The Best Diaper Pail

After a new round of diaper pail testing, we’ve decided to reverse the order of our longtime diaper pail picks. The Munchkin Step will be our new top pick due to its superior odor control. We’ll continue to recommend the Ubbi Steel Diaper Pail for people who prefer not to buy proprietary refills. We will update this guide with our full findings soon.

A dedicated diaper pail can make the daily—sometimes hourly—task of changing a baby's diaper easier and can help conceal the stink of the discard pile. After putting in eight hours of research, considering 15 pails, and testing nine finalists over several weeks as three families logged nearly 250 diaper changes among them, we found that the Ubbi Steel Diaper Pail offers the best balance between odor control and ease of use. If superior odor control matters far more than convenience and cost for you, look to our also-great pick, the Munchkin Step.

This durable can is simple to use and effective at keeping stinky-diaper smells contained when closed. It takes regular trash bags—which significantly reduces its lifetime cost.

The Ubbi pail stands apart with a straightforward, effective, less complicated design that's easier to load and empty than its competitors. Unlike most other pails, the Ubbi can use regular trash bags—not proprietary refills—an advantage that simplifies everything from changing the bags to buying replacements and also costs you literally hundreds of dollars less over a few years of ownership. Its powder-coated steel shell is tougher than other pails’ plastic bodies, and it was one of the few pails we found that also work well for cloth diapers. Its small footprint fills efficiently, and compared with other pails we tried, it's easier to tell when the Ubbi is full. Stink suppression is the main reason people buy a diaper pail, but we found that those smell-containing features make lots of pails less convenient to use. We’ve concluded that the Ubbi pail's many advantages make up for its not being the best all-around odor controller, but if stink suppression is the main thing you care about, you’re likely to be happier with our also-great pick, the Munchkin Step.

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This pail is the best at containing smells, but it's bulky, and its proprietary refills make it one of the most expensive to own long term.

*At the time of publishing, the price was $65.

If you’re willing to pay more over the life of your pail and put up with a few annoying quirks, the Munchkin Step offers the maximum odor control of any model we tested. Most pails we considered were effective at containing smells between deposits, but no other pail was as good as the Munchkin Step at controlling smells while the pail was in use. This pail fights odor with scented accessories that may bother some people, and it also isolates smells with a physical barrier that requires you to force dirty diapers through a restricted opening—which can be gross. It's also bulkier (yet fits less) than the Ubbi. Plus, because of its proprietary refills, its long-term costs were the highest among our finalists.

This durable can is simple to use and effective at keeping stinky-diaper smells contained when closed. It takes regular trash bags—which significantly reduces its lifetime cost.

This pail is the best at containing smells, but it's bulky, and its proprietary refills make it one of the most expensive to own long term.

*At the time of publishing, the price was $65.

By the time your bundle of joy is 3 years old, you will have tossed out about 5,000 dirty diapers—and putting them in the right pail will make that chore stink a lot less. Many people are content to use a regular trash can or plastic grocery bags for soiled diapers and to collect and dispose of them frequently, even daily. But given the amount of diapers you’ll actually go through—expect at least eight a day in the first several months alone—having a dedicated diaper pail by the changing table will control odor better and limit the chore of transferring used diapers to a trash-pickup area (or, for cloth, the laundry) to just once or twice a week.

In addition to changing and disposing of thousands of diapers for my own child (who was about 18 months old at the time we initially published this guide), I canvassed friends, solicited insight from a local parents’ listserv, and surveyed a dozen parents about their diaper pail use. I examined the specs of all the best-selling pails on Amazon, Babies"R"Us, BuyBuy Baby, Target, and Walmart, and I read through more than a thousand customer reviews. I consulted other diaper pail guides and roundups, including those on BabyCenter, BabyGearLab, Babylist, Lucie's List, and The NightLight.

Most helpful was my interview with design engineer Vincent Valderrama, who worked on the development of Playtex Diaper Genie pails from 2006 to 2014. He described his team's approach to developing the pail, including what issues they addressed and how they prioritized them, how they used special materials and mechanisms to minimize odors, and how they focused on making pails that were easy to use.

Just about everyone we spoke to and every publication we read agreed on the criteria that make a good diaper pail:

We conducted six hours of online research, identifying the most popular models available, which gave us an initial list of 15 diaper pails. We then looked at previously published guides and roundups as well as customer reviews on retailers’ sites to winnow the list, eliminating pails that owners complained were too small or were ineffective at containing the smell of dirty diapers. Though some pails we considered could work effectively with cloth diapers, that was not a requirement; our priority was finding pails meant for disposable diapers. After narrowing the field from an opening survey of about 15 pails, we ended up with nine contenders.

Diaper pails deal with the smell issue in several ways. All the pails have some kind of physical barrier—at the minimum, a close-fitting lid. The more elaborate designs have an antechamber where you place the diaper, and then some mechanism dumps the diaper in the pail when you close the lid, exposing the contents as little as possible. As Valderrama explained to me, some pails also block odor using the bag itself: At Playtex, the company used a barrier-film technology with multiple layers of differing composition, which offers additional physical barriers to odor, moisture, and oxygen. Some pails try to freshen the air within using a carbon filter or a scented baking soda puck. We were willing to give any of these designs a chance.

Some pails try to freshen the air within using a carbon filter or a scented baking soda puck.

We compared the costs of owning each of the pails we tested, assuming one child whose diapers would primarily be changed at home. We figured the child would be in diapers from birth to age 3, and we used conservative estimates of diaper and bag consumption over that period. Your mileage may vary depending on how often you empty your pail, what kind of childcare arrangements you have, and, of course, how much output your child produces. Some diaper pail makers offer estimates of bag costs over time as well as bag capacity, though we found the latter to be on the optimistic side. BabyGearLab performed its own calculations for its review, and its findings were in line with ours.

We first set up whichever models required assembly, noting how easy or difficult it was and any problems we encountered. We then put the mechanical parts through their paces, opening and shutting the lids (manually or using the button or foot pedal, depending on the model) and other doors, if they had them, 200 times.

We then put the diaper pails that passed this stage through a test run at home to see how they would hold up to everyday use. We made sure to dispose of, ahem, fully loaded diapers from a 16-month-old without attempting to fold them up tightly first (to simulate how a not particularly fastidious caregiver might use a pail), changing out the liner when full or after four days (about 20 size-4 diapers), and inserting a refill for those pails that took proprietary bags. For pails that take regular tall kitchen trash bags, we used the Glad Tall Kitchen Drawstring Bag, Wirecutter's pick for the best kitchen trash bag at the time.

Finally, we took the three pails that performed best at home and asked two other families to try them out for a week as well. The family with a 1-year-old tested one pail, and another with a newborn and a 3-year-old tested two pails.

To determine how well these pails minimized the smell of dirty diapers, we decided that during our home trials any amount of smell that was discernible while the pail was in use or the liner was being changed was worth noting, and that any amount of odor detectable when the pail was just sitting in the room was grounds for dismissal.

This durable can is simple to use and effective at keeping stinky-diaper smells contained when closed. It takes regular trash bags—which significantly reduces its lifetime cost.

The simple, easy-to-use Ubbi Steel Diaper Pail effectively contains stinky-diaper smells, and a combination of factors makes it the most generally satisfying pail we found. Because it takes regular trash bags, it's one of the most cost-effective and convenient models available. It's compact and unobtrusive, yet it can hold up to a week's worth of diapers and can be filled more efficiently than almost all the other pails we considered. Its sleek, attractive metal construction is notably better in quality than most plastic pails, and it comes in more colors and patterns than any other pail we found. And unlike most diaper pails, it works well for cloth-diaper users.

Emptying the pail is as easy as emptying a trash can—there's no bag-cutting, no extra knot-tying.

Using regular trash bags gives the Ubbi pail several advantages, starting with setup. Line it with a bag, like any garbage can, and it's ready to use—other pails require you to insert, unfurl, and tie off a fussy refill liner. The Ubbi pail requires bags to go through a ring and under a front tab, but we think this is intuitive enough to figure out without instructions—which is not the case with more-complicated competing pails. Regular bags also mean that emptying the pail is as easy as emptying a trash can—there's no bag-cutting, no extra knot-tying, and no stooping to the floor.

Another advantage of using regular trash bags is cost-effectiveness and convenience. You might spend $45 over three years on Glad trash bags, for example, but buying proprietary pail refills costs anywhere from $160 to nearly $300 in the same amount of time. So even though the Ubbi costs more than most pails up front, it's a better long-term value. Cost aside, proprietary refills aren't as widely available as trash bags—a problem if you run out. (If you insist on adding cost and complexity to your life, Ubbi does offer dedicated plastic liners made with 20% recycled materials.)

The last major advantage of the Ubbi pail's trash-bag setup is that it's one of the few diaper pails designed to work with cloth diapers as well as disposables: The opening can hold the type of waterproof liner (also known as a wet bag) that most cloth diaperers use to collect soiled laundry. Pails that use proprietary inserts can't do this. Ubbi also makes its own cloth-diaper insert bag expressly for this purpose.

The Ubbi pail's metal body and lid, rubber seals, and sliding hatch door do a good job of keeping in odors, especially when the pail is simply sitting in the room. Some smell does escape when you put diapers in and when you empty the pail, but that's true of nearly all of the pails we considered.

Filling the Ubbi pail is easier than with some competitors. The hatch for diaper disposal slides across the top of the pail, a design that allows you to place the pail right up against the wall until you have to empty it. (In contrast, many others are hinged, so their lid needs space to flip up.) The big white knob that opens the hatch is easy to operate one-handed; you can slide it with the back of your hand or wrist even with a soiled diaper in hand. That oversize knob is also "easy to find at 4 a.m.," noted one of our testers, which is not the case with other pails that have inset pedals or handles that might be challenging to find in the dark. And unlike any of the other pails we tested, the Ubbi pail has an optional, easy-to-use childproof lock, an unusual feature that may be appreciated by those with curious or poop-obsessed toddlers.

The pail has a narrow profile, so it tucks away neatly and doesn't draw attention to itself, unlike taller or wider models. Ironically, you can actually get more diapers into the Ubbi than into other pails of comparable size, as you can easily reach into the Ubbi pail and move the diapers aside with your hand (or with the diaper you’re holding)—other models’ smell-isolating mechanisms have physical barriers that make that difficult. Because the Ubbi pail's body is slimmer than a regular trash bag, you can pack every inch full of diapers, whereas some other models waste space by using liners that are considerably narrower than the pails themselves. You can see and feel inside the Ubbi when you throw a diaper in, so you can more easily tell when it's full than with other pails, which often visually block off the loading area as part of their odor-control design.

You can actually get more diapers into the Ubbi than into other pails of comparable size.

If you opt to use a diaper pail, you’ll likely have it around for at least three years, possibly much longer if you have more than one child. The well-constructed Ubbi pail is built to last, with fewer seams and weak points than on many of the other models we looked at. It's made almost entirely of powder-coated steel, which tends to be more durable and long-lasting than the plastics used in most models. It also feels nice to use: The parts fit together well, the lid closes snugly, and the hatch slides neatly, quietly, and satisfyingly into place. The pail comes in 13 solid colors and five patterns, the widest range of options of any pail sold.

The NightLight also chose the Ubbi as its diaper pail pick, citing its cost-effectiveness, ease of use, and ability to take regular trash bags. It's also among the top picks on Lucie's List and Babylist, both of which praise the Ubbi pail's good looks and effective odor control. Design engineer Vincent Valderrama commented that he was impressed with the Ubbi pail's aesthetic: "It was the first pail that came out where I felt, ‘Wow, that's a pretty pail.’ [It's as] if Simplehuman made a diaper pail."

Our pick does not entirely eliminate odors from diaper changing; it will smell sometimes when you open the pail to throw away a diaper and when you empty the pail. "I can't say that I find the odor-containing abilities very impressive," said one parent who tested the Ubbi pail for us for a year. "It seems like odors have permeated the interior of the pail, despite having tried every baking soda odor absorber available." There will be times, depending largely on your kid's output, when opening it will release a truly unholy stench. But this is true of all the pails we tested except for the Munchkin Step, our pick for people who care about stink-blocking beyond all other qualities.

The Ubbi pail also has some minor design issues worth noting. Our long-term tester said she had issues figuring out the opening mechanism at first: "The lateral push/pull opening is not intuitive ... and I noticed that my in-laws also didn't get it when they babysat (diapers left on top of pail!)." It lacks a foot pedal, but the knob it has instead allows for easy, one-handed use, so it's not much of a problem. Only three of the nine pails we tested had a foot pedal, and in spite of its absence on the Ubbi pail, we still think this pail is the easiest to load.

When the Ubbi pail nears capacity, pulling out the liner can require a lot of force. Use strong trash bags—or else don't wait too long to empty the pail. And beware the proprietary liners, which our long-term tester said "kind of suck since they have neither drawstring nor ties, and don't seem to help contain odors."

Sturdy as the pail is, it isn't impervious to abuse; the steel can get dinged or dented if struck hard enough (it's possible to fix some dents by pushing them back out, some Amazon reviewers have noted). Amazon reviewers have also complained of the rubber gasket that lines the edge of the lid falling out and wearing out over time, of bolts that rust when the pail is washed, and of an interior rim that catches and tears liners. A company representative told us that in 2013 Ubbi began producing improved pails to address these issues.

Last, the Ubbi pail is more expensive up front than most diaper pails. But as noted above, this is offset by the fact that it uses regular trash bags, and the lifetime cost of using this pail is one of the lowest across all the pails we considered.

This pail is the best at containing smells, but it's bulky, and its proprietary refills make it one of the most expensive to own long term.

*At the time of publishing, the price was $65.

The Munchkin Step uses expensive specialized bags and requires that you force dirty diapers through a tight slot with your hand, but it is better at controlling odors than our top pick and just about every other pail we tested. (A more basic model, the Munchkin Pail, is equivalent to the Munchkin Step in smell control.)

Part of the reason the Munchkin Step is so effective at odor control is the plastic teeth that cover the opening almost entirely. Shutting the lid—which you have to do manually, a small but irritating flaw—twists the teeth to close the bag, ensuring that smells stay inside. However, to get that dirty diaper into the pail, you have to push it through with your hand, and if you’ve ever had to deal with an overloaded, messy diaper, you know that forcing such a package through a too-small opening could be disastrous. If you’re not scrupulous about wrapping up diapers tightly and neatly before you throw them out, this is probably not the pail for you (one of our testers said the push-through requirement was a dealbreaker for this very reason).

The Munchkin Step further battles odor by masking stink with scented bags and a baking soda puck. These measures are effective, but some testers found the "fake lavender" smell of both off-putting. Munchkin does make unscented ring refills, but they don't mask the odor of dirty diapers as well. Unfortunately, the Munchkin pail accepts only its own brand of refills (though Munchkin bag refills also work in Diaper Genie pails).

Those proprietary refills are expensive enough to make the Munchkin Step one of the costliest pails to own long term, even though the pail itself usually retails for slightly less than our pick, the Ubbi pail. Munchkin offers three kinds of bags: The unscented Nursery Fresh and the lavender-scented Arm & Hammer options are both ring refills that need to be cut and tied when you empty the pail, whereas the scented Snap, Seal & Toss bags are like trash bags but with a special plastic ring at the opening to keep the bag in place in the pail, which is intended to make it easy for you to close the bag. The last type is the most economical, but we’ve seen dozens of Amazon reviewers complain about them ripping and being less effective at odor control than the ring refills. Based on our calculations, three years’ worth of Munchkin's Snap, Seal & Toss bags will cost more than $200; the equivalent in Munchkin ring refills will run closer to $300. (We figure that generic trash bags for the Ubbi pail, in contrast, will add up to about $45 over the same period.)

Unfortunately, the Munchkin pail accepts only its own brand of refills.

Increased costs aside, the proprietary refills mean that the Munchkin pail loses out on many of the other advantages that the Ubbi pail has. If you use cloth diapers, you can't load the Munchkin pail with a lined bag to collect them for the laundry. You’re unable to use the pail if you unexpectedly run out of refills. Changing the bags is not as simple as taking out the trash, as on the Ubbi pail—instead, on the Munchkin pail, you have to cut the tube-like sleeve, tie it off, and generally waste a foot or so of plastic sheeting in the process. If you use the Snap, Seal & Toss bags, you end up wasting even more plastic, because the Munchkin Step allows you to fill the bag only two-thirds of the way before it needs to be emptied.

Unlike the Ubbi pail, the Munchkin Step has a foot pedal that you use to open it. The Step is also one of the biggest pails we tested, though its capacity is no greater than that of other pails. It's 27 inches tall, whereas our top pick is 23 inches, including the knob. The foot pedal accounts for much of the Step's extra height. Taller people may like that added height—combined with the foot pedal, it means less bending over. However, though the foot pedal offers hands-free convenience, opening and closing the pail can be noisy. Also keep in mind that the Munchkin Step is about 12 inches in diameter—the Ubbi pail is 10.75 inches wide and 15 inches deep—and needs to be placed away from the wall to accommodate the hinged lid. Its size makes it appear more prominent in a room than other models, and as one of our testers noted, its high-gloss finish also draws attention to itself. Like the Ubbi Steel Diaper Pail, it comes out of the box ready to use.

The Munchkin Step is BabyCenter's "Best Odor-Blocking Diaper Pail." Lucie's List named the Munchkin Step one of its top picks, as well, pointing out that "it does require a bit of diaper-squishing, but not nearly as much as the Diaper Genie." Lucie's List goes on to say: "If odor control is a top priority and you don't mind buying special bags, this is your go-to." We agree.

The Playtex Diaper Genie, trademarked in the US in 1992, was one of the first products dedicated to making diaper disposal more convenient and less smelly. It's the market giant, and it has become synonymous with "diaper pail." There are many satisfied users of the discontinued Diaper Genie II Elite, including Wirecutter staffers, one of our testing families, and the folks at BabyGearLab (they put it in second place after the less expensive Diaper Genie Essentials). The Elite was a truly hands-free pail: Stepping on the foot pedal flipped open the lid and the clamp doors so that you could drop in the diaper. According to online reviews, it released some smells when the lid was opened and when the bag was changed, but it was effective at containing odors when simply sitting in the room. We could understand, then, why Amazon reviewers looking to replace a worn-out Elite pail were disappointed to learn that it was discontinued, especially because we found that the current Diaper Genie lineup does not improve on it. (We did not test the Elite, just the three Diaper Genie models available at the time of our testing: the Complete, Essentials, and Expressions.)

The design of the most popular model, the Playtex Diaper Genie Complete, addresses the issue of smell when the lid is open. It also offers hands-free disposal: The foot pedal opens an antechamber at the top that receives the dirty diaper and then releases it when the lid is closed, so that the inside of the pail is never exposed. However, though we found that this design was effective at trapping odors in the pail during our several days of testing, we saw scores of complaints from Amazon reviewers indicating that the pail did not perform well in this respect.

The Diaper Genie Complete is also far less efficient to use than the Ubbi pail, our pick. The antechamber design dumps diapers in a vertical tower, which fills the pail quickly and inefficiently. We got only 15 size-4 diapers in before needing to empty it; in comparison, our pick held at least 20 to 30 size-4 diapers. Also inefficient: This model (like all Diaper Genie pails) uses proprietary refills. This means that despite a relatively low price tag, the Complete is one of the most expensive models to own long term, with a three-year cost that far surpasses that of the Ubbi and is up there with the cost of the Munchkin Step, our also-great pick for maximum odor control.

The Complete model required the most setup of all the pails we considered, with three pieces that needed assembly. Despite reading its lengthy instruction booklet, we had enough trouble with assembly to call a customer service agent (who was quite helpful). Even once we figured it out, though, we were troubled by how poorly all the plastic parts fit together, and in our look at Amazon reviews, we saw dozens complaining about the cheap feel of the pail and its tendency to come apart; some reviewers also said that the pail toppled over easily. It does have a fan or two: BabyCenter named the Diaper Genie Complete its "Best Diaper Pail Overall."

Dozens of Amazon reviewers complained about the cheap feel of the pail and its tendency to come apart.

We were also disappointed with the quality of the least expensive and most basic Diaper Genie model, the Playtex Diaper Genie Essentials (currently unavailable). Right out of the box, it felt cheap and flimsy. It has no foot pedal, and to put a diaper in, you have to push against the clamp—Playtex calls it that, but it's more like a trapdoor thing—that's just inside the lid opening. (BabyGearLab's video shows the clamp at around 0:32.) If you’re trying to operate this pail one-handed, that means squishing the diaper against the clamp. During our tests, the springs attached to the clamp refused to stay in their tracks, and the action was grinding and unpleasant. Even more problematic: The clamp required so much force to open that messy diapers would be a total disaster. Despite that, BabyGearLab named the Essentials pail its top pick.

The Diaper Genie Expressions costs about the same as the Complete but is more similar to the Essentials in function and features (no foot pedal, no carbon filter holder). It's unique in that you can wrap it in a printed fabric sleeve (sold separately) to better match your nursery. We found the clamp action on the Expressions model to be smooth, but it partly obstructs an already narrow opening, and when you consider that along with the force necessary to push the clamp open, this pail is another nonstarter if you have a particularly disgusting diaper.

In our tests, the Diaper Dékor Plus was as effective as our top-pick pail from Ubbi in keeping in smells while sitting in the room, but dozens of Amazon reviewers have complained that this pail stinks up its surroundings. It's ready to use right out of the box, but it requires proprietary refills, which bring the cost of owning this pail over three years to more than $200. The manufacturer claims that diapers can be dropped through the trapdoor, but we found that in reality they needed to be pushed or thrown through, which is a problem if you have a truly foul diaper. It's a little rickety overall, with a front hatch that doesn't always shut properly and an upper lid that can get misaligned with the lower bucket. This model does have a knob to lock the diaper-loading hatch, and it's about as secure as the Ubbi pail's lock.

Though the Munchkin Pail shares many smell-control features with our also-great pick, the Munchkin Step, it lacks a foot pedal, which makes throwing away diapers with one hand difficult. The lid also closes loudly and does not stay open when pushed up if not pushed beyond a certain angle. In addition, it shares many of the Step's flaws, such as the restricted opening, which requires you to force the diaper through a ring of plastic teeth. As with the Step, some testers did not like the Munchkin Pail's lavender-scented puck and bags.

The Safety 1st Easy Saver was one of the most inexpensive options we considered. We liked its simple design—basically a compact garbage can with a tight-fitting lid and a smaller opening with a push-button flip-top lid. But it was the least effective pail at controlling odors when just sitting in the room, as well as when open for disposal and changing out the liner.

To get the best mileage out of your diaper pail, get in the habit of wrapping soiled diapers into neat, tight bundles. Doing so helps contain the smell even further, reduces your risk of exposure to loose contents, and efficiently packs the bag inside the pail. If it's convenient, you might even consider flushing any solid waste before disposing of diapers, which will keep odors down and allow you to wait longer before emptying the pail (some parents do this to reinforce from an early age that poop belongs in a toilet).

If your diaper pail does a good job of trapping odors, the inside is bound to start smelling eventually. Airing out the pail, preferably overnight, should help.

If your pail's walls get soiled in any way, it's best to tackle the problem immediately, for obvious reasons. Ubbi recommends cleaning its steel cans with a dry cloth when necessary, and, if using a wet cloth, making sure to allow the pail to dry completely before using it again. The company advises against using abrasive liquid cleaners and spray bleach or detergent, as the substances might get under the screws and corrode the metal. Munchkin recommends cleaning its plastic pail with warm water and soap. Munchkin also suggests using a solution of vinegar, baking soda, and lemon.

Vincent Valderrama, senior designer at Smart Design, phone interview, May 4, 2017

The Best Diaper Pail Review, BabyGearLab, May 11, 2015

The Best Diaper Pail, The NightLight

Diaper pails, Lucie's List

Best Diaper Pails of 2017, BabyList, January 1, 2017

Winnie Yang

Winnie Yang is the former supervising editor of Wirecutter's appliance coverage and formerly the editor of guides to baby and parenting gear. In a previous life, she served as the managing editor of Culinary Backstreets and The Art of Eating, and she has written for Condé Nast Traveler, Feast, Jamie, Saveur, and Tasting Table, among other publications.

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