Best Toilets for $200 or Less
You don't have to spend a lot of money to get a great toilet. Here's what performed best in our rigorous tests.
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If there’s one thing that doesn’t change in the home landscape, it’s this: A good toilet doesn’t need to break the bank. So many home appliances have undergone major cosmetic overhauls and gained smart features—you can buy a refrigerator with a screen that functions almost like an iPad; vacuum cleaners are getting increasingly more sophisticated and cost more as they do. But even while there have been efforts to level up a toilet’s technology — Kohler, for one, now offers a very space-age smart toilet complete with multicolored lights and a seat that opens automatically—most toilets remain comfortably familiar, which has kept them especially affordable. You don’t need to spend more than $200 for a toilet that performs well.
Because most toilets are largely similar, you may be wondering how to choose between them. “When browsing the aisle of any home-improvement store, you’re met with a number of toilets made of the same materials and that cost about the same,” says Chris Regan, who oversees toilet testing at Consumer Reports. Aesthetically speaking, the main differences you’ll find between toilets are in the exterior contours of its tank, bowl, and flush mechanisms.
How Consumer Reports Tests Toilets
To assess toilets, our lab testers built a plumbing system made from transparent piping material (so they can see what’s going on as water flows through it), complete with the bends and turns found in home plumbing. We measure the volume and flow of water into and out of the toilet and conduct tests for key performance metrics, including a solid-waste-removal test, a bowl-cleaning test, and a noise assessment.
In the crucial solid-waste-removal test, our tester simulates waste with a bucket of 160 solid polyethylene balls, seven sponges with #10 screws pressed in for realistic weight, and non-lubricated latex condoms filled with water. (For details, see What Happens When Consumer Reports Tests Toilets.)
If that sounds a bit extreme, it’s meant to be: Because very few toilets can remove the simulated waste in just one flush, we’re able to get differentiating data to score each toilet. Our tester notes how many flushes each toilet requires to finish the job. That data, along with results from other tests, allow us to separate the good toilets from, well, the crappy ones. The best in our tests can do it all in one go; the worst clog with the first flush.
All of the top-rated budget toilets reviewed below earn the Environmental Protection Agency’s WaterSense certification. For the single-flush toilets this means they have demonstrated that they flush just 1.28 gallons of water on average, 20 percent less than the current federal standards. For the dual-flush toilets, the full flush (for solid waste) meets the federal standard, while the partial flush (for liquid waste) requires just 1.10 gallons of water.
All of the toilets below also feature taller "comfort height" bowls that comply with the Americans With Disabilities Act.
CR members can read on for reviews of the top toilets that cost $200 or less, including models from Delta and the Home Depot house brand Glacier Bay. Members can also see how all the tested models perform in our toilet ratings. For more information as you shop, see our toilet buying guide.
