Is homemade cleaner cheaper than store-bought?

For vinegar-based cleaners, yes, by a wide margin. At prices observed online at Walmart on October 22, 2026, a published vinegar-and-water glass cleaner costs about 1.5 cents per fluid ounce against 10 to 15 cents for Windex. A published liquid laundry recipe works out to under 3 cents per high-efficiency load for its powders, against about 7 cents for the cheapest store detergent seen. The savings shrink or disappear when a recipe calls for castile soap or essential oils, and when you buy borax or washing soda from a marketplace seller at two or three times the shelf price. The figures below show every step, so you can redo them with your own store's prices.

The prices used on this page

All prices were read on October 22, 2026 from the retailer pages listed, for online orders. Shelf prices vary by store and change often, so treat these as one dated example and check your own receipt.

The load counts are the manufacturers' own, as printed in the listing. Prices for a Fels-Naptha bar, castile soap and essential oils did not appear on the pages read, so this page shows how to price them rather than giving a figure.

Glass cleaner: the clearest saving

NMSU's G-313 gives this window cleaner: "In a spray bottle, mix 1 cup distilled vinegar with 1 cup water" [5].

1. One cup is 8 fluid ounces. At 3.1 cents per ounce, the vinegar costs about 25 cents.
2. The water is close to free, so the 16 ounces of finished cleaner cost about 25 cents, or 1.5 cents per ounce.
3. A 23-ounce Windex spray costs $3.48 (15.1 cents per ounce). The same 23 ounces of the NMSU mix cost about 35 cents.
4. Against the 2-liter Windex refill (10.3 cents per ounce), the homemade mix still costs about one seventh as much.

This compares cost only. Whether a vinegar mix leaves your windows as clear as a commercial product depends on your water and your technique, which the glass cleaner page covers.

All-purpose and floor cleaners

UF/IFAS's all-purpose cleaner is orange peel in a quart jar "fill[ed] with white vinegar," left to sit for about a week [6]. A quart is 32 ounces, and the peel takes up part of the jar, so the vinegar costs less than $1.00, or under 3.1 cents per ounce. The closest store product on the same page, Windex With Vinegar at 32 ounces, cost $3.97 [4]. Peel from oranges you have already eaten adds nothing.

The UF/IFAS floor cleaners are cheaper still per use, because they are mostly water [6]:

No store floor cleaner price was recorded for this page, so there is no side-by-side figure here.

One comparison does not hold up: store "multi-surface disinfectant" sprays. Those are EPA-registered to kill germs, and no homemade mix may claim that job [7]. Pricing a vinegar spray against a disinfectant compares two different tools; the page on what to make and what to buy explains which job needs which.

Laundry: cheap per load, with conditions

Cost per load is worked out here. The recipes themselves, and whether a bar-soap mix cleans like detergent, are on the homemade laundry detergent page.

The UF/IFAS liquid version

UF/IFAS's 10-gallon liquid detergent uses 1 bar Fels-Naptha soap, 1 cup Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda and 1/2 cup Borax, with water, and "Yields 10 gallons. For high-efficiency machines, use 1/4 cup per load. For top-loading machines, use 1/2 cup per load" [6].

1. Ten gallons is 160 cups. At 1/4 cup per load that is 640 high-efficiency loads; at 1/2 cup it is 320 top-loader loads.
2. Charge a whole box of borax ($6.98) and a whole box of washing soda ($5.43 to $8.90) to this one batch, even though the recipe uses only a cup or less of each. That is $12.41 to $15.88.
3. Spread over 640 loads, the powders cost 1.9 to 2.5 cents per HE load. Over 320 loads, 3.9 to 5.0 cents per top-loader load.
4. Add the soap bar: its price divided by 640 (HE) or 320 (top loader).

Because step 2 charges full boxes, the real figure is lower. Even so, against Arm & Hammer Clean Burst at 7.2 cents per load, the bar would have to cost more than about $30 before the homemade HE version cost more, and more than about $7.30 for the top-loader dose. Against Tide at 21.8 cents per load the gap is far wider.

The UF/IFAS powder version

The powder uses 1 cup borax, 1 cup washing soda and 1 finely chopped bar of Fels-Naptha, at "2 tablespoons (tbsps.) per load" [6]. Two cups is 32 tablespoons, so the borax and washing soda alone make at least 16 loads, and the chopped bar adds more. The listings read for this page do not say how many cups a box holds, so the cost per load depends on a number you can find in your own kitchen:

Cost per load = (cost of the cups used from each box + price of the bar) ÷ loads per batch

To get the cups-per-box figure, measure the box out once with a dry measuring cup.

What the per-load figure leaves out

Your time grating and melting soap, the bucket, and the question of fit. A soap-based mix behaves differently from detergent in hard water, and HE washer makers have their own detergent guidance. Read the hard water page and the HE washer page before you switch, because a repair bill erases years of 5-cent loads.

Where the savings disappear

Castile soap and essential oils

Vinegar costs about 3 cents an ounce. Castile soap and essential oils are sold in small bottles at many times that price per ounce, so a recipe built on them can cost as much as the store product it replaces. Use the unit price on the shelf tag or listing (Walmart shows it, for example "10.7¢/oz" on the borax [2]) and work it out the same way:

Ingredient cost in a batch = unit price × amount the recipe uses

Do this for each ingredient and add them. Oils also bring questions that have nothing to do with price, including pets and plastic bottles; see the essential oils page.

Who you buy from

The seller can matter more than the recipe. On one Walmart page read for this comparison, the same 65-ounce box of 20 Mule Team Borax was offered by different sellers at prices from $6.98 to $19.73 for a single box, and in multipacks up to $54.89 for three [8]. Washing soda in a six-pack of 55-ounce boxes was $61.99, more than $10 a box, against $5.43 to $8.90 for one box [3]. Buy the single box at the shelf price.

Bottles

A spray bottle is a one-time cost, and it is the one saving not to chase. Buy a bottle made for cleaners rather than reusing an empty store-cleaner bottle (Clorox's bleach safety data sheet says "Do not reuse empty containers" [9]), and never use a food or drink bottle. The bottles and labels page explains both rules.

Choosing what to make first for the money

Glass and window cleaning gives the largest, surest saving, so the published glass recipes are a good first batch. If laundry is your biggest cleaning cost, go next to homemade laundry detergent and read what it does in your water and your washer.

References

1. Walmart.com, *Vinegar* category listing (Great Value Distilled White Vinegar, 128 fl oz), price observed October 22, 2026. https://www.walmart.com/c/kp/vinegar
2. Walmart.com, *20 Mule Team All Natural Borax Laundry Detergent Booster & Multi-Purpose Household Cleaner, 65 Ounce*, price observed October 22, 2026. https://www.walmart.com/ip/20850525
3. Walmart.com, *Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda Detergent Booster & Household Cleaner, 55 oz*, with related detergent listings on the page, prices observed October 22, 2026. https://www.walmart.com/ip/seort/115347349 and https://www.walmart.com/ip/19407690
4. Walmart.com, *Windex* category listing (Original Glass Cleaner 23 fl oz and 2 L refill; With Vinegar 32 fl oz), prices observed October 22, 2026. https://www.walmart.com/c/kp/gallon-windex
5. New Mexico State University Cooperative Extension Service, Griffiths R. and Koukel S. (rev.), *Green Alternatives to Toxic Household Products*, Guide G-313, revised February 2019. https://pubs.nmsu.edu/_g/G313/index.html
6. University of Florida IFAS Extension, Griffin A. and Cantrell R.A., *Homemade Household Cleaners*, FCS3319, Release Date October 7, 2025. https://ask.ifas.ufl.edu/publication/FY1449
7. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, *Determining If a Cleaning Product Is a Pesticide Under FIFRA*, last updated July 6, 2026. https://www.epa.gov/pesticide-registration/determining-if-cleaning-product-pesticide-under-fifra
8. Walmart.com, *Borax* category listing, prices observed October 22, 2026. https://www.walmart.com/c/kp/borax
9. The Clorox Company, Safety Data Sheet: Clorox Regular Bleach2, revision 3, December 9, 2020. https://www.thecloroxcompany.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/US001153-Clorox-Regular-Bleach2_3.pdf