The Best Shower Cleaners of 2026

Written by
Mark Brezinski, senior writer who's been testing and reviewing products for over a decade.
Natalie Nguyen, writer and editor of tech and lifestyle products and Oxford comma enthusiast.

Updated March 5, 2025

You can't get yourself clean in a dirty shower. Soap scum and hard water stains can cling to your tiles and grout, making everything feel slimy and gross. The solution? A shower cleaner that gets your shower sparkling clean.

We tested a batch of the most popular shower cleaners on the market, cleaning soap scum and grime off of shower walls of all types—tile, grout, plastic, metal, and glass. We also considered other factors, such as the spray pattern, antimicrobial properties, and how much you’ll pay per ounce to clean your bathroom.

Once the soap scum was scoured away, two cleaners stood out from the pack. The Clorox Clean-Up Cleaner Spray (available at Walmart) has the best raw stain-fighting power on tough stains, and is easily the best shower cleaner on the market. The OxiClean Foam-Tastic Bathroom Cleaner (available at Walmart) is not too far behind our top pick as an affordable alternative. Both cleaners excelled at the various surfaces we tested, scrubbing stubborn stains off grout and leaving streak-free shine on glass shower doors.

Other Shower Cleaners We Tested

Scrubbing Bubbles Bathroom Grime Fighter

The Scrubbing Bubbles Bathroom Grime Fighter and its iconic mascot rank squarely in the middle of the pack on cleaning power. The initial swipe left more of the stain behind than other cleaners. Still, we didn’t have to scrub particularly hard to get every surface looking spotless.

While we generally like foaming action shower cleaner sprays, we were a bit underwhelmed by Scrubbing Bubbles’s performance. The foam barely puffed up compared to its competitors, and it was very runny. Still, the foaming action it did display seemed to help it clean out grout with one fewer swipe than the average cleaner.

While we had no issue with its test results, this cleaner is more expensive than its competitors.

Pros

• Decent cleaning power

Cons

• More pricy per ounce than cleaners with similar performance

• Foaming action is very mild

Buy now at Amazon

$4.08 from Walmart

Better Life Tub and Tile Cleaner

While not the best nontoxic option on this list, the Better Life Natural Tub and Tile Cleaner still outperformed some cleaners that rely on more harmful chemicals.

While this shower cleaner left a moderate amount of streaks and residue on a first pass, we could clean up the straggler stains with a minimum of subsequent scrubs.

Better Life has a standard spray bottle design that works fine. We also like its thin spray pattern, which provides good coverage. It drips a little but isn’t too runny.

Where this Better Life shower cleaner really shines is in its value as a nontoxic option. While other nontoxic options on this list may have more cleaning power, they also cost almost twice as much as the Better Life does.

If you want a budget-friendly, nontoxic cleaner without too much cleaning power, Better Life Natural Tub and Tile Cleaner is a good pick.

Pros

• A good value for a nontoxic cleaner

Cons

• Requires a bit more effort to scrub out stains

Buy now at Amazon

Ecos Plant-powered Bathroom Cleaner

The Ecos shower cleaner works well enough, but simply doesn’t pack the same punch as traditional cleaners. It took quite a few swipes to scrub away our test stains, and glass surfaces required a bit of polishing to remove lingering streaks and haze. It cleans bathroom surfaces, but it takes about 10% longer.

In terms of its bottle, the one non-standard feature is that its nozzle can be set to either mist or stream—we recommend sticking with mist.

One of the best qualities of this best shower cleaner product is its low cost per ounce—the lowest out of all the products we tested.

If you’re looking for a powerful cleaner, the Ecos isn’t the best choice on this list, though we do recommend it as a cheap, nontoxic option.

Pros

• Inexpensive

• Nontoxic

Cons

• Doesn't cut through stains as well as other options

Buy now at Amazon

Microban 24 Hour Multi-Purpose Cleaner

Microban 24-hour Bathroom Cleaner and Sanitizing Spray keeps a surface free from bacterial growth for up to 24 hours; it’s not the best in terms of raw cleaning power.

We found this daily shower cleaner needed more scrubbing than average to fully erase our test stains. Glass surfaces require a bit of a polish afterward to remove streaks.

The cleaner comes in a standard spray bottle, with a medium-density spray that was too runny for accurate spot-cleaning.

Microban has a good claim on being the best antimicrobial cleaner in the business. However, if you’re looking to cut through gunk, look elsewhere.

Pros

• Can offer 24-hour protection from bacteria

Cons

• Requires more effort to scrub out stains

Buy now at Amazon

CLR Routine Clean Brilliant Bath Foaming Action Cleaner

This one surprised us. CLR Brilliant Bath Foaming Action Cleaner fell behind all of the other options we tested and failed to live up to the CLR reputation.

Its cleaning power just doesn’t measure up. It took the CLR eight swipes to clear grime off tile, compared to the overall average of four swipes for the same results.

The CLR’s spray is a mixed bag. It creates a thick, foamy, dollop when sprayed, which we generally prefer to runny formulas. Unfortunately, it still manages to be runny. The whole blob of foam tends to slide down surfaces, away from where you sprayed it.

Add a slightly above-average price to its below-average performance, and it isn’t a particularly compelling purchase.

It is possible that it’s formulated more specifically for the calcium, lime, and rust (as implied by its name), which we didn’t test for. If you need a cleaner that excels in these areas, it’s possible CLR is right for you. As a more general-purpose cleaner? We don’t recommend it.

Pros

• Foaming spray

• Good at getting grime off grout

Cons

• Poor cleaning performance for its price

Buy now at Amazon

$3.94 from Walmart

$4.19 from Target

How We Tested Shower Cleaners

The Tests

Since showers are made up of different materials, we made sure to test each of our best shower cleaners on the gamut: plastic, tile, grout, glass, and metal. To do this, we marked out swatches on each surface or set of surfaces. This helped us isolate each spray’s performance and cross-compare the swatches after each individual swipe with a sudsed-up sponge.

The stains we chose to test were soap scum and a general sticky grime (similar to the smudge a child may leave behind after eating a PB&J). We used fans to dry each stain onto each surface, to ensure they were as difficult as possible to clean.

How to Choose the Best Shower Cleaner for You

What is the Best Shower Cleaner for Mold and Mildew?

Mold and mildew are best snuffed out sooner than later. Not only will the mold’s spores lower your indoor air quality, it can also eat away at your grout over time, much like it does on vinyl siding. So, what’s the best shower cleaner for destroying these biological invaders?

If your first thought was “something antibacterial,” you’d be surprised. Antibacterial cleaners only fight bacteria, but mold and mildew are actually fungus.

The secret in fighting mold and mildew is to make your bathroom inhospitable to their growth in the first place. Mold and mildew need a damp environment, which your bathroom provides after a steamy shower.

Make sure the room is well-ventilated and that humidity can dissipate quickly. Consider getting a fan or a dehumidifier if you’re still having trouble keeping the area dry.

What is the Best Shower Cleaner for Glass?

Glass is a notoriously difficult surface to clean. Glass cleaners need to scrub away splotches and grime, but they need to dry perfectly clear. Hazy residues that may go unnoticed on an opaque surface are going to look like a fog bank on glass.

Surprisingly, all of the shower cleaners we tested were able to wipe clean for a streak-free shine. Some took more effort to get everything clean, but our testing indicated that all of the cleaners could give your shower’s glass door a spotless sheen.

What is the Best Shower Cleaner for Hard-Water Stains?

Hard-water stains happen when water that’s rich in calcium and/or magnesium is allowed to dry on a surface, resulting in a small deposit of those excess minerals.

Since we’re dealing with hardened minerals here, these stains can be difficult to scrub out—if you don’t have the correct tool.

Fortunately, the correct tool is cheap and easy: common white vinegar. Scrub the surface with a roughly 50/50 mixture of vinegar and water and your white scale deposits should melt away.

Keep in mind, however, that the stains are just a symptom of the larger hard water problem. Fortunately, it’s also relatively easy to fix hard water.

How to Clean Shower Curtains

One surface we didn’t test with for this round-up is the sort of porous plastic material that’s common to shower curtains. The reason? They’re incredibly difficult to clean manually, and the effort isn’t really worth it. Instead, we recommend using a washing machine for a much more thorough and efficient cleaning.

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