Best Air Purifiers of 2025

The CleanForce Mega1000 is our runaway winner for best home air purifier no matter what you’re up against. Smoke, pollen, dust, mold, pet dander, bacteria, and some viruses all end up trapped in one of the Mega1000’s eight filters.

Our other HEPA air purifier recommendations offer a few perks that you can’t get with the CleanForce Mega1000, like ultra-quiet operation, extra air quality sensors, and smart home integrations. We’ve also added budget-friendly alternatives for our top choices.

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The CleanForce Mega1000 pulls air from two directions at once, and each side of the unit has its own set of four filters:

• Two pre-filters designed to catch large debris like dust bunnies and pet hair
• A medical-grade H13 HEPA filter to trap small particles
• An activated carbon filter for odor control

There’s no smart connectivity, so you won’t be able to control the CleanForce Mega1000 with your voice or a smartphone app. But it does come with a remote, and the unit’s display screen gives status updates about the filters and air quality.

This powerful air purifier is advertised for spaces up to 4,650 square feet, but don’t let that discourage you from buying it for home use. In smaller spaces, big air purifiers like the CleanForce Mega1000 just clean the air faster and more often. Keep it on a lower fan setting to draw less energy.

The main downside of the CleanForce Mega1000 is its large size. It sits on over 1 square foot of floor space and stands over 2 feet tall. And because it pulls air from both sides of the unit, it needs to stay out in the open. If you’re already in a cramped space, this may not be the air purifier for you.

This Winix air purifier offers four stages of filtration:

• A washable pre-filter
• An activated carbon filter
• A true HEPA filter
• The Winix PlasmaWave “permanent filter”

Similar to ion-generating air purifiers, Winix’s PlasmaWave technology neutralizes tiny airborne molecules, offering a deep-clean that HEPA filters alone can’t achieve. But unlike ion generators, PlasmaWave doesn’t produce ozone—a molecule that causes allergy-like symptoms in some people, according to the EPA.

The Winix 5300-2 lacks a remote, mobile app, and smart hub connectivity. But you don’t really need to be hands-on with it. The 5300-2 automatically adjusts to one of its five fan speeds whenever it detects a change in indoor air quality.

If you do want a remote, try the Winix 5500-2 for about $250.

Other pet-home-friendly features include an activated carbon filter for pet odor control and an auto-sensor that adjusts the fan speed when air quality diminishes—like when your dog runs around the house after rolling in dirt or when your cat kicks up a cloud of litter dust.

This Coway air purifier traps pollen from the air at the same chart-topping rate as our top two picks, but it’s not a good air purifier for smoke particles. Its dust-cleaning performance is above average. And, although it’s advertised for rooms up to 1,560 square feet, it only cleans the air twice in one hour in such a large space. We recommend using it in a smaller room for best results.

At 22 decibels, the Coway AirMega 400S is the quietest air purifier on our list and one of the quietest you’ll find on the market, period. It also integrates with Amazon Alexa and Google Home for voice activation and smart home automation.

The Levoit 400S includes a pre-filter, activated carbon filter, and an H13 HEPA air filter. It integrates with Alexa or Google Assistant for voice control, and its smartphone app shows useful data like remaining filter life and indoor air quality trends.

The Stadler Form Roger Big uses four filters:

• Two washable pre-filters for larger allergens, like pet fur
• An H12 HEPA filter for small particles, like dust and pollen
• An activated carbon filter to trap odors

This air purifier can be controlled through a smartphone app. It also takes up less space than the CleanForce Mega1000 and—to be perfectly honest—looks nicer than our top pick.

If you don’t need to purify a 1,100 square-foot space, you can save a bit of money by choosing the smaller Roger model (rated for 710 square feet). Downgrading to the even smaller Roger Little (355 square feet) means you’ll lose the gas sensor and smartphone app.

Germ Guardian sells a lot of different air purifiers. We steered clear of this brand’s ozone-producing models, which narrowed the selection quite a bit. We didn’t find any stand-out specifications that set Germ Guardian apart from our other picks, but that doesn’t mean this is a bad brand if it meets your expectations.

As with Germ Guardian, some Blueair models generate ozone, and we don’t recommend that kind of air purifier. The Blueair Classic 505 is a HEPA air purifier that performs as well as some of our top picks, but it’s only available in refurbished units. Other Blueair HEPA options had low CADRs, so they couldn’t rattle our list of the best air purifiers.

Some Dyson air purifiers also heat and cool the room, giving you a three-in-one device. We also like all of the control options: a traditional remote, smartphone app, or voice control via Amazon Alexa. But Dyson’s purifiers are louder than other options, aren’t rated for large rooms, and use more energy per year than more powerful models.

The Alen Breathesmart uses a medical-grade H13 HEPA filter and cleans the air about as well as the mid-size Stadler Form Roger. But it’s on the loud side and lacks user-friendly features like an air quality indicator, washable pre-filter, and remote control or smartphone app.

We do have to give the Alen Breathesmart props for looking good, though. With custom paneling, it’s easy to make this purifier blend in with your décor. 

There’s no denying that the CleanForce Mega1000 is the best air purifier on the market today. It’s the fastest and most effective unit designed for home use and is worth every penny. But if it’s out of your price range, our other top picks have their own strengths:

• Stadler Form Roger Big: a stylish purifier that’s excellent for allergies
• Winix 5300-2: an affordable air purifier that performs well in smaller spaces
• Coway Airmega 400S: a powerful smart air purifier with two filter alerts
• Levoit Core 400S: a quiet air purifier that doesn’t take up too much space

We started with Energy Star's list of energy-efficient air purifiers because it collects important information in one place: cleaning rates for smoke, dust, and pollen, plus ozone emissions and filter types.

We only considered fan-and-filter air purifiers for our lineup because ion generators produce ozone, which can cause health problems—negating the purpose of an air purifier. We also left out products designed for garages or workshops, and eliminated contenders you can't buy online.

Efficacy was our main concern, so we looked at the nearly 370 air purifiers that remained to find those with the highest Clean Air Delivery Rates (CADR) for smoke, dust, and pollen. We preferred air purifiers that could clean a larger space at least five times per hour—the standard set by the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers.

Due to the abundance of data available from Energy Star, we didn't conduct any hands-on testing for this review. We supplemented this data with additional research into customer reviews and manufacturer resources.

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