Garden Last updated · owner ratings verified July 2026
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Side by side
| Tide Tide Hygienic Clean Heavy Duty 10X Best for odor $20-28 Check price | Tide Tide PODS Ultra Oxi Easiest to dose $20-26 Check price | Tide Tide Powder, Original Best value $20-26 Check price | Persil Persil Odor Fighter Liquid Odor specialist $14-22 Check price | Our pick Persil Persil ProClean Plus Oxi Power Best overall $45-60 (4-pack) Check price | Persil Persil Ultra Pacs Advanced Clean Oxi+Odor Power Persil, no measuring $16-24 Check price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| What owners rate it | ||||||
| Owner rating | 4.8 / 5 (12,284) | 4.8 / 5 (46,324) | 4.8 / 5 (16,047) | 4.8 / 5 (2,948) | 4.7 / 5 (1,113) | 4.8 / 5 (558) |
| Specifications | ||||||
| Form | Liquid | Pacs | Powder | Liquid | Liquid | Pacs |
| Loads per container | About 59-72 depending on size | 61 | 125 | About 50-60 | About 64 per bottle | 57 |
| Approx. cost per load | Roughly 30-38 cents | Roughly 33-42 cents | Roughly 16-21 cents | Roughly 26-34 cents | Roughly 19-26 cents in the 4-pack | Roughly 30-38 cents |
| Machine compatibility | HE and standard | HE and standard | HE and standard | HE and standard | HE and standard | HE and standard |
| Scent profile | Strong Original; no unscented version of this formula | Moderate Original | Classic Tide Original | Heavy floral-fresh | Strong signature Persil | Strong signature Persil |
| Stain classes owners rate it for | Body odor, sweat, built-up residue | Set-in food, grass and coffee stains | Dinginess, hard-water gray, mud and clay | Body odor, sweat, synthetic fabric smell | Grease, mud, grass, ground-in dirt | Odor plus general stains |
| Cold-water performance | Good, but works better on warm for oils | Dissolves reliably in cold | Weakest of the six; needs warm water to dissolve fully | Good; formulated to work down to cold | Strong; oxi boosters stay active in cold | Dissolves reliably in cold |
| Who it suits | ||||||
| Best for | Sweat and body-odor buildup in everyday loads | Households that overdose liquid and end up with residue | Hard-water homes and the lowest cost per load on this page | Gym clothes, work shirts and anything that smells before it looks dirty | Heavy soil, work clothes and stains a normal detergent leaves behind | Persil cleaning power without the notorious cap drips |
Ratings are aggregated Amazon owner ratings, not our own testing. Figures verified July 2026.
Pros and cons
Tide Hygienic Clean Heavy Duty 10X
- Owners who switched from standard Tide report the musty smell in towels and gym shirts stops coming back
- Thicker than regular Tide liquid, so the cap dose goes further than the bottle size suggests
- Rinses clean in low-water HE machines without the film owners complain about with cheaper liquids
- Scent is strong out of the cap and lingers on synthetics
- Costs noticeably more per load than Tide Original liquid
- Cap markings are hard to read, and overdosing is the top cause of the residue complaints
Tide PODS Ultra Oxi
- Fixed dose removes the single biggest cause of smelly, filmy laundry
- Owners consistently report it lifts set-in coffee, grass and food stains without a pretreat step
- Dissolves in cold water far more reliably than the store-brand pacs owners compare it to
- Most expensive per load of any Tide format here
- One pac is not enough for a genuinely full or heavily soiled load
- Must be stored out of reach; the packaging is a known child-safety concern
Tide Powder, Original
- Cheapest per load of the six here by a wide margin
- Owners in hard-water areas report it beats every liquid they had tried for dinginess
- Contains no water to freeze, split or gel in an unheated garage or basement laundry
- Can leave undissolved grit on cold, short cycles
- The box tears and the scoop gets buried; owners repeatedly say to decant it
- No pretreating straight onto a stain the way a liquid allows
Persil Odor Fighter Liquid
- Owners who bought it specifically for a smell problem overwhelmingly report the smell did not return
- Cheaper per load than Tide Hygienic Clean while targeting the same problem
- Holds up on synthetics, which is where odor complaints concentrate
- Perfume is heavy and reads as floral rather than clean to a lot of owners
- No fragrance-free equivalent in the Persil range
- Stocked less widely than Tide, so a store run can come up empty
Persil ProClean Plus Oxi Power
- The most concentrated formula on this page; owners consistently report a smaller dose does more
- Bought as a four-pack it lands under most single bottles of Tide per load
- Reviewers who handle grease, grass and clay repeatedly name it as the one that finally worked
- Four bottles is a lot of shelf and money up front
- Scent is the most polarizing of the six; some owners describe it as overpowering
- Overdosing this one causes residue faster than any other formula here
Persil Ultra Pacs Advanced Clean Oxi+Odor Power
- Puts the Persil formula into a fixed dose, which owners say ends the residue problem
- Owners report it handles odor as well as the liquid Odor Fighter
- Film wrapper dissolves cleanly on cold cycles in most owner reports
- Newest product here, so the owner-review record is thinner than the rest
- Harder to find in stores than Tide PODS
- As with all pacs, one is not enough for a genuinely full load
Decision factors
What you actually pay
Sticker price is the wrong number for detergent. The number that matters is cost per load, and on that measure the ranking flips more than once. Tide Powder is the cheapest thing on this page at roughly 16 to 21 cents a load, because you are not paying to ship water. Persil ProClean bought as a four-pack lands around 19 to 26 cents. Single bottles of either brand sit in the high twenties to mid thirties, and pods from both brands are the most expensive way to buy laundry detergent, full stop — you are paying for the film and the convenience.
Where does the Persil premium go? Into concentration. Persil ProClean carries a heavier enzyme and surfactant load per ounce, which is why the dose line is lower and why owners who pour a Tide-sized cap of it end up with residue. Where does the Tide premium go? Into formats and shelf presence. Tide is the only one of the two with a powder, a genuine fragrance-free line, a coldwater-specific formula and pods stocked in every grocery store in the country.
The running cost nobody budgets for is over-dosing. Both brands are concentrated, both caps are hard to read, and the single most common complaint in the owner-review record for every product on this page traces back to using too much. Fixing that is free and typically saves 20 to 30 percent of your detergent spend, which is a bigger saving than switching brands.
Which one fits you
- The smell is the whole problem Persil Odor Fighter It is aimed at exactly one job, and owners who bought it for that job report it did it. Cheaper per load than Tide’s equivalent.
- Work clothes, mud, grease, kids Persil ProClean Plus Oxi Power The most concentrated formula here, and the four-pack undercuts most single bottles of Tide per load.
- Sensitive skin or eczema in the house Tide Free & Gentle Persil has no fragrance-free line in the US. Tide’s is accepted by the National Eczema Association, which settles it.
- Hard water, or you just want the lowest cost Tide Powder, Original Roughly a third the cost per load of pods, and owners in hard-water areas rate it above every liquid they had tried.
If neither is right
- Arm & Hammer Clean Burst If the real constraint is budget, this undercuts both brands on liquid and holds a strong owner rating across a very large review base. It will not match Persil on ground-in soil, but for normal household laundry the gap is smaller than the price gap.
- all Free Clear with Odor Relief The one product that does both jobs this page is about: fragrance-free and aimed at odor. Worth a look if someone in the house reacts to Persil’s perfume but you still have a smell problem to solve.
- HEX Performance Activewear Detergent Purpose-built for synthetic athletic fabric, which is where odor complaints actually live. Narrower than either mainstream brand, and priced accordingly, but owners of technical gear rate it highly.
Which should you actually buy?
If your laundry problem is a smell that keeps coming back, buy Persil. If your laundry problem is several different things at once — a sensitive-skin sufferer, hard water, a tight budget, a teenager who plays sport — buy Tide, because only one of these brands sells a formula for each of those. That is the whole comparison in two sentences, and everything below is the evidence for it.
What actually separates the two brands?
Tide is Procter & Gamble, has been the default American detergent since 1946, and competes on range. Persil is Henkel, has been the default German detergent for far longer, and only arrived on US shelves in 2015. It competes on concentration.
That difference in strategy shows up on the shelf. Tide sells liquid, powder, pods, coldwater-specific, fragrance-free, heavy-duty and half a dozen scent variants. Persil sells a much shorter line built around one very strong core formula. Neither approach is wrong, but they suit different households, and the mistake most people make is comparing a single bottle of each rather than comparing what each brand can cover.
The second real difference is dosing. Persil ProClean is the more concentrated of the two, and the owner-review record shows a clear pattern: people who switch from Tide to Persil and keep pouring the same amount get residue and complain about it. That is not a formula defect, it is a habit that has to change with the bottle.
Which one handles odor better?
Odor in fabric is almost never a dirt problem. It is bacteria and skin oil bound into fiber — especially polyester and elastane, which do not absorb water the way cotton does and so do not rinse out the same way. The formulas that solve it are the ones with the heaviest enzyme load and surfactants that release oil at low temperature.
Both brands have a product aimed squarely at this. Persil Odor Fighter and Tide Hygienic Clean Heavy Duty 10X are the direct rivals, both rate strongly in the owner-review record, and both draw the same recurring comment: buyers who bought it because towels or gym gear had started to smell report the smell did not come back. On cost per load, Persil Odor Fighter is the cheaper of the two. That is the deciding factor here, because on outcomes owners do not separate them.
Neither will fix a machine problem, and a surprising share of odor complaints are machine problems. If the smell is on everything rather than on the synthetics, the detergent is not the cause — see why clothes still smell after washing before you buy anything.
Which one is better on stains?
Published lab work and owner consensus point the same direction here. Consumer Reports has ranked Persil ProClean at or near the top of its detergent tests in multiple years, and the owner-review record backs it up in the specific place it should: reviewers who deal with grease, clay, grass and ground-in work dirt name Persil ProClean disproportionately often as the one that finally worked after other detergents did not.
Tide is not far behind, and on some stain classes it closes the gap entirely. Tide PODS Ultra Oxi draws consistent praise for set-in coffee, food and grass without a separate pretreat, and Tide Powder outperforms both brands’ liquids on hard-water dinginess because powders carry water softeners that liquids generally do not. The honest summary: Persil is stronger on soil, Tide is stronger on the specific stain classes it built products for.
What if someone in the house has sensitive skin?
Then this comparison is already over. Persil does not sell a widely stocked fragrance-free formula in the US, and Persil’s scent is the heavier of the two brands by some distance — the most common criticism in its owner reviews is not cleaning, it is perfume. Tide Free & Gentle is fragrance-free and dye-free and carries the National Eczema Association seal of acceptance.
Scent sensitivity is not a niche concern in laundry. It is the single most-repeated complaint against Persil across the whole range, including from owners who rate the cleaning highly. If anyone in the house has reacted to a detergent before, start with the fragrance-free option and treat cleaning power as the second question. Our full odor-removal detergent rankings cover the fragrance-free options in more detail.
Which is genuinely cheaper to run?
Per load, and only per load. On that basis Tide Powder wins outright, Persil ProClean in the four-pack is second, single bottles of either brand are mid-field, and pods from both brands are the expensive way to do laundry. The four-pack is the detail most people miss — it looks like the expensive option on the shelf and is the cheap option in the machine.
There is one running cost that dwarfs the brand difference: dose. Both of these are concentrated formulas, both are routinely overdosed, and overdosing wastes detergent, leaves residue and causes the exact odor problem you bought the detergent to fix. Measure to the line. It saves more money than switching brands does.
The call
Persil ProClean Plus Oxi Power is the better detergent, and the four-pack makes it the better buy for anyone with genuinely dirty laundry. Tide is the better brand to live with, because it covers the situations Persil does not: fragrance-free, hard water, an unheated laundry room, a grocery run at 9pm. If you only ever buy one bottle, buy Persil. If you buy detergent for a household rather than for yourself, buy Tide.
Every product on this page is ranked from aggregated Amazon owner ratings and published expert consensus, not first-hand trials — the method is set out in full on how we rank. For the wider field beyond these two brands, start with the best laundry detergent rankings, and check HE vs regular detergent if you are not sure what your machine takes.