlier), go with the DivaCup. The caveat here is that if your vagina is also narrow, the DivaCup might be uncomfortable to wear because it is relatively wide; if you have a long but narrow vagina, go with a MeLuna cup.

In the United States, the DivaCup is a best seller. In fact, some of the cup users we spoke with didn’t even realize that other options existed. But the DivaCup is one of the largest, longest cups you can buy: For example, the Model 1 DivaCup is 66 millimeters long, whereas the MeLuna Classic Medium is 48 millimeters long. So if you’ve tried a DivaCup and found it uncomfortable, but you still like the idea of a menstrual cup, we encourage you to try again with a smaller cup. The DivaCup comes in three sizes.

If you have a wide vagina, you need a cup that can ensure that you won’t experience leaks. The Lena cup is a good choice. It’s wider and more bell shaped than most of the cups we tested, but it’s still easy to insert and remove, fold up, and clean. The silicone of the Lena cup is nice and smooth but no less firm than the material of the MeLuna cup or the DivaCup, and of the wide cups we tested, it was the easiest one to handle without spillage. It comes in two sizes.

Discs have a much higher capacity than cups do—the average menstrual disc in our test group has a capacity of about 45 milliliters, whereas most “small” menstrual cups hold only about 25 mL and, according to Put A Cup In It, the largest menstrual cup available holds 51 mL. Discs are also good for people who have experienced vaginal prolapse or have some other condition that makes the vaginal canal either very short or too weak to maintain the pressure that is required to correctly position a menstrual cup. Plus, discs are likely to pose a lower risk of IUD expulsion (although there is no empirical data about that available yet).

Another advantage is that because discs don’t sit in the vaginal canal in the same way as cups do, you can have penetrative sex with a disc in, whereas with a cup you cannot. So if you’re looking for something that will keep your period sex a little less messy, a menstrual disc could be a good choice.

If you want to try a menstrual disc, we recommend starting with a disposable disc like the Flex Disc. If you find that you like it better than a cup, you have several reusable discs to choose from. We’ve tested 10 of them. Our overall favorite is the Saalt Disc, but the Flex Reusable Disc is also worth considering, especially if you have a heavy flow.

Saalt Disc: This reusable disc comes in two sizes and has a little indent that makes removal far easier in comparison with the competition. Other discs have a string (which can cause a mess if you pull too hard, and the cup slips past your pubic bone too fast) or a rim that you’re supposed to find your way under with your finger. The indent on the Saalt Disc, and on other discs like it, is meant for you to hook your finger into when you want to remove the disc. The Saalt Disc’s rim is stiff enough for you to push it into place, but it’s not so stiff that it feels uncomfortable to wear. Though the disc has little wavy ridges, they are easy to clean.

Flex Reusable Disc: Flex has been making discs for a while, mostly disposable discs. But the company’s reusable offering is a great choice for people with a heavy flow who want more capacity. The one-size-fits-most Flex Reusable Disc can hold 70 mL of fluid. (Inside the body, it’s likely to hold less since it’s squeezed a bit in there, but its capacity is still way more than that of any other cup or disc we’ve tested.) Although it doesn’t have an indent to help you remove it, its rim is well defined enough, and the bowl of the disc is flexible enough, that hooking a finger in it is relatively easy. The Flex Reusable Disc also has a smartly designed little notch in the front to make folding the disc easier when you insert it.

One of the challenges of finding the right menstrual cup for you is that not all vaginas are shaped the same way. Ultimately, cup fitting is often a matter of trial and error before you find what menstrual cup bloggers call the “Goldilocks cup.” And this isn’t trivial, because most cups range in price from $20 to $40 and aren’t returnable.

Finding a cup or disc that fits, and feels, just right may require some experimentation; you should not be able to feel a cup inside you very much, and it definitely should not hurt. In this guide we have cup and disc recommendations for a variety of vagina dimensions, and here we’ll walk you through picking the right size as best we can.

In general, menstrual cups come in two main sizes: large and small (often coded as A and B). From company to company, these sizes are called different things, but in general the larger one is for people who have given birth and the smaller version is for people who haven’t. Unless you already know that you have a large or small vagina, you should go by that divide and pick the one that applies to you. (Some guides draw the line between large and small at age 30. That is nonsense. If you truly can’t decide otherwise, go by vaginal birth or no vaginal birth if you’re choosing between A and B.) The maker of one of our picks, MeLuna, has a size calculator that accounts for your body size, whether you play sports, and whether you’ve had a vaginal birth, among other things.

One thing to think about when it comes to picking a cup size: It’s more important to find a cup that fits you properly than to find a cup that you can wear for the maximum amount of time, or that holds the most blood. Some people go into their search for a menstrual cup looking for something that they won’t have to change even on their heaviest days. But that cup might wind up being really uncomfortable to use. The heaviness of your flow and the size of your vagina aren’t correlated, so you may have a small vagina and a heavy flow, for example. Instead of looking at the volume a cup can hold, try to pick based on which cup will fit you most comfortably.

The first variable you should figure out about your vagina is how long it is. To tell whether you have a high, medium, or low cervix, simply insert a finger into your vagina. If your cervix is hard to reach, and you can’t feel it at the end of your finger, your cervix sits high. If you can touch your cervix by inserting some of your finger, you have an average-length vagina. And if it takes only a tiny bit of your finger to reach your cervix, you have a low cervix. It’s best to do this test when you’re menstruating, because your cervix changes position during that part of your cycle.

If you suspect that you might have a particularly long or short vagina, you can ask your OB-GYN the next time you go in. When you get a Pap smear, the speculum they use can come in a few different sizes. Most people simply get the standard, middle-size speculum, but some need the large or small version. Ask your gynecologist which size they use on you. If it’s the biggest speculum possible, you should probably opt for one of the larger cups; if it’s the smallest one possible, you should probably choose one of the smaller cups, or even one of the “teen” cups.

Another way to gather data on your vagina shape is to think about what else you’ve comfortably fit in there. If you have vaginal intercourse, or if you use penetrative sex toys, you probably know what angles are most comfortable for you. If you don’t like penetration to be straight on, you probably don’t want a long, thin cup. If you don’t like penetration to be at an angle, where something is hitting your vaginal walls, you probably don’t want a wider, shorter cup. (These are general guidelines; remember that vaginas are stretchy.)

Aside from size, there is one other main distinction between cups: firmness. Some cups are made of sturdier materials than others. This matters because to insert a cup you fold it up, and once it’s inside, it has to pop back open. For some people with strong pelvic-floor muscles or tight vaginal walls, the thinner, more bendy cups just aren’t strong enough to pop open again. For other people, thicker, sturdier cups are uncomfortable to insert and wear. This, too, is a matter of personal comfort and preference that requires some trial and error to figure out. We recommend starting with a medium-firm cup and figuring things out from there, but if you’re an athlete or really into Kegel exercises, you might want a firmer cup.

Most menstrual cups are designed with a long, skinny stem. But some models, including our MeLuna pick, come with other options; along with the regular stem, you can find a ball design and a loop design. The argument for ball and loop stems is that they can make a cup easier to remove, as a ball gives you something bigger to grab, or you can slip a finger into a loop to pull the cup out. In our tests, however, we found that the shape of the stem didn’t really change how easy or hard it was to remove the cups. In fact, trying to remove a cup by hooking your finger into a loop and pulling is a recipe for spillage. The same goes for pulling on a ball. When we tried removing cups that way, we wound up spilling a lot of blood all over the place.

Most people remove their cups by inserting two fingers and gently squeezing the cup, and then sliding it out. (More on how to insert and remove cups later.) A ball or loop stem doesn’t interfere with your doing it that way, so the presence of such a stem is not a dealbreaker; those shapes just aren’t going to help you all that much. Ball and loop designs are slightly bigger, too, and some people find that they can irritate the vaginal canal more than a skinny stem does.

The other thing to think about with ball, loop, or thin stem designs is whether you’ll wind up modifying the cup. Most cups come with relatively long stems that many people trim down. The stem should never irritate your vaginal canal, and it definitely shouldn’t stick out of your vagina. If you end up trimming off a ball or loop, you’re essentially defeating the purpose of that whole setup.

Discs do not sit in the vaginal canal the way menstrual cups do. Instead, you position them at an angle in what’s called the vaginal fornix, the place where your cervix and vaginal canal meet. To use a disc, you squeeze the rim so that the disc becomes a long, thin shape (akin to a tampon), and you insert it up into the vagina and push it all the way back so that the farthest part of the disc finds its way tucked up behind your cervix. Then you press the side of the disc closest to you up and tuck it behind your pubic bone. Tension, rather than suction, is what keeps a disc in place.

Removing a disc also differs from removing a cup: Rather than pinching the bottom of the disc and pulling out, you insert a finger into your vaginal canal and hook it under the rim of the disc. Then you carefully pull the disc out, making sure to keep it at an angle so that it doesn’t dump your menstrual fluid out onto you, the floor, or whatever else. (There’s a reason that the menstrual cup reviewers of Put A Cup In It called one menstrual disc a “blood drawer.”) Menstrual disc users often recommend removing the disc in the shower, at least the first couple of times, to get the hang of it. As with a menstrual cup, learning how to insert, position, and remove a menstrual disc takes time.

Another thing to know about discs is that due to their positioning up against the pubic bone, they can “auto-dump” or “self-empty” when you go to the bathroom, or any other time you bear down on your lower abdominal muscles. This can be a good thing—it means you might not have to manually empty your disc in the middle of the day, such as in the office, although you might need to reach in and make sure the disc is still in place afterward. But this emptying can also be a challenge because it can happen when you sneeze or laugh too hard.

Before cleaning your cup, read its instruction manual. Some cups can be boiled, others can’t. Follow the rules for your cup, with one exception: Many companies that make menstrual cups also sell special soaps and cleaning wipes, and they might even recommend these accessories in their manuals. Such items will certainly clean your cup, but there’s no reason to spend extra money on special cup-cleaning soaps. Any hand soap works just fine.

In general, there are two types of menstrual cup cleaning: the cleaning you do in between insertions during your cycle, and the cleaning you do in between cycles.

During your cycle: On the days you’re using the cup, you’ll wind up emptying it throughout the day. Depending on what your flow is like, how often that emptying should be will change. But inevitably all menstrual cup users find themselves in some public bathroom stall dumping menstrual blood down the toilet. In some bathrooms (at home or in single-person bathrooms, for example), you can wash the cup off in the sink with mild soap before reinserting it. Some people carry baby wipes with them to wipe out the cup before reinserting it when they find themselves emptying the cup in a bathroom stall.

In between cycles: It’s best to sterilize your cup between cycles, with a bit more of a deep clean than you might perform between wears. You have lots of ways to do this. Many people boil their cups (again, check the instructions for your cup to see whether they warn against boiling) for a few minutes, as indicated by the cup maker. There’s no need to use a specific device, such as a dedicated steamer, to clean a menstrual cup. Other people use sterilization tablets. Lots of menstrual cup fan sites recommend using hydrogen peroxide to sterilize cups, but some cup makers advise against it.

If you go for a cup or disc that’s a lighter color—clear, white, light pink, or light blue, for example—you might find it starting to discolor over the years. You can prevent this by washing your cup or disc regularly and not letting it sit too long while dirty. If you want to try to remove the stains, you can let the cup sit in a 3% hydrogen peroxide solution (we don’t recommend using anything more than 6%) for up to 24 hours.

Storage: Don’t store your cup in a sealed container with no airflow. Most cups come with some kind of fabric pouch or bag, and though you don’t have to use those, you shouldn’t opt for something that’s airtight. Sealing the cup like that makes it impossible for the moisture on the cup to go anywhere, and the cup can get stinky.

If you have no prior experience using a menstrual cup, folding, inserting, and removing one for the first time—or the first several times—can be challenging.

Every person I talked to who uses a menstrual cup told me that it definitely involves a learning curve. Menstrual cup reviewer Jackie Bolen said that her biggest frustration with menstrual cups is that “people give up too soon.” Bolen continued, “Just keep trying and wear a pad while you’re experimenting with it; after five or six months, if it’s really not working, try a different cup.” The learning curve includes figuring out the best way to insert and remove the cup without spilling blood everywhere, determining whether the cup is actually open inside you, and knowing when it’s time to take the cup out. Overall, cup evangelists say that it’s worth a few messes, and that anybody who is considering switching from pads and tampons should stick with a cup for at least four cycles before giving up.

How to fold a menstrual cup

You have tons of ways to fold a menstrual cup. Here’s a video of some of them. We found that the punch-down fold and the 7 fold were the easiest to use, as they made the cup the smallest yet still gave us a spot to grip that kept the cup from opening before we let go.

How to insert and remove a menstrual cup

This is the hardest part. Let’s start with insertion. You fold the cup and insert it into your vagina. Then you release the cup, and it should pop open inside you. Figuring out if it’s fully open can be tough; some cups you can feel pop open, but depending on your musculature and how forceful that opening is, sometimes you can’t tell. Once you’ve inserted the cup, you can reposition it by inserting a finger and moving the cup around a bit. Another good trick for making sure that the cup is open and positioned right is to grab the bottom and twist the cup gently. Some people like to squat or jump up and down a bit after they insert the cup, just to make sure that the cup is secure and won’t move around.

Removal is a little easier overall—but failure in this regard can be more, let’s say, dramatic. We recommend squatting over the toilet for this part, especially for the first few times, just in case. It’s important to relax before you try to get the cup out; if you’re tense, your vaginal muscles will squeeze the cup, which makes it way harder to get out.

You can try several techniques for removing a cup, but usually it doesn’t work to grab the stem and yank. Instead, pinch the bottom of the cup and then slowly remove it. Sometimes you’ll read about “breaking the seal” of a menstrual cup—that is, just as you had to fold the cup a bit to get it in, you need to fold it a bit to get it out, too.

This is an argument for not letting the cup get too full, because you’ll have to squeeze it a bit to remove it. We do not recommend just pulling on the stem, whatever the design, to get the cup out. When we tested cups this way, it was a disaster every time. Pulling the cup out like that requires using a lot more force, and you’re holding the cup only at the very end with two fingers, which means that when it does come out, you can’t easily control what happens. For us, what happened was a lot of blood all over the place.

If you’re just starting to use a cup, try to time your removals when you’re home and in a comfortable space, not in an office bathroom or public bathroom.

How to know if a menstrual cup fits (and how it should feel)

Once the cup is properly positioned, it should feel the same way a tampon does inside you. If you think about it, you can feel it there. But it shouldn’t be uncomfortable or constantly at the forefront of your mind. It shouldn’t press on your bladder, and you shouldn’t be able to feel the stem at all; if you can, and it’s irritating you, try cutting it shorter.

Before assuming that a cup’s size is wrong, try removing and inserting the cup a couple of times over a couple of cycles. It’s hard to isolate the variables—a cup might be the right size but sitting awkwardly because it’s not in deep enough or it’s at a weird angle. Dr. Jen Gunter told us that if a cup is especially painful to use, you should consult your OB-GYN to find out why.

If the stem is poking you, trim it. If you have trimmed the stem and are sure the cup is in as far as it can go, but the cup is still poking out of your vagina or rubbing uncomfortably, you need a smaller cup.

If the cup migrates up your vagina, and you’re having to dig to fish it out, you need a bigger cup.

If the cup makes you feel like you need to pee all the time or is causing pain in your urethra, you might need a smaller cup or a softer cup. The cup might be the right size, but it might be too firm and pushing too hard on your vaginal walls.

How to know when a menstrual cup is full

This part takes a bit of learning. You can start by removing and emptying a cup in as much time as you would normally fill two tampons, and then build up the time between cup “changes” from there. Some people like to wear a panty liner or period underwear while they’re learning their cup schedule, just in case.

What happens if a menstrual cup leaks?

It’s easy to find horror stories about cups online, but a leaking cup is pretty much the same as a leaking tampon or pad. If the cup hasn’t sealed properly or fully opened in your vagina, it won’t catch the blood, and that blood will wind up on your underwear or whatever else you’re wearing. Again, you might consider wearing a liner or period underwear while wearing a menstrual cup for the first few cycles, as you get the hang of it.

In a July 2019 The Lancet Public Health analysis, researchers at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and their colleagues found that cups were as likely—or more likely—to prevent menstrual leaks compared with tampons and pads.

Can you use lube to insert a menstrual cup?

It’s totally fine to use lubricant to insert a menstrual cup, as long as you use a lubricant that plays nicely with your cup’s material—in other words, with silicone cups, avoid silicone-based lubricants.

Are menstrual cups FDA approved?

Menstrual cups are considered a Class II medical device, just as scented pads and tampons are. That doesn’t mean the FDA tests every cup design—instead, cup manufacturers must register their products with the FDA in order to market them. But menstrual cups are also what’s known as “510(k) exempt,” which means cup makers don’t have to get any additional FDA clearance. Not all the cups we reviewed for this guide are technically FDA cleared, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t safe; it simply means they haven’t filed the form to the FDA to be on this list.

Can you use a menstrual cup if you have an IUD?

You probably can use a cup along with an IUD, though you should discuss the topic with your doctor. In a recent Contraception and Reproductive Medicine review, researchers identified seven papers that examined this question, and they found that IUD expulsion could be connected with menstrual cup use, but the frequency at which that happens remains unknown. Dr. Leo Han, who published a paper in 2019 on the question, told us that anybody who uses a cup should be aware of the risk. The trouble, he explained, is that the exact mechanism by which these expulsions happen is still unclear to doctors. Perhaps the cup itself is generating suction, and when a user removes the cup, that suction pulls the IUD down and out. Another possibility is that during removal, users are inadvertently tugging on the strings of the IUD and pulling it out that way.

Han said that there is nothing dangerous about this kind of accidental IUD expulsion. It’s more of an inconvenience—if you pull your IUD out by accident, you then have to make an appointment to have it reinserted. Plus, while you’re waiting, you have to use another form of contraception.

Researchers at the University of Colorado Denver are leading an ongoing clinical trial “examining suction as a mechanism of IUD displacement with menstrual cup use.” The team is evaluating the number of study participants who experience IUD displacement—in which the device shifts more than 1 cm from its original position in the uterus—when they use manufacturer-recommended cup insertion and removal techniques. The researchers are also evaluating whether people who experience IUD displacement break a cup’s seal when removing it, report feeling suction during cup removal, or feel the IUD strings when they’re removing a cup. The trial began in February 2022 and is expected to wrap up in 2024.

To avoid expulsion of your IUD, take care to break the seal of the cup when you remove it, and try to make sure that you’re not accidentally tugging on the IUD’s strings. If you’re worried about IUD expulsion (or it has happened to you with a cup) but you still want to try a reusable menstrual product, you could use a disc instead—because of the way discs are positioned in the body, they don’t have the same issues with suction or the risk of pulling an IUD’s strings.

Can you use a menstrual cup if you use the NuvaRing?

Yes, though you generally shouldn’t wear both the NuvaRing (an insertable birth control ring) and the menstrual cup at the same time. In theory, you take out the NuvaRing to get your period, so you would just replace the ring with the cup. But some people find that they need to put the ring back in when they aren’t quite done with their period. The challenge here may be that the cup can’t sit against your cervix the way it might without the ring in place—there is, after all, only so much space in your vagina—and that might make the seal less reliable. TL;DR, you can try to wear both at once, but the cup might leak a bit.

Can you use a menstrual cup during exercise?

Yes, you can exercise with a cup in place, though first you might want to give yourself some time to practice with the cup inserted before you do any strenuous activities. Once you’re confident that you’ve got insertion down, and that the cup is open and in the right place, you can definitely do all your normal activities, from hot yoga to football practice. In the learning period, chances are a little higher that you’ll have a mishap and leak a bit. That isn’t the end of the world! If you exercise a lot, you might want to try a firmer cup, because your vaginal walls are likely a bit stronger than the average person’s.

Can you use a menstrual cup if you have a heavy flow?

You can use a menstrual cup with a heavy flow, but in that case you might have to change the cup more, and you might opt for one with more capacity—if it’s comfortable to wear.

Can you use a menstrual cup if you have a lot of blood clots during your flow?

Yes—in fact, some people like cups exactly for this reason. Tampons and pads are very good at absorbing liquids but not so good at absorbing solids. A cup doesn’t discriminate; it just catches whatever comes out of the cervix. So if you’ve ever pulled out a tampon and found a nice clot sticking to the side of it, a cup might be a better option.

Can you use a menstrual cup if you have a tilted uterus?

Yes. Because the opening of the cup surrounds the cervix, even if your flow tends to wind up on one side of your vagina, the cup will catch it.

Can you use a menstrual cup if you have never had penetrative sex?

Yes, if you can use tampons, you can use a cup. But you might want to opt for a smaller, softer cup.

For an update to this guide, we’re testing the Cora Soft Fit Disc and the Hello Disc. (We previously tested a lower-cost, now-discontinued disc with a pull tab similar to that on the Hello model, from Rhythm.)

We’ll test the Sunny Cup + Applicator kit once it’s widely available. We’re also considering reusable menstrual cup applicators from Ecoblossom and Pixie Cup, among other makers.

Menstrual cups

AllMatters (formerly OrganiCup): The AllMatters cup is, like many on this list, a totally fine cup. The material is soft, and the cup is a bit firmer than others, so it might not be comfortable for people with tight vaginal canals. But we need to take a moment to note some of the marketing for what was previously called the OrganiCup. For one thing, the company promotes the cup as “cruelty-free and using no animal by-products,” which suggests that the other cups in this guide might be using animal by-products. No animal products go into the production of medical-grade silicone, and menstrual cups are not tested on animals. I reached out to The Vegan Society, the body that certified the OrganiCup as vegan, asking for clarification. The representative said that some cups might theoretically be made using oils that could have animal by-products in them. When I asked if they had ever seen a non-vegan menstrual cup before, they said: “We cannot ... conclusively say that the society has not ever refused registration to a menstrual cup as we do not have complete records of applications for products that were not registered. We also would not be able to provide details of companies that have been refused registration owing to client confidentiality.” There’s nothing wrong with the AllMatters cup, but it’s a nice reminder to think about the marketing claims that companies might make.

Blossom Cup: This silicone cup performed well in all our tests. It was easy to insert and remove, and cleaning was no problem. It’s a good cup, but it’s not quite as good as our picks.

CVS Health Menstrual Cup: Of the two silicone cups sold by major pharmacies’ house brands, the CVS cup was the superior version. It’s smoother, and it has a better overall feel than the Walgreens cup (see below). And it’s less expensive, too—at least online.

Flex Cup: Formerly known as the Keela cup, the Flex Cup features an innovative design that aims to make removal easier. Instead of requiring you to reach up into your vaginal canal, pinch the cup, and pull it down and out of your body, this cup has a built-in pull tab that does some of the work for you. The stem of the Flex Cup runs up through the middle of the cup and attaches to the rim. To remove the cup, you pull the loop on the stem down, which pulls the rim of the cup and helps to both break the cup’s seal and pull the cup toward your vaginal opening. Once the cup is low enough, you can grab it with your fingers, pinch it, and remove it the way you would a normal cup. This is a great idea. Unfortunately, in our tests the Flex Cup didn’t work quite as easily as advertised. I had a hard time getting the amount of tension right: If I pulled too hard, I risked yanking the whole cup out by the bottom, flinging blood around. If I pulled too gently, nothing happened. I also encountered leaking through the hole where the stem pull tab threads through the bottom of the cup. A much smaller drawback is that the cup is black. It looks great, but it’s hard to visually examine and make sure it’s clean, especially the inside. I felt as though I needed to use a flashlight to look into the cup and confirm that it was properly cleaned, especially since this cup has more nooks and crannies than others we’ve tested.

Flowette Floweret Valve Menstrual Cup: This cup attempts to solve one of the problems that people often have with cups—emptying them without creating a mess (especially away from home). The idea is an interesting one: The Floweret cup has a valve in the stem that you can pinch to let the cup empty itself into the toilet. In theory this is a good concept. (The Tulip Cup Stem Cup had a similar design.) In practice, I found that emptying the cup via the stem was messier than simply removing it. To access the valve, you have to reach two fingers into your vaginal canal and pinch at the exact right angle to make the slit open. When you do, the blood is likely to run out of the cup and all over your hand instead of into the toilet.

FemmyCycle: These are by far the most unusual cups we tested, and ultimately we decided not to recommend them. FemmyCycle cups feature an internal funnel-like lip to keep the cup from spilling, and they’re far wider and more bulbous than anything else we’ve encountered. Because they have that extra internal layer, they’re much harder to fold into a compact shape for insertion. Plus, the silicone they’re made of is very plasticky, and we found that it caught on skin and made insertion even more difficult.

Fun Cup: This cup looks and feels great. It’s made by Fun Factory, a German company that mostly produces sex toys. And you can tell that it’s designed by people who think about aesthetics, because the silicone is soft to the touch and the design is lovely. Unfortunately, this is a case of form over function: Without a stem, this cup was difficult to remove cleanly. It’s asymmetrical and angled, too, so depending on how you insert it, you might wind up with the lower bit tipped the wrong way, which could cause leakage.

The Honey Pot Company Menstrual Cup: Like many of the others, this cup works just fine. It falls right in the middle in terms of flexibility, it has a nice smooth finish, and it comes with little milliliter labels for inside the cup—though they are very hard to read. The one downside of this cup is that the stem is narrow and hollow, which makes it a pain to clean. If you plan on cutting your cup’s stem down, that might resolve the issue, but I found it annoying to have to make sure nothing was stuck in the tiny opening.

Intimina Lily Cup: This cup has a particularly interesting design. It’s the smoothest and the best feeling of all the cups we tested, as the silicone is impressively soft. But the cup itself is pretty big, and the design makes it a bit harder to use for first-timers. The cup is asymmetrical, which means getting insertion just right takes a bit more practice, but it has a no-spill lip that helped us cut down on messes in our tests. It’s a pretty long cup, so if you have a short vagina, this one probably won’t work for you.

Intimina Lily Cup Compact: This cup seems like a really cool idea, as it collapses into a compact little disc. But in our tests, that feature introduced some flaws. Because the body of the cup has to be able to fold down, we had an especially hard time folding the cup to insert it. This is also the cup with the least resistant silicone that we tested, so if you have a strong vaginal canal, you’ll crush this cup before it can open. In the end, we didn’t think the cup’s collapsibility was worth the other trade-offs this design makes. It’s not as if menstrual cups are gigantic—they’re pretty easy to store in a purse, even in an uncollapsed state.

Intimina Lily Cup One: Much like the Compact version, the Lily Cup One collapses into a flat disc that you can store in the little plastic case that accompanies it. On its website, Intimina says that the Lily Cup One is a good “beginner cup” because the rim is firmer, and because the cup includes “a removal loop to make sure you won’t panic once you need to remove it.” We don’t recommend pulling cups from the loop at the bottom as a general rule, and we found that because of the way the loop is designed, if we tried to remove the cup the recommended way, by pinching, the loop’s design actually made removal harder unless we pinched at a specific angle. The design also features a lot more nooks and crannies, especially at the bottom of the cup, so cleaning is harder.

The Keeper: The rubber Keeper is the same shape as The Moon Cup but just a little firmer. We think medical-grade silicone cups are the best for most people, but if you’d like to try a cup made of rubber, this is your best option. If you’re just looking for a firmer cup, try the MeLuna Sport.

Lunette: The Lunette cup is great. It’s soft and smooth, and it’s easy to fold, grip, and clean. It’s a bit wider than the MeLuna cup, so if the MeLuna cup seems too narrow for you, the Lunette cup could be a good choice.

Mooncup UK (MCUK): This cup is very similar to the cup known as The Moon Cup. The lip on the two cups is almost identical, but The Moon Cup has a rounder and fuller shape, whereas the MCUK is narrower and more tapered, like the MeLuna cup. The MCUK is made of a pearlized material similar to that of the MeLuna, and The Moon Cup is translucent. Overall, the MCUK is more soft and pliable than the MeLuna cup: It’s soft enough to be comfortable and to pop open once inside but firm enough to prevent leaking. Since we tested it, MCUK stopped shipping its menstrual cups to customers in the US.

The Moon Cup: This cup is similar to the MCUK, but it’s made by a different company called The Keeper, Inc. If you know that you like The Moon Cup, and it fits you, but you can’t find it anymore, the MeLuna Classic is the closest alternative we tested. It isn’t a perfect replacement—the MeLuna cup’s defining characteristic is a prominent rim—and it’s a narrower cup than most others. You can figure out what specific size of the MeLuna cup to choose by using its size calculator, but the size closest to The Moon Cup is the large MeLuna cup, which is 51 millimeters long; The Moon Cup is 50 millimeters long.

Oi Girl Cup: If you don’t want a silicone cup and don’t like the MeLuna options, consider this TPE cup from Organic Initiative. If you tried The Keeper and found it to be too firm, the Oi cup might work better for you, as it’s a lot more flexible. It comes in three sizes.

Ruby Cup: The Ruby Cup is a totally serviceable cup in a field of very serviceable cups. We found nothing particularly notable about it and no dealbreakers, either. The stem of the Ruby Cup is thicker than most, which might irritate some people, but otherwise we have nothing special or terrible to say about it. Ruby says it donates a cup “to a person without access to safe period products” for every cup it sells, which is nice.

Saalt Menstrual Cup: The brand’s small and regular cups performed well in our tests. They’re wider, more bell-shaped cups compared with the MeLuna cups we recommend, and they performed nearly identically to our wider-fit pick, the Lena cup. If the Lena cup is unavailable, the Saalt cup is a competent alternative, and it comes in beautiful packaging. Saalt also now makes “soft” versions of its cups, but frankly, we couldn’t feel much of a difference between the “soft” version and the non-soft ones we tested earlier—certainly not enough to see how this version is any better than the previous Saalt cups we’ve tested.

SckoonCup: This model has one of the most pronounced bell shapes of all the cups we tested, with significant flaring at the base. When I inserted the cup into the fake vaginas, I immediately saw that most of the pressure from the cup would be concentrated on that flared ring, which might be uncomfortable for some wearers. The thick ring makes the cup especially easy to open up, though.

Super Jennie: The large Super Jennie cup lives up to its name—it’s really big. Even the “small” Super Jennie, which we also tested, holds more fluid than most large cups. Although the large cup is too big for most people, if you know that you bleed a lot and can comfortably fit a larger cup, it might be right for you. That said, the Super Jennie’s flexible silicone made it less rigid than a lot of the other cups we tried, which made getting this cup to open up in place within our test vaginas harder.

Tampax Cup: Tampax entered the menstrual cup game with cups for “regular” and “heavy” flow. We tested the heavy version, which according to Tampax is “best for Super+ or Ultra tampon users.” This is the largest-capacity cup we’ve tested, and it’s really wide. If you have a heavy flow and you’ve found that even the wide, bell-shaped cups you’ve tried are still too narrow for you, this cup might be worth a last-ditch effort. Otherwise, we’ve concluded that this cup is likely to be uncomfortable for most people.

Walgreens Menstrual Cup: The Walgreens cup was nothing special, and our test unit had an unfortunate sticky plastic feeling even after a few washes. If you really want to buy a store-brand cup at a pharmacy, go to CVS.

Yuuki Menstrual Cup: Yuuki cups come in various firmness options; you can get the Yuuki Soft or the Yuuki Classic. The Yuuki Classic is on the firmer end of the cups we tested, although not as firm as the MeLuna Sport, so if you need a wider and firmer cup, the Yuuki cup is a good choice for you.

Reusable menstrual discs

Cora The Perfect Fit Disc: This disc is close in design to our pick, the Saalt Disc, and if this disc is what you can find in your area, go for it. The original Cora disc is a little smaller than the Saalt Disc, but it works just as well. We’re testing Cora’s Soft Fit Disc and will update this guide with our findings.

Diva Disc: Diva, one of the original cup manufacturers and maker of our pick for people with a high cervix, now makes a disc, as well, but we don’t recommend it. Not only does it not hold nearly as much as some of the other discs available (just 36 mL), but also its design leaves a lot to be desired. The disc has a small strap at the back, ostensibly to help with removal, but we had particular difficulty finding the strap with a finger once the disc was inserted.

Intimina Ziggy Cup 2: An oblong disc, Intimina’s Ziggy disc has a correct orientation for insertion—if you insert it upside down, the disc will be uncomfortable and will leak. It’s also hard to remove. I found that when trying to hook my finger under the Ziggy disc to remove it, I wound up disturbing the contents enough to cause spillage most of the time.

June Menstrual Disc: One of the advantages of a menstrual disc is capacity, but the June disc holds only about as much as a menstrual cup (28 mL for the small version). If you prefer discs but don’t need something that holds as much fluid, the June disc could be a good choice for you. It keeps its shape during insertion, and it’s fairly easy to remove and clean.

Lumma Menstrual Disc: This is the only menstrual disc we’ve considered that has size options—namely, “Short,” “Medium,” and “High,” referring to the height of the cervix. The Lumma disc also has a fairly firm rim, which makes it easier to insert. But the Lumma disc doesn’t feel as soft to the touch as some of the other discs we tested—it has a stickier, more plasticky feel.

Nixit Menstrual Cup: This disc has a double-ribbed rim that makes insertion and removal a little easier—plus, it’s soft to the touch. A tester who used both the Intimina Ziggy disc (see above) and the Nixit disc during penetrative intercourse reported that the two discs performed relatively similarly, but she preferred the Nixit disc as it was easier to remove, and although she could always feel the Intimina Ziggy disc during sex, eventually the Nixit disc was undetectable. The main downside of the Nixit disc is that, at more than $40, it’s one of the most expensive options out there.

Pixie Disc: Most discs are round, but the Pixie Disc is oblong. It was the firmest of the discs we tried—perhaps too firm for some people—and it comes with a string for removal instead of a finger indent or a soft basin. The string works well in theory, but because of the way discs sit right up against the pubic bone, string removals can be dicey. Sometimes it takes a bit of force on the string to move the disc past the pubic bone, at which point you wind up yanking the whole thing out a lot more aggressively than you want and get blood everywhere.

This article was edited by Tracy Vence and Kalee Thompson.