We created this guide in 2014, a decade ago. In that time we’ve tested some 120 bottles over many hundreds of hours of personal testing, panel testing, and research.

For this guide, we’ve done the following over the years:

• We’ve spoken or emailed with a lot of experts, including Wesley Johnson, a cryogenics research engineer at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, for insight into how double-walled insulation works, as well as urban planner Josselyn Ivanov, who wrote her master’s thesis on the decline of publicly available water, aka drinking fountains, for MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning.
• Across five different writers, including, most recently, Sam Schild and Eve O’Neill, whose reporting still appears throughout the current guide, we’ve seen countless (even beyond the 120 we’ve chosen for testing) iterations of the same object, from the hard-plastic Nalgene bottle that steamrolled college campuses in the 2000s to a $5,000-plus Chanel bottle that looks freshly looted from Blackbeard’s treasure chest.
• I asked a panel of paid testers with mobility and hand-strength issues to compare some of our picks and look for problems and design qualities that we may have otherwise missed. Their input was invaluable to us as we made several of the selections for this guide.
• Like all Wirecutter journalists, I review and test products with complete editorial independence. I’m never made aware of any business implications of my editorial recommendations. Read more about our editorial standards.

These bottles are for anyone who’s thirsty.

Water is a need that unites the world. So almost anyone should benefit from having a dependable water bottle that they love. Assuming that the bottle isn’t frequently lost and replaced, carrying a reusable water bottle is much better for the environment and way more cost-effective than buying bottled water.

In 2014 nearly 64% of all bottled water sold in the US was nothing more than pricey, prepackaged tap water (PDF). And that’s a trend that hasn’t declined (PDF) in the past decade.

On top of that, every day in the US, more than 60 million plastic bottles are thrown away—bottles that, in 2007, required somewhere between 32 million and 54 million barrels of oil, according to a study published in the journal Environmental Research Letters (PDF). That’s roughly 2,000 times as much as the energy cost of producing tap water.

Any way you look at it, bottled water is a scam of convenience. Opt out of being a mark with a refillable bottle all your own.

Size options (ounces): 24, 32, 40, 64
Lids available: Flex Chug Cap (included), Flex Cap, Flex Sip Lid, Flex Straw Cap
Dishwasher-safe: yes, but hand-washing is recommended

Reliable and versatile, the Hydro Flask 24 oz Wide Mouth with Flex Chug Cap is best for people who favor simple objects that do one thing well—whether you’re sitting at a desk, commuting on a subway, or working out at the gym.

A Hydro Flask bottle—of any kind—is reliable. This insulated, double-walled stainless steel water bottle has a powder-coated exterior (a permanent, lightly textured coating) and a plastic cap. As with all our insulated picks, its steel core means that, unlike some aluminum competitors, this bottle won’t dent easily when dropped. Unlike glass bottles, this bottle won’t have issues with the bottom cracking. And unlike plastic bottles, it won’t deteriorate while in use. We’ve chosen Hydro Flask bottles for this guide since we first published it in 2014. Hydro Flask has had an excellent track record through our years of testing, and it backs its bottles with a limited lifetime warranty.

The cap fully covers the mouth of the bottle. Though we strongly recommend any variation of Hydro Flask’s bottle, we prefer the model with the Flex Chug Cap because, unlike the standard mouth design (our previous pick), it completely covers and protects the surface you put to your lips when you drink. You can use this bottle shape with three other lids, as well: the Flex Cap, the Flex Sip Lid (for hot drinks), and the Flex Straw Cap. We tested all of them, and they all work well, but we prefer the Flex Chug Cap for its simplicity and coverage. All Hydro Flask caps are also BPA-free.

Wider is better for most folks. A wide-mouthed bottle is easier to fill with water, either at a fountain or beneath a spout. We tested our preferred 24-ounce size, but this bottle comes in sizes all the way up to 64 ounces. No matter which size you choose, the wide mouth is easy to fill with ice of any size or shape, especially when the ice is ejected forcefully from a fridge dispenser.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

• The Flex Chug Cap does not stay attached to the bottle. If you’re prone to losing caps (or things in general), you may prefer our pick from Takeya.
• We like the ease of filling this wide bottle. However, if you don’t ice your drinks or prefer a narrower, tapered metal brim from which to drink, the standard mouth design may be for you. The standard mouth mimics the rim of a glass better than the lip on any other steel bottle we tested.

Size options (ounces): 18, 22, 24, 32, 40, 64
Lids available: Spout Lid (included), Straw Lid
Dishwasher-safe: yes, but hand-washing is recommended

Secure and well made, with an included rubber base, the Takeya 24oz Actives Water Bottle with Spout Lid is great for anyone but best for the clumsy or forgetful.

It all starts with an excellent attached lid. This double-walled, stainless steel bottle is marketed to gym-goers. But even if you’re not seeking a water bottle for working out, the Takeya Actives bottle has a lid that’s a total standout. The plastic top features a spout with a twist-on flip cap. Spout lids flow as easily as if you were drinking from an open glass, yet they won’t splash you with the bottle’s contents as you’re cantering down the sidewalk or powering through a sweaty treadmill workout.

The spout lid on the Takeya Actives bottle stands out because you can lock it after you flip it open, so it doesn’t hit your face. And when it’s closed, it covers the drinking surface completely. Takeya also offers a Straw Lid, which you can purchase separately. We tested the Straw Lid, and it was leak-free; we recommend getting one if you primarily want to drink from this bottle while driving.

It’s wide enough for you to add ice or extras. The whole thing twists off to reveal a 2.25-inch-wide mouth opening, so you can add whatever you like—load the bottle with ice, add an electrolyte powder, plop in some lemon wedges. This diameter is pretty standard, though, across all the bottles we tested with wide-access caps, such as the Hydro Flask bottle.

It’s well protected from falls, and that feature doesn’t cost extra. A silicone rubber boot, or base, comes standard on this bottle and prevents it from slipping or making noise on hard surfaces. The bottle is also backed by a limited lifetime warranty. Takeya’s website lists the lid as being BPA-free, and it’s top-rack dishwasher-safe. But hand-washing is recommended for the body.

It’s well sized and leak-free. We originally tested this bottle in the 22-ounce size. Over the years—and maybe it’s just due to the average size of water bottles increasing in diameter—we’ve started to prefer the slightly larger 24-ounce size, which still fits in most cup holders and backpack pockets. Also, maybe we’re splitting hairs here, but something about that extra 2 ounces seems to mark the divide between a tease and a proper thirst-slaking amount of water. If you prefer, the bottle comes in both larger and smaller sizes, too, from 18 to 64 ounces. All of the Takeya bottle sizes we’ve tested have proved to be leak-free.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

• We’ve found very little not to love about this design. This is a bottle that we think everyone can be happy with.
• You may be wondering why this bottle isn’t our first choice. By the narrowest margin—narrower than even the difference between the bottles’ spouts—we found that people tended to prefer the feel of the Hydro Flask bottle against their mouth while drinking. Plus, for people who prefer occasionally drinking right from a bottle’s rim, forgoing the cap entirely, the Hydro Flask model is the clear winner, as its rim feels like holding a water glass to your lips. That said, both are excellent water bottles and do exactly what you need, which is to keep water cold without leaking.

Size options (ounces): 12, 16, 20, 32
Lids available: TKWide Twist Cap (included), TKWide Chug Cap, TKWide Loop Cap, TKWide Café Cap, TKWide Straw Cap
Dishwasher-safe: yes, but hand-washing is recommended

If you want a bottle that’s easy to open and simple to sip from, the Klean Kanteen 20 oz TKWide Insulated Water Bottle with Twist Cap is a great choice.

It has a great straw that’s easy to open. This bottle’s integrated silicone straw is set inside a twisting cap. When the cap is closed, the straw stays safely tucked away and protected from the elements, but a simple twist pops the straw out. (Inside the bottle, the silicone straw connects to a longer metal straw.) Closed, the cap is completely leak-free, making this bottle an ideal driving companion—it fits in a cup holder and is easy to sip from while you’re keeping your eyes on the road. Our testing panel also found the straw lid the easiest to access with a variety of dexterity limitations.

It’s easy to drink from. If you have daily hydration goals, there’s something about a straw that makes it easy to consume the 20, 30, or 40 ounces of water you have ahead of you. We tested this bottle in the 20-ounce size, which was the closest to our preferred 24 ounces, but this Klean Kanteen bottle also comes in both larger and smaller sizes. We also liked the 32-ounce size, which would be easy to fill once (or twice) and to position next to your laptop, where you could easily grab it and hit your goal for the day.

It has decent alternative lids. You can swap out the lid for four others from Klean Kanteen: the TKWide Chug Cap, TKWide Loop Cap, TKWide Café Cap, and TKWide Straw Cap. We found the Loop Cap to be a decent alternative if you want a standard water bottle, and the Chug Cap could easily make this Klean Kanteen model a runner-up to our pick from Takeya. But we were a little less impressed with the Café Cap and the Straw Cap, both of which leaked at times.

It comes with a mission. Klean Kanteen offers a lifetime limited warranty against defects in the manufacturing and materials; the company will replace defective items. And Klean Kanteen is a B-Corp with Climate Neutral Certification (though we remain skeptical as to whether that neutrality is based on carbon offsets). The company is also a member of the 1% for the Planet pledge, with a general mission to increase sustainability in the world.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

• The twist cap, silicon lip, and internal metal straw can be a little fiddly to clean.
• In the past, we’ve had issues with Klean Kanteen bottles leaking. The straw lid on this model stands out for its unique design and simple deployment, but we have so far experienced one small leak while traveling with the bottle. We’re looking even closer at the design now, but we’re still confident that it’s the best currently available bottle with an integrated straw.

Size options (ounces): 12, 22, 32, 40
Lids available: stainless-steel-lined lid (included)
Dishwasher-safe: yes

If you’d rather not drink out of metal or plastic, or if you simply enjoy the heft and presence of a glass bottle, the Purifyou Glass Water Bottle is a lovely choice.

It’s a glass bottle that doesn’t cut corners. We recognize that some people just don’t want plastic touching their water. A major reason this bottle outperformed all the other glass options is that it’s the only one we found with a metal-lined cap rather than some form of plastic. The simple utility of a finger loop on the cap was a pleasant surprise—it made the repetitive task of opening and closing the cap that much easier, compared with standard round caps.

The narrow lip is better for some people. We also like the small mouth on this bottle, specifically. When you drink from a wide-mouth glass bottle, it can seem as if you’re drinking out of a jar. The downside is that the Purifyou bottle—unlike our insulated picks—is too narrow to accommodate ice cubes. But a glass bottle can’t retain heat or cold anyway, so that isn’t really a problem. We tested and liked the dimensions of the 22-ounce bottle, though it won’t fit in many cup holders since the base is 3.25 inches wide. The body’s center is a little wide too, and it isn’t tapered like some others, but we had no problem holding it.

It’s glass, but not just any glass. The Purifyou bottle is made of borosilicate glass, and that makes it special. Borosilicate glass resists thermal shock, so if you take the bottle out of a hot dishwasher and fill it with cold or room-temperature water, it will resist shattering better than bottles made of common soda-lime glass. In addition, its integrated silicone sleeve helps to guard against the occasional bump (although it won’t stand up to being repeatedly dropped like our steel-core picks). Purifyou offers warranty coverage for all manufacturing defects and will replace the bottle if it “breaks within the first year” if you register online.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

• Glass bottles are limiting. They’re excellent for carrying room-temperature water and that’s it, since they are poor insulators.
• Glass bottles aren’t as durable as other options, despite being heavier.
• If you’re looking for an environmentally friendly option, note that neither the silicone sleeve nor the cap on this bottle is recyclable, since the cap is made from two materials fused into one. If you have environmental concerns, the best approach is to buy a bottle that you know you will use for a long time.

Size options (ounces): 10 (Maker), 18 (Mover), 32 (Founder)
Lids available: Element Top (twist lid), Union Top (spout lid), Scope Top (café lid)
Dishwasher-safe: no

If you notice that odors or flavors in your old water bottle don’t go away, if you want a bottle that looks like a design object, or if you want one bottle that can hold both hot and cold drinks, the Purist Mover 18oz is the perfect choice.

It’s great if you like ice water one day and hot coffee the next. The 18-ounce Purist Mover is a drink bottle designed within an inch of its life. While its exterior is stainless steel, its interior is glass. Unlike traditional glass vacuum linings, the Purist Mover’s is unbreakable (and so minimal that you can barely notice it) because it’s applied as a thin, spray-on coating. You get the benefits of a glass bottle minus the weight and potential breakage, plus it keeps drinks hot or cold. In our tests, this bottle was as tough as our non-glass picks, yet we didn’t experience any taste-transfer issues as we occasionally did with stainless steel and plastic models.

It lasts for years. We’ve had this bottle in testing for five years, including one episode where we left it under a car seat for a month with kombucha in it. Someone finally got the courage to open the bottle and clean it out, and the next day a bottle full of water tasted like water and nothing else. Wirecutter’s Tim Barribeau—who is pathologically averse to the taste of coffee—found that even after cold-brew concentrate sat in the Purist Mover for a weekend, water came out tasting fresh after a simple wash of the bottle. Some tastes and smells lingered in the flip-top lid, but those disappeared after a good scrub. Purist offers a two-year warranty that covers manufacturing defects.

It’s customizable. Purist offers three lids that work with this water bottle: the simple, screw-top Element Top, the flip-spout Union Top, and the Scope Top, a café lid designed for hot beverages. The lip of the bottle is somewhat thick, so if drinking from a thick-walled bottle would bother you, we recommend either the Union Top or the Scope Top. Though 18-ounce bottles can feel small, the Mover can hold more than advertised. The Union Top spout cap is hollow and raised above the top of the bottle, in contrast with the flat Element Top, which plunges downward. As a result, using the Union Top, you can fill the bottle to the brim; we did, and that’s when we discovered that the bottle can hold up to 21 ounces. Purist also sells bottles in smaller and larger sizes, up to 32 ounces.

Purist has a lifetime warranty that covers manufacturing defects.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

• This bottle is clunky to drink from if you use only the twist-off Element Top. So if you’re going to invest in a Purist bottle, we recommend getting the Union Top spout lid or the Scope Top, Purist’s version of a café cap. The Union Top is tricky to open due to its tight seal, but we found that if we pinched both sides of the spout, the cover popped off easily.
• The bottle is a little small at 18 ounces and a little large at 32 ounces. Personally, if Purist’s bottle were the only one I could own, I’d pick the 32-ounce size, the Founder. The shape of it is impractical, though, if you want to put it in a car’s cup holder, for instance.
• It’s also our most expensive pick. But considering its special lining made to stop flavor transfers, as well as its sleek look, we think this bottle could be worth its high price.

If you want more size options: Consider the Yeti Rambler 26 oz Water Bottle. We decided not to make it a pick because of its high cost per ounce compared with the Hydro Flask bottle. But it comes in a larger variety of sizes—18, 26, 36, 46, and 64 ounces—and has a similar well-protected drinking spout.

If you’re traveling by air: Consider the Slim Stainless Steel Memobottle, which is uniquely shaped—long and slender, like a pencil case—to take up less room in your personal-item bag than a traditional water bottle. However, it’s expensive and not great for general use: The bottle’s contoured bottom prevents it from standing on its own, and it certainly won’t sit snugly in a standard cup holder.

If you’re set on getting a collapsible travel bottle: Consider the Nomader Collapsible Water Bottle, which was our travel pick in 2018. It has stood the test of time, whereas other travel bottles have sprung leaks. If you must have a travel bottle, this one is the easiest to fill and drink from. Our big concern is that this bottle doesn’t roll down particularly small, so it’s up to you to decide whether the tiny space savings are worth paying for.

If you want a classic plastic bottle: Consider the Nalgene Wide Mouth Sustain Water Bottle, which is inexpensive, indestructible, and lightweight. For a decade now, we’ve been talking about why this bottle isn’t one of our picks. In day-to-day life, it’s sort of annoying. You can’t drink out of it while walking, its attached cap gets in your face, and it doesn’t fit in a cup holder or a backpack pocket. Out there in the wild, it’s the ultimate weapon. Back here in the urban jungle, it’s just kind of a klutz.

If you want a spout lid on a lightweight, plastic bottle: After a reimagining of the lid on the CamelBak Chute Mag 25oz Bottle—resulting in the addition of a magnet to keep the lid open and out of the way while you’re drinking—we can’t find any serious negatives for this bottle, other than its plastic construction. If you’re okay with that, you may like this bottle.

The Owala FreeSip has a remarkable online following, maybe not quite as large but certainly just as fervent as that of the Stanley Quencher. When we started testing it, it became clear why people love this bottle so much: It’s inexpensive, easy to use with one hand while you’re driving, and adaptable. Throw in unusual color palettes and limited-edition releases, and you have quite the formula for online success. Our only hesitation is the lightweight spring release of the cap, which we fear may break over time. We hear you, Owala fans, but we’re not ready to recommend this bottle without further long-term stress testing—which we’re doing right now.

There are so many water bottles in the world that it’s helpful for us to outline what we don’t consider, as well as what we do. Some vessels could easily serve as water bottles, but because of their included caps (travel-mug caps) or their available sizes (limited to smaller capacities), they are more suited to hot drinks. If that’s what you’re looking for, we have a guide to travel mugs for hot beverages.

In evaluating water bottles, we look for the following:

• Build quality: When we encounter bottles with a pattern of complaints about build quality, usability, or leakage, we drop them from our list of possible test candidates.
• Customer support: We also eliminate bottles made by companies that appear to have an opaque supply chain or no online presence outside of an Amazon listing. In any category, if we recommend a product, we want to make sure that you won’t have a problem finding one to buy. And if a product is defective, you should be able to contact the manufacturer so that the company can make it right.
• No leaks: We fill each bottle with water dyed with food coloring. Then we place the bottle on its side over a paper towel for 24 hours and watch for leaks. Our leak test also takes into account how the lid seats on the bottle. We believe that good design is human-centered design, and that you should be able to simply screw the top back on, no particular care taken, and trust that the bottle is properly closed.
• Ability to stay cold: We perform temperature tests with the goal of seeing which bottle keeps its contents the coldest for the longest. What we’ve found in years of testing is that almost every insulated bottle performs to within a few degrees of its competition. There are exceptions, but they’re rare. Companies love to make claims about how long a bottle can keep something hot or cold, but they all work basically the same.
• The right bottle proportions: After several years of testing, we’re convinced that 20- to 24-ounce bottles are the perfect size. Although bottles under 20 ounces are wonderfully portable, the contents get consumed quickly. And bottles over 24 ounces begin to get comically large, either obtrusively rotund or excessively tall. The latter, especially, can be very easy to knock over, and they don’t stay upright in cup holders—if they fit at all—because they’re top-heavy.
• The best drinking experience: Think about the lip. If you’re drinking directly from the bottle, what is that experience like? What about if you’re trying to drink out of it while walking? Or if you’re drinking from it in a car? On top of that, due to reader comments, we’ve been tracking whether the cap of a bottle covers the drinking surface completely or leaves it exposed. Some people are concerned about bacteria getting onto the lip of their bottle via contact with their hands or with sweaty gym clothes.

Once we found the water bottles that met the above criteria, we put them to the test. We performed our leak and temperature tests to compare the bottles, but we also subjected them to daily use at the gym, at the office, and at home, on airplanes, in cars, and on walks, and anywhere else we might find ourselves thirsty.

Metal bottles

Coleman FreeFlow Autoseal 40 oz Stainless Steel Water Bottle: We passed on this bottle for the same reason we pass on most trigger bottles—it has a relatively elaborate cap that needs detailed cleaning.

Corkcicle Classic Canteen: This bottle performed well in every regard, but its cap is the smallest of those on the various bottles we tested. In fact, the cap was so small, we were afraid we’d lose it.

Corkcicle Series A Sport Canteen: This bottle performed poorly in our insulation tests. Also, though it didn’t leak during testing, we thought the quick-sip lid was too prone to human error to be genuinely leakproof.

Healthy Human 21oz Stainless Steel Water Bottle: Several of these bottles leaked in our testing.

Klean Kanteen Classic Water Bottle with Sport Cap: This bottle has had small leaks throughout our years of testing. That history was the source of our biggest hesitation about recommending the Klean Kanteen TKWide with the Twist Cap, but the TKWide’s straw design, ease of use, and overall praise from our testing panel nudged it into the mix—for now.

Klean Kanteen Classic Insulated Bottle with Pour Through Cap: Though the new lid’s dual gaskets fixed the bottle’s leaking problem, opening the pour-through cap took us twice as many turns in comparison with most other bottles. This bottle works better for carrying hot drinks to pour into a smaller cup. Plus, the cap is metal, as is the bottle, and everyone who tested this model hated the metal-on-metal sound of the cap threading onto the bottle.

Simple Modern Summit Water Bottle 32 oz: This bottle leaked through the threads when we left it on its side overnight.

Stanley Quik Flip Go Bottle: This is one of the few flip-top bottles we’ve found that have a lock to secure the top. But this bottle is especially tall and unwieldy. It would make a better thermos than a water bottle.

S’well Original Bottle: This bottle insulates as well as our insulated picks, and it has been watertight in all our tests. If you like it, go for it. Keep in mind, though, that S’well bottles, unless they’re on sale, are more expensive at every capacity than almost anything else we’ve seen.

Glass bottles

Ello Syndicate 20 oz Glass Water Bottle: This bottle has a cap problem, with reports of mold building up.

Glasstic 16oz Clear Glass: This bottle suffered from extensive scuffing during our drop tests.

Lifefactory 22 oz Glass Water Bottle: The wide mouth was awkward to drink out of—it felt like drinking out of a jar. Also, the standard lid is watertight but made of plastic, a concern for many people seeking glass bottles.

Collapsible bottles

Hydaway Collapsible Water Bottle: This model was a pick years ago, but we received feedback both from people who loved it and from others who hated it. Such mixed reports convinced us that this bottle wasn’t a reliable recommendation for most travelers.

Vapur 1L Wide Mouth Anti-Bottle: The cap leaked when we applied lateral torsion.

Plastic bottles

CamelBak Podium 21oz Bike Bottle: A former pick, this lightweight squeeze bottle is cheap enough that if the TSA agent makes you ditch it at the airport, you won’t be heartbroken. But the CamelBak Chute is a little more practical for most people.

Takeya 24oz Tritan Water Bottle: This is a version of our attached-cap pick made from a BPA-free Tritan. It offers all of the same attributes as our pick but in a lightweight and non-insulated plastic. We dismissed it because a plastic bottle shouldn’t cost as much as this one does.

Yeti Yonder 34 oz Water Bottle: This is a plastic version of the Yeti Rambler, our insulated alternative to our top pick. But you pay extra for the name; plastic bottles everywhere else are far less expensive.

If you’re drinking anything besides water, gunk will build up in your bottle over time, so you’ll need to clean it occasionally. The best way to do that is to use a bottle brush and some baking soda and vinegar.

After several hours of research, we found that the best bottle-cleaning set is the OXO Good Grips Water Bottle Cleaning Set. This dishwasher-safe kit offers a large bottle brush, a skinny straw brush, and a looped, detail-cleaning brush, all kept together on a handy ring so you don’t lose any parts. We bought a couple of sets to confirm their quality, and they are as good as we thought they would be.

This article was edited by Ria Misra and Christine Ryan.