If vacuuming is your least favorite chore, employing a robot vacuum can save you time and stress while also making sure your home stays clean. While once most robo-vacs landed on the higher end of the price spectrum, that’s not the case anymore. Sure, you could pick up a $1,000 cleaning behemoth with mopping features, but it would be incorrect to assume that you need to spend that much money to get a good machine.
Now, you can get an autonomous dirt-sucker with serious cleaning chops for $500 — sometimes even $300 or less. But you get what you pay for in this space; don’t expect affordable robot vacuum cleaners to have all of the bells and whistles that premium machines do, like self-emptying capabilities or advanced dirt detection. After testing dozens of robot vacuums at various price points, I’ve narrowed down our top picks for the best budget robot vacuums you can buy right now.
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Best budget robot vacuums for 2025
iRobot Best budget robot vacuum overall iRobot Roomba Vac Robot Vacuum (Q0120) Max mode: No | Wi-Fi capabilities: Yes | Object detection: Yes | Charging dock: Yes | Self-emptying dock: No | Mopping capabilities: No | Weight: 5.84lbs Our previous top pick was the Roomba 694, which you can still find (sparingly) at retailers like Amazon. This model has essentially been replaced with a newer, more “essential” version: the $250 Roomba Vac robot vacuum. Not much has changed here, aside from slight design tweaks that make for a more polished silhouette and a larger battery. Otherwise, this new model does everything our previous top pick did and will be the best cheap robot vacuum cleaner for most people thanks to its good cleaning performance and easy-to-use mobile app. Setting up this powerful robot vacuum is straightforward: Open the companion app and follow the instructions. Once it’s connected to your home Wi-Fi network, you’re able to use the app to control the vacuum whenever you don’t feel like using the physical buttons. iRobot’s app is one of the biggest selling points for any Roomba. It’s so easy to use that even someone with no prior experience will be able to quickly master the robot’s basic functions. iRobot’s app puts most pertinent controls on the homepage, so you rarely (if ever) need to navigate through its menu to do things like set a cleaning schedule. We recommend setting cleaning schedules to really get the most out of the device. After all, these are semi-autonomous bots, so why not make it so you rarely have to interact with them? Doing so will ensure the Roomba runs through your home on a regular basis, so you’re always left with clean floors. The only thing I try to do before a cleaning job is get charging cables off of the floor – the Roomba will stop if it sucks something like that up and it’s relatively easy to extract a cable from the machine’s side brushes, but I’d rather not have to do so if I can avoid it. When it comes to battery life, the Roomba Vac will run for up to 120 minutes before it will automatically return to its charging base to power up again. It’s worth noting that the essential family of Roombas includes a combo vac-and-mop machine that you can get for an extra $25. It’s a bit more manual of a machine because you have to refill its water reservoir and attach its washable mopping pad when you want to clean hard floors — but it’ll do so for you, just like it’ll autonomously vacuum all kinds of floors. Just keep in mind that neither of these machines, the standard or the combo, come with a self-emptying base. You’ll have to spend $400 on the Vacuum 2 Essential to get that. iRobot has made a name for itself in the autonomous vacuum market for good reason. Its machines are polished, dead simple to use and the accompanying app is excellent. That ease of use (and the reputation of the iRobot name) comes with a slightly higher asking price, which many will be willing to pay. But there are plenty of solid, more affordable options now that didn’t exist even just five years ago. Pros Simple yet attractive design
Good suction power for its size
Easy to use mobile app Cons Cannot fit under low furniture $67 at Amazon Explore More Buying Options $249 at Wayfair$126 at Best Buy
Shark Best budget robot vacuum - runner up Shark Ion RV765 Wi-Fi Robot Vacuum Max mode: Yes | Wi-Fi capabilities: Yes | Object detection: Yes | Cliff sensors: Yes | Charging dock: Yes | Self-emptying dock: No | Mopping capabilities: No | Weight: 6.6lbs The Shark RV765 is the updated version of the RV761 that we previously recommended. Like the Roomba 694, the Shark RV765 has a slightly different design and a longer run time than the RV761, but otherwise they’re the same vacuum. You can still find the RV761, but it’s a little difficult to do so now that the latest model is available. Although we haven’t tested the RV765, we feel comfortable recommending it since we found the previous version to be a great affordable robot vacuum. One thing that the RV765 fixes about the previous version is the latter’s ugly bowling-shirt design. The new model nixes that and opts for a sleeker, all-black look with three buttons for docking, cleaning and max mode. You could rely just on the buttons, but it also connects to Wi-Fi so you can use the Shark Clean app. As for the longer run time, that’s just a bonus. The RV761 ran for about 90 minutes before needing to recharge, which was plenty of time for it to clean my two-bedroom apartment. The additional 30 minutes of battery life on the RV765 should allow it to clean larger spaces more efficiently, improving its cleaning performance and dirt detection capabilities. Some other things we liked about the RV761 include its spot-clean feature; adjustable wheels, which raise and lower automatically depending on the “terrain” and the obstacles in its path; and its intuitive companion app that allows you to start and stop cleaning jobs, schedule cleaning sessions, assign no-go zones and more. Pros Sleek design
Improved battery life
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