The best electric toothbrushes of 2026

The American Dental Association runs a Seal of Acceptance program with a public product search, and a toothbrush either appears in it or does not. We walked that register in full in August 2026 and collected all 182 accepted products, which covers everything from mouthrinse to athletic mouthguards. Three of the five brushes here are in it: the Oral-B iO Series, the quip Non-Rechargeable and the Waterpik Sonic-Fusion. Burst does not appear in the register at all. Philips does appear, once, and the entry is the Sonicare Power Flosser rather than any of its toothbrushes.

Two things make the register easy to misread. The acceptance statements are not identical, so quote the one attached to the product you are buying: the Waterpik entry is accepted for plaque "along the gumline and between teeth", while the Oral-B and quip entries say plain "removing plaque". And an entry is pinned to a model, not to a brand. The ADA lists "quip Electric Toothbrush - Non-Rechargeable", which is the AAA powered brush, so quip's rechargeable Rev is a different product as far as that entry is concerned.

The Seal is voluntary and a missing entry is not evidence that a brush is bad. A maker has to apply, submit evidence and wait, and it can decide that is not worth doing. What the Seal does tell you is which claims somebody outside the company has agreed to put their name on. Where that outside opinion does not exist, the only thing left is the maker.

Philips prints "up to 2000% more plaque removal" on the front of the 9900 box. Oral-B prints "100% more plaque removal" on its own graphic. Those two numbers are twenty times apart and they say nothing about each other, because both are footnoted the same way: Philips as "vs. a manual toothbrush", Oral-B as "vs a regular manual brush". Neither listing publishes a comparison against the other.

The footnote is often not in the listing text at all. Philips' comparator sits in small type in the bottom corner of the box in its own product photograph, and Oral-B's sits under the graphic in the seventh image of its gallery. Waterpik's "up to 2X as effective" is footnoted inside the image as "data on file, simulated", a word that appears nowhere in the listing text. Burst's box says "clinically proven to remove up to 10X plaque" and its footnote reads only "In laboratory tests", with no comparator named at all.

The practical rule is short. A percentage with a superscript is a claim about a comparison you have not been shown yet. Find the comparison before you weigh the number, and if the comparator is a manual toothbrush, the number is telling you about electric brushes in general rather than about that brush.

The handle is bought once. The heads are bought forever, and that is where the real cost of an electric toothbrush lives. Exactly one of these five listings puts a number on it. quip writes "Dentists recommend replacing brush heads every 3 months before bristles wear out and no longer brush properly". Philips does not give a number, saying only that dental professionals recommend changing the head regularly, and its brush reminds you when its own sensor decides the time has come. The Oral-B, Waterpik and Burst listings we link state no interval at all.

Take quip's three months and the arithmetic is four heads a year, which is worth doing before you buy, because what ships in the box differs a lot. The Oral-B box photograph shows three spare heads beside the one on the handle, so on that interval the first year is covered. quip and Burst each include one spare. The Waterpik includes two flossing heads, one compact and one full size. The Sonicare ships with one.

Check what a four pack costs on the day you buy rather than trusting a number in an article. The thing that does not change is the count: four a year, per person in the house.