Best Vacuums for Pet Hair, Tested and Reviewed

Upright vacuums are a good choice if you have a lot of carpet and area rugs in your home because they tend to be better than canister vacuums at cleaning carpets.​​ These highly rated models earn top-level marks on vacuuming pet hair and bare floors.

If you have stairs in your home, a canister vacuum may be a good option. This configuration is easier to use on stairs than a traditional upright because its weight is distributed between the powerhead and the canister. In addition to earning excellent scores for cleaning up pet hair, these two models have very good hose suction strength. 

Stick vacuums are lightweight and easy to pull out of a closet. They’re great for quick messes, and their cleaning power has improved in recent years. Here are two picks from the corded and cordless stick vacuums we’ve tested that earn excellent scores for picking up pet hair.

Handheld vacuums aren’t designed for heavy cleaning. They’re best for whisking up cereal from under a high chair or off the floor mats in your car. Few can truly tackle pet hair, but here are some notable exceptions. These models also earn very good marks in our carpet tests and are even more impressive at cleaning debris from bare floors. 

CR doesn’t collect reliability or satisfaction data on this type of vacuum because consumers tend to replace rather than repair handheld vacs, given their relatively modest price.

Robovacs have improved and become less expensive since we first began testing them several years ago. More models now also come with mopping abilities.

The highly rated models below received top scores in our pet hair tests. They’re easy to use and especially effective at cleaning bare floors. We’ve included in our recommendations below a model that’s vacuum-only and a combo unit that offers both vacuum and mopping functions.

To see how well vacuums pick up pet hair, we devised a pet hair lab test for full-sized upright and canister vacuums. Technicians take 5 grams of long, feathery fur from Maine Coon cats and scatter, stomp, and smash it into a medium-pile carpet.

Then we make multiple passes with each vacuum. Models that get top ratings collect all the fur in a bag or bin. Average vacuums leave behind visible patches, or the fur becomes entangled in the brush. 

We also test smaller vacuums (robotic, stick, and handheld models) for pet hair pickup. Because we don’t expect them to clean as thoroughly as a full-sized vacuum, we use a bit less cat hair in our tests. In other words, we design our tests to challenge the cleaning capabilities of each type of vacuum we rate.

Given the fuzzy claims about a vacuum’s ability to whisk away what our furry friends leave behind, we filter vacuums down to models that get top marks in performance ratings across our pet hair and other key tests. If you’re sensitive to pet hair, we suggest a bagged vacuum over a bagless model because every time you empty a bagless bin, the fur can fly.