Which Pool Robot
A kidney-shaped backyard pool with a brick deck and trees behind it

Robotic pool cleaners

Which pool robot fits your pool?

Makers rate each robot for a pool length or a floor area, and for the surfaces it climbs. Put in your pool's size to get the numbers to hold against those ratings.

Your pool

32 ft16 ft
512 sq ft floor970 sq ft with walls18,200 gallonsLook for a robot rated for pools of 32 ft or longer, or for 970 sq ft if it cleans the walls.Check every robot's rating against it

Start with the pool

What kind of pool, and what cleans it now?

Inground and above-ground pools take different robots. A skimmer handles the surface. If an older suction or pressure cleaner is still running, the choice is a robot or another rebuild.

Robots for inground pools

Corded and cordless robots rated by pool length or floor area. The differences that matter are wall and waterline climbing, how fine the filter is, and whether it handles steps and a sun shelf.

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Cleaners for above-ground pools

Round and oval pools with a vinyl liner and a flat floor. Smaller cordless robots fit most of them, as long as the maker rates the robot for vinyl and for the pool's diameter.

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Solar skimmers

Floating skimmers that run on a solar panel and collect leaves and pollen from the surface before they sink. They work alongside a floor cleaner and leave the floor and walls to it.

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Replacing a suction or pressure cleaner

A Zodiac MX6, a Baracuda or a Polaris 280 runs on the pool pump. Here is what changes when a robot takes over, and when a rebuild kit is the cheaper repair.

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Keeping an older cleaner running

Parts by the cleaner you have

Bags, tires, sweep hoses, diaphragms and rebuild kits, listed by the maker's part number for each model. Each page compares the parts a cleaner needs over a season with what a robot asks for.

Reading a spec sheet

What the makers rate

Every robot on this site is listed with the figures from its maker's page or manual, in the same four places.

01Pool length or area
Corded robots are usually rated by pool length, cordless ones by floor area in square feet. Match the rating to the pool, with the walls counted if the robot climbs them.
02Surfaces
Floor only, floor and walls, or floor, walls and the waterline. Steps and sun shelves are a separate line in the spec, and many robots skip them.
03Filter fineness
Given in microns. A finer filter catches pollen and fine dirt and clogs sooner under leaves, so some robots ship with two baskets.
04Power
A corded robot needs a GFCI outlet and a cable long enough for the far end of the pool. A cordless one is rated by runtime per charge, and the charge has to cover the cycle you want.

Guides

Before you choose

All guides
A diaphragm suction cleaner and its hose on the floor of a pool

Checking the flow to a suction pool cleaner

The makers' own flow checks for the Zodiac MX6 and MX8, Baracuda G3 and G2, Hayward Navigator Pro and Hayward PoolCleaner, and what a reading outside the range points to.

A man on a pool deck watching a corded robot clean the pool floor

Cordless or corded pool robot

What a cordless robot's runtime and square-foot rating mean, what a corded robot's cable and power supply need, and where each fits, from the makers' own figures.

A Polaris 3900 Sport pressure cleaner with its sweep hose and bag

The booster pump behind a Polaris pressure cleaner

Which Polaris pressure cleaners need a booster pump and which run without one, what the PB4-60 manual says about pressure, and how the cleaners are set by wheel speed.