It can be a pain to constantly clean up after a shedding pet. While you love your furry friends, their hair and dandruff can quickly pile up and get caught in fibers or under furniture. Luckily, a robot vacuum can help take some weight off your shoulders by automating the cleaning process. It can travel around your home and pick up pet hair so you can spend more time with your cats or dogs. A robot vacuum can be helpful if you're in the middle of seasonal shedding, as you can program it to clean a room several times a day if needed.
We've tested more than 65 robot vacuum cleaners, and below are our recommendations for the best robot vacuums for pet hair. These recommendations are based on their pet-hair cleaning performance on different surfaces, their design, and price. For more, look at our lists of the best robot vacuums and the best robot vacuums for hardwood floors. If you're only interested in brand-specific options, consider our recommendations for the best iRobot vacuums. Or, if you're looking for the absolute best in pet hair performance and don't mind doing the job yourself, check out our recommendations for the best vacuums for pet hair.
The best automatic vacuum for pet hair we've tested is the Roborock S8 Pro Ultra. This vacuum sits at the top of the Roborock line-up, and it excels at picking up pet hair from floors. Its twin rubber brushrolls significantly improve pet hair pickup on most surface types compared to the single roller setup found in the older Roborock S7 MaxV. Its multifunction dock is its standout feature, though. Compared to the standard Roborock S8+'s dock, it not only empties out its dustbin but also refills its water tank from a reservoir and washes and dries its mop pad. The dock also includes a fast-charging system, so even if your mischievous pet likes to traipse in the dirt a few times a day, there'll never be too much downtime between cleaning sessions.
This vacuum's other major feature is its dual-sensor navigation system; combining a LIDAR sensor that maps out your home with a structured light sensor, it can identify and avoid common obstacles in real-time, like power cords, furniture legs, or even pet waste. It also stores up to four floor maps and uses its sensors to spot landmarks and determine which room it's working in. You can even specify cleaning settings for different rooms. Unfortunately, as good as the performance is, you might need to manually clean finer debris piled up against walls or in corners; also, its mopping system isn't particularly effective and will require many passes for stubborn stains. Finally, while the multifunction dock makes for an excellent hands-off ownership experience, it's simply enormous—it may not fit in smaller living spaces.
If you're looking for a robot vacuum with many great features for dealing with pet hair but at a more affordable price point, the Roborock Q5 Max+ is a great choice. For pet hair in particular, its redesigned dual-roller cleaning head offers performance on par with the Roborock S8 Pro Ultra. However, you lose the mopping function and the real-time hazard avoidance, and its dock isn't capable of fast charging, so you can expect to wait multiple hours between cleans. Nevertheless, this vacuum has a decently sized internal dustbin, so it won't need to return to its self-empty station too often, and it boasts impressive battery life (but again, shorter than the Pro Ultra's), so it's able to cover quite a bit of ground during each clean.
It also manages to pack in many of its pricier stablemate's automation features, like multi-floor mapping capability and a 'Smart Recognition' feature that automatically determines which of its stored maps it's working in. Using the companion app, you can also view and customize the 3D representation of your home after it's mapped out, label specific rooms, and send the vacuum wherever you'd like using the 'Pin n Go' function. That said, like the S8 Pro Ultra, it does a poor job of sealing fine allergens like pet dander, which can escape from gaps in its top cover.
The Wyze Robot Vacuum is a great option if you're looking for the best automatic vacuum for pet hair on a budget. Unlike the pricier Roborock Q5 Max+, it isn't compatible with a self-emptying dock station, so you must empty its dustbin manually at the end of almost every cleaning session, as the internal dirt compartment is quite small. And while it's not quite as effective as the more expensive Roborock for dealing with pet hair on bare floors and carpets, it still offers great performance overall. Its companion app provides functionality similar to Roborock's, with support for multi-floor mapping, room labeling, and no-go zones. It does a pretty good job of sealing in fine allergens like pet dander, and it runs very quietly, which is good if your pet is sensitive to loud noises.
The Roborock S7 MaxV is a high-end robot vacuum with a wide range of automation features similar to the Roborock S8 Pro Ultra. However, it has the unique advantage of having a more advanced obstacle avoidance system that incorporates a color camera, allowing it to be used as a roving security camera. Its single-roller cleaning head is less effective for dealing with pet hair on carpets than the newer model's twin-roller head.
See our reviewThe Ecovacs DEEBOT OZMO T8 AIVI is a high-end robot vacuum with a dual-sensor navigation system similar to the Roborock S8 Pro Ultra. However, it has a less advanced mopping system and isn't as effective in dealing with pet hair on bare floors.
See our reviewThe Shark IQ 2-in-1 is a mid-range robot vacuum with a mopping feature for any dirt or mud your pet might track in. However, it has a harder time dealing with pet hair on carpeted surfaces when compared to the Roborock Q5 Max+.
See our reviewWe've verified that our recommendations are available and represent the best choices. We've also made edits for clarity.
Oct 09, 2024: We've done a major overhaul of this article, updating our recommendations based on our new pet hair testing and to reflect the best available products on the market. To this end, we replaced the Roborock S8+/S8 with the Roborock S8 Pro Ultra, the Roborock Q5+ with the Roborock Q5 Max+, and the eufy RoboVac 11S with the Wyze Robot Vacuum.
Jun 19, 2024: Replaced the Eureka Groove with the eufy RoboVac 11S because the Eureka is getting hard to find.
Feb 13, 2024: Replaced ILIFE A4s with Eureka Groove as 'Best Budget Robot Vacuum For Pet Hair' pick due to current availability.
Dec 11, 2023: Removed eufy RoboVac X8 from Notable Mentions due to current availability, added Shark IQ 2-in-1 to Notable Mentions.
Our recommendations above are what we think are currently the best robot vacuums for pet hair for most people. We factor in the price, feedback from our visitors, and availability.
If you would like to do the work of choosing yourself, here's the list of all our robot vacuum reviews ranked by pet hair performance. Be careful not to get too caught up in the details. While no vacuum is perfect for every use, most are good enough to please almost everyone, and the differences are often not noticeable unless you really look for them.