Pick My Pool Cleaner
Four questions, in this order. Each one eliminates a large part of the market, and the first one eliminates the most. Prices on the pages below were live on November 6, 2026.
By Mike M. · Published November 6, 2026 · Last updated November 6, 2026
Question 1: how big is your pool?
Start here, because this is the gate that cannot be recovered from. Measure the longest dimension and the floor area. A machine rated below your pool’s area does not fail dramatically — it covers roughly 70% and parks, and the part it misses is the same part every cycle.
Add about 70% to your floor area if you want the walls cleaned too: a 16 × 32 ft pool is 512 sq ft of floor and roughly 900 sq ft of wetted surface.
| Your pool | Start here | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Spa, hot tub, or under ~150 sq ft | Handheld vacuums | A three-minute hand job. No robot fits a hot tub, and buying one for a plunge pool is overkill. |
| Small, under ~1,000 sq ft | Small-pool cleaners | High wall-to-floor ratio, so wall coverage matters more here than in a big pool. Everything else is overspend. |
| Standard, 1,000-2,000 sq ft | The master roundup | Every machine on this site is a candidate. Go to question 2. |
| Large, over ~2,000 sq ft or 40 ft long | Large-pool cleaners | Completion beats capability. Most cordless machines will not finish; corded has no runtime limit. |
Question 2: what kind of pool is it?
Pool type decides weight, wall behavior and whether a cable can reach the water at all. It is not a detail: an inground flagship in an Intex pool genuinely performs worse than a $130 floor robot, because the floor flexes under its weight and the soft wall gives it nothing to climb.
| Your pool | Go to | The constraint |
|---|---|---|
| Inground | Inground cleaners | Everything is a candidate. Shape then decides whether camera mapping is worth paying for. |
| Above-ground, rigid wall | Above-ground cleaners | Debris collects in the cove, the wall is thin liner, and you lift the machine over it. Light wins. |
| Intex, Bestway or soft-sided | Intex and soft-sided | The floor flexes and the wall deflects. Wall climbing cannot work — do not pay for it. |
Question 3: what is the surface?
Surface decides brush compound and track grip, and the right answer genuinely inverts between the two extremes. Rough pebble grips beautifully and destroys brushes in a season; slick gelcoat is gentle on brushes and defeats climbing entirely.
| Your surface | Go to | What changes |
|---|---|---|
| Vinyl liner | Vinyl liner cleaners | A liner is a $4,000-6,000 consumable. Brush compound is a real risk; never anything stainless. |
| Pebble, PebbleTec-style or rough gunite | Pebble and gunite | Effectively sandpaper. Brush price and availability matter more than any headline spec. |
| Fiberglass gelcoat | Fiberglass cleaners | Very slick: tracked drives hold where wheels spin. Gelcoat also shows fine sediment clearly. |
| Smooth plaster or tile | The master roundup | The forgiving middle. No surface constraint — decide on debris instead. |
Question 4: what is actually in your pool?
The last question and the one that picks the machine. Each debris type is governed by a different specification, and no single machine leads on all of them — which is why buying the most expensive robot is not the same as buying the right one.
| Your debris | Go to | The spec that decides it |
|---|---|---|
| Leaves — oak, maple, seasonal fall | Cleaners for leaves | Basket volume. 5 liters and above. A fine filter is a liability here. |
| Pine needles, or constant tree fall | Cleaners for pine needles | Surface interception, plus intake geometry. Needles bridge intakes and wrap axles. |
| Sand, silt or fine dust | Cleaners for sand and silt | Published micron rating — 10 or finer. A coarse basket relocates sand rather than removing it. |
| Algae, or cloudy water after treatment | Cleaners for algae | Active scrubbing plus fine filtration. But chemistry kills algae, not the robot. |
| A ring at the waterline | Cleaners for the waterline | A published waterline pass. Wall climbing is not the same thing. |
| Acorns, pine cones, rigid twigs | Robotic vs pressure-side | No robot intake will swallow these. You want a bag, not a filter. |
| Mostly nothing — it just needs maintaining | Best under $500 | Do not overbuy. Match the rated area and stop. |
Two answers that are not a robot
Worth saying before you spend anything, because for some readers the right answer here is not a purchase at all.
If your pool is under trees, buy a skimmer as well as — or before — a better floor robot. Debris caught floating never sinks, never stains and never loads your filter, so surface interception removes more total debris than any floor-cleaning upgrade. A corded floor machine plus a solar skimmer beats most single flagships and costs less.
If your pool is small, covered, or rarely used, you may not need a robot. A flat leaf rake, a brush, the discipline to skim daily and a water level kept up will keep a lightly-used pool genuinely clean — this guide sets out how far that gets you and exactly where it stops working. We would rather you bought nothing than the wrong thing.
One more decision, if you are still choosing
Once you have a shortlist, there is one question left and it decides how long you own the machine rather than how well it cleans: cordless or corded.
Cordless carries the better current specifications and nothing to set up. Corded has no battery, so it routinely outlives two cordless machines. The question that settles it is narrow: is a replacement battery sold for the specific model you want? Where one is, cordless is a six-to-eight-year purchase. Where it is not, it is a three-to-four-year purchase and should be priced that way — here is what exists, by model.
Every pick on the pages above comes from a published five-metric rubric applied to published specifications. We do not physically test pool cleaners, and nothing on this site implies that we do.