The Best Vacuums for Pet Hair, According to Our Rigorous Home Testing

When it comes to cleaning your home, pet hair adds an extra layer of complexity. It gets worked into carpets and upholstery, clogged up in dust filters and impossibly tangled around vacuum brush rolls. To help minimize these issues, vacuum makers have started producing models that are specially designed to handle pet hair. If you share your home with animals, these cleaning tools are worth the investment.

The best vacuums for pet hair have powerful suction, large dustbins and no-tangle brush rolls, making it much easier to keep your home hair-free. We’ve tested dozens of vacuums, including cordless, upright, hand-held and robot models. These are the best vacuums for pet hair in each category.

Best cordless vacuum for pet hair

Cordless stick vacuums are ideal for quick daily cleaning sessions, and when it comes to pet hair, the Dyson Outsize+ is the top performer. Its dustbin is 150% larger than those on other Dyson cordless vacuums; the 1.9-liter bin can hold an impressive amount of hair and debris before it needs emptying. And its carpet-cleaning head is wider than the standard, allowing you to cover more area with each pass. We particularly love that the floorhead has de-tangling hair removal vanes, which automatically remove long hair from the brush bar as it spins.

While this cordless vacuum is a bit bulkier than other stick models, it’s still easy to maneuver around the floor, and it comes with an arsenal of attachments to clean virtually any surface in your home. The hair screw tool will prove particularly useful for pet owners as its motorized design pulls hair off upholstery in just a few quick passes.

Best upright vacuum for pet hair

For deep cleaning, upright vacuums offer the most power, and they’re particularly effective at pulling dirt, dust and pet hair out of carpeting. If you have a lot of hair to contend with, the Dyson Ball Animal 3 is the way to go. This upright vacuum offers unbeatable suction that makes quick work of any type of debris, and its brush roll has thick, stiff bristles that get deep into rugs, pulling up hair that other vacuums left behind. It’s also equipped with the same handy hair-removal vanes as the Outsize+, above, which prevent long strands from getting tangled up in the floorhead.

The Dyson Ball Animal 3 has a sizable 1.7-liter dustbin and three height settings that you can adjust depending on what type of floor you’re cleaning. However, this vacuum is quite heavy, weighing more than 17 pounds, and the hose is surprisingly stiff, which can make it hard to clean areas like stairs.

Best hand-held vacuum for pet hair

If you need to clean hair out of your car or another hard-to-reach area, a hand-held vacuum is generally the best tool for the job, and in particular, the Black & Decker Dustbuster AdvancedClean—sometimes called the Furbuster—is a pro at tackling unruly pet hair. Its motorized pet tool is able to pull even the most stubborn hair out of car upholstery in just a few passes, and unlike many hand-held models, it has two suction settings in case you need an extra boost of power. The dustbin is substantially larger than many other hand-held vacuums, with a 0.75-liter capacity, and the Dustbuster AdvancedClean can run for up to 30 minutes on its lower setting, allowing you to cover more area on a single charge.

Best robot vacuum for pet hair

Robot vacuums are great for picking up balls of pet hair that gather in the corners of your home, and of all the models we’ve tested, the iRobot Roomba s9+ is the best-equipped to handle copious amounts of fur. As one of the higher-end models from the brand, it has more powerful suction than other robot vacuums, and thanks to its two rubber brush rolls, it was able to pick up the vast majority of pet hair from carpeting in our testing.

This robot vacuum has a self-emptying design, so if its onboard dustbin gets filled with hair, it will navigate back to its base to empty out. This means less daily maintenance is required on your part. We were also impressed by its easy-to-use app. It’s intuitive to navigate and offers a variety of useful features, such as the ability to label individual rooms, create “no-go” areas and set up heavy-traffic zones that need more frequent cleaning.

What to look for when shopping for a vacuum for pet hair

While many vacuums are marketed toward pet owners, some perform better than others. In our experience, there are a few key features you’ll want to look for when selecting a vacuum for pet hair:

• No-tangle brush roll: If your pets have long hair, the strands will often get wrapped around the brush roll of your vacuum and you’ll have to cut the clumps off to keep it working properly. To save yourself the hassle, look for a vacuum with a no-tangle (or anti-tangle) brush roll. These models typically have special vanes that pull hair off the brush roll as it spins—preventing the strands from getting wrapped up in the bristles—and they require far less maintenance on a day-to-day basis. 
• Dustbin capacity: Clumps of pet hair have a larger volume than other debris, so it’s a good idea to select a vacuum with a large dustbin capacity if you have pets. With a large dustbin, you’ll be able to vacuum for longer before having to stop and empty it. (While it can be tempting to just keep cleaning after the dustbin has reached its max capacity line, it’s bad for your vacuum and generally results in decreased suction.) In the case of robot vacuums, look for a self-emptying model that’s able to empty its own dustbin throughout the cleaning cycle. 
• HEPA filters: With pet hair comes pet dander. To keep these allergens out of your home, you’ll want to select a vacuum with a HEPA filter—or at least a multistage filtration system that’s able to capture fine particles. These high-efficiency filters trap all the dirt, dust and dander the vacuum sucks up, keeping the particles from being expelled back out into your home. 
• Motorized pet tool: If you want to clean pet hair off furniture, we recommend looking for a vacuum with a motorized pet tool. These attachments have a small spinning brush roll that helps pull hair out of upholstery. We’ve found that motorized tools are faster and more effective than nonmotorized ones.