10 Of The Best Handheld Steam Cleaners For Deep Cleaning Your Home

Keeping your home clean can feel like a never-ending task, especially if you have kids, pets, or a job that brings dirt or mud home on your clothes and shoes. Unfortunately, this isn't a task you can ignore — at least, not forever. However, you can make cleaning a little more simple by picking up a tool that makes the process easier: a steam cleaner.

A steam cleaner is one of the most versatile tools you can add to your cleaning arsenal, as you can use it to clean all kinds of surfaces and materials, including countertops, grout, tile, hardwood, upholstered furniture, and curtains. Despite only using water instead of harsh chemicals, steam cleaners are quite effective at lifting stubborn stains, killing most bacteria and mold, and breathing new life into whatever they clean.

Plus, steam cleaners are relatively affordable, and if you buy from a good, reliable brand, this gadget can easily last you a decade or more. I've rounded up ten of the best handheld steam cleaners you can buy right now, based on positive reviews from critics and consumers. All these steam cleaners function similarly, but they'll differ in price and feature sets.

The Bissell Steam Shot OmniReach is taking the world by steam, likely due to its affordable price despite powerful cleaning capabilities. At just $50, this handheld cleaner offers 1,000 watts of steam power, on which you can adjust the pressure and temperature, depending on the surface you're cleaning.

The Steam Shot OmniReach comes with a 300-milliliter water tank and 10 cleaning tools to swap between for tackling various areas of your home. This includes a fabric steamer, a window cleaner, an extension hose, an accessory nozzle, three round bristle brushes with different colors, a grout-cleaning tool, a flat scraper tool, and an angle concentrator tool.

Reviewers note it's easy to set up and learn how to use, and very effective. In Taste of Home's review of the Steam Shot OmniReach, they note that it only took about 30 to 60 seconds for the cleaner to loosen gunk around grout, and they had similar experiences with cleaning other surfaces.

If you have pets, Bissell's Little Green Max Pet is worth the splurge. It's regularly $140, but you can often find it on sale for $100. With the handheld cleaner, you'll get a pet hair removal tool attachment and a tough stain tool that's self-cleaning and able to take on all the biggest pet messes you can imagine.

Bissell recommends using its proprietary Pet Pro Oxy Spot & Stain formula in conjunction with the cleaner when it comes to smelly stains, like those from urine, vomit, or feces, and there's an eight-ounce trial bottle included so you can test it out. And with the stain tool's self-cleaning feature, you don't have to worry about touching any of the mess.

The self-cleaning feature is one of YouTuber AlderandJade's favorite things about the Bissell Little Green Max Pet, along with stronger suction power compared to the Little Green model. Having a high-quality steam cleaner on hand is a great recommendation for anyone responsible for keeping the home clean, but it's an especially helpful cleaning gadget for pet owners.

Shark's StainStriker Portable steam cleaner retails for $140, but you can often find it discounted to just $110. In addition to the machine itself, it comes with a 3.5-inch reversible bristle tool, an integrated crevice tool, and a pet tool that's designed to collect the mess separately from the main tank, preventing unwanted pet odors and bodily fluids from contaminating your cleaner.

You'll also get a sample of Shark's two proprietary solutions that the company says delivers "20x more stain-striking power" and the ability to "instantly and permanently eliminate tough odors, even pet urine and smoke."

This handheld steam cleaner may be pricey, but the results speak for themselves. The SharkStainstriker Portable made a red wine stain disappear in a Real Homes review test and took care of a mystery stain that even professionals couldn't get up in a review by The Family Handyman. Plus, the cleaner weighs a mere nine pounds, making it easy to carry out to your car when it needs a deep clean.

The Dupray Neat is another steam cleaner that's been making the rounds on TikTok and other social media platforms, thanks to a versatile array of attachments, impressive steam cleaning pressure, and a large 54-ounce water tank, allowing users to clean for about an hour without refilling.

There are multiple brushes, extender tubes to reach high places or under furniture, attachments for cleaning windows and floors, a precision lance for grout, and more. And the cleaning doesn't have to stop in your home. You can take this steam cleaner outside to your car, as it's one of the most useful tools to tackle deep cleaning your vehicle's interior.

It retails for $150 regularly, so it's not the most budget-friendly steam cleaner, but positive reviews from Tech Gear Lab and nearly 20,000 people on Amazon speak to the Dupray Neat's overall worth. Dare I say, it may just make deep cleaning a task to look forward to.

The PurSteam 10-in-1 Steam Mop is a fantastic affordable option, with an average rating of 4.2 stars and over 53,000 reviews on Amazon. This gadget doubles as a traditional steam mop for your floors and as a detachable hand steamer you can use to clean smaller messes.

It only takes 30 seconds to heat up the water in its small tank, and the mop comes with multiple attachments and accessories to improve its cleaning effectiveness. There are multiple brush sizes and types to choose between, an angled nozzle, a grout brush, a scrape tool, microfiber cloths, a squeegee for windows, and more.

In Tech Gear Lab's review of the PurSteam 10-in-1, they note the steam cleaner does particularly well with cleaning laminate, linoleum, and vinyl flooring and removing stubborn stains. However, if you have a lot of tile or stone in your home, you might want to choose a different steam cleaner.

If you're searching for a steam cleaner that can tackle your floors in addition to smaller messes on fabric, grout, and other surfaces, look no further than the Black+Decker 7-in-1 Steam Mop. It's $200 at full price, but you can often find it on sale for 20% off or more, and it promises quite a few features in exchange for that high price tag.

The water in the tank heats up in just 20 seconds, and there are many different ways to clean with this gadget. It comes with a grout brush attachment, a garment steamer for fabric, a copper grate cleaner that's great for tackling grill grates, a SteamGlove attachment that lets you steam clean safely with your hand, an adjustable steam nozzle for various amounts of pressure, and a small detail brush for deep cleaning smaller areas.

This steam mop does need to be plugged in, but it has a 20-foot cord, so you can stray quite a long distance from an outlet while cleaning. If you want to check out the mop's floor cleaning power in action, take a look at Deandra Aguilar's review on YouTube.

This is one of the more affordable high-quality steam cleaners available right now, typically priced around $50. The Pheut Pressurized Steam Cleaner heats up a relatively small tank in three to five minutes, and provides about eight to 12 minutes of cleaning time, depending on what you're cleaning and how much steam pressure you need.

It includes a 12-piece accessory kit, with four round brushes, a fabric-cleaning tool, an extended nozzle, a cone-shaped nozzle, a bent nozzle, a glass-cleaning tool, a towel sleeve, and a measuring cup and a funnel to make filling the cleaner with water easier. With these attachments, it's easy to keep your home sparkling clean.

This steam cleaner is an ideal pick for small tasks, like eliminating grime around sink drains, deep cleaning door and window tracks, and sprucing up grout in your shower. To see the Pheut cleaner in action, check out WTI's YouTube review. If you want to be able to clean large areas of your floor, opt for a steamer that doubles as a mop and a handheld cleaner instead.

Bissell is one of the best steam cleaner brands you can spring for, so although this 207A PowerFresh Slim 3-in-1 steam mop retails for $165 full price, it's worth the investment. You can use it upright, like a traditional mop, take off the mop piece to use it as an extended steam cleaner for hard-to-reach places, or detach the main unit to use it as a handheld steam cleaner with the included attachments.

There's a grout tool that also works well for cleaning grimy sink drains, a flat scraper attachment, an angled tool, and two bristle scrub brushes for multi-purpose use. And like other steam cleaners, this uses purely steam to clean your home and eliminate bacteria — no extra chemicals required.

As for real-world cleaning tests, this handheld steamer has clearly passed the test. It's gathered multiple positive reviews from customers on Amazon, as well as raving professional reviews from Top Ten Reviews and Tech Gear Lab. It easily tackled baked-on stains from the bottom of cooking pans and it maneuvers well when in mop mode, thanks to a swiveling mop head.

The Conair Turbo ExtremeSteam is a compact handheld steamer, but it's very useful in specific scenarios. It's ideal for clothes in lieu of ironing, seat belts in your vehicle, and large fabric pieces like quilts or curtains. In fact, one quilter said this steamer probably cut her pressing time in half prior to trunk shows where she shows off her quilts.

At just $70, it's a pretty affordable little steamer, especially considering it often goes on sale for about $50. And because it has such a small form factor, it's lightweight and comfortable to hold.

On the flip side, that means it has a small 7.3-ounce water tank, which Conair says gives you about 15 minutes of constant steam. That's plenty of time to tackle steam cleaning your couch, a set of curtains, or multiple garments, but it's something to keep in mind if you have larger projects in mind for your future steam cleaner.

Although Kärcher is better known as a major pressure washer brand, the company is responsible for creating an impressive, albeit expensive, handheld steam cleaner. The Kärcher SC3 EasyFix Extra typically retails for around $200, but when you hear how impressive its cleaning power is, you'll understand the price tag justification.

Top Ten Reviews ultimately gave the SC3 EasyFix Extra 4.5 out of 5 stars, thanks to how spotless it left every tested service and how it "outperformed every other mop [they'd] tested." Multiple customers on Amazon agree, as the cleaner has amassed an average 4.3-star rating with over 1,400 reviews.

This steam cleaner comes with a hand nozzle and a floor mop attachment, along with microfiber cloths for both of these pieces. Then, it also features a round brush, extension tubes, and a spot-cleaning detail nozzle. With all these accessories, you can utilize the SC3 EasyFix Extra to clean the floors of your entire home or take on small projects with stuck-on stains.

To compile this list, I looked extensively at personal customer reviews on Amazon, Best Buy, and other retail sites and professional reviews from YouTube and reliable websites, including but not limited to NYMag, Tech Gear Lab, and Top Ten Reviews.

Using a steam cleaner to deep clean your home is a vague task, so I tried to think about every cleaning task someone might want to take on with a handheld steam cleaner. This includes steam cleaning floors, tackling grime that's built up on drains and sinks, polishing up grout in your shower or kitchen, and even tasks technically outside the home, like giving your vehicle's interior the glow up it deserves.

Some of these steam cleaners are better-suited for cleaning floors, while others may be your best bet for smoothing out wrinkles on curtains, so I go over each cleaners best use cases in its individual entry.