The 2 Best Electric Toothbrushes for Kids in 2024 | Reviews by Wirecutter

By Nancy Redd

Nancy Redd is a writer who covers health and grooming. She has tested dozens of hair dryers, toothbrushes, and pairs of period underwear.

After a new round of testing, we now recommend the vibrating Philips Sonicare for Kids Design a Pet Edition as our top pick and the oscillating Oral-B Kids Electric Toothbrush as the runner-up.

More than half of all children in the US will develop a dental cavity before the fourth grade, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Although using an electric toothbrush is not guaranteed to reduce dental issues, experts say that a powered brush can make it easier for some kids to develop good oral-health habits.

For children using an electric toothbrush for the first time—or for anyone who prefers a smaller, vibrating brush head with a rubberized back or enjoys decorating their toothbrush with colorful animal stickers—the Philips Sonicare for Kids Design a Pet Edition rechargeable toothbrush is a great choice. It can sync wirelessly with an interactive app for kids, which some brushers may find motivating.

This quiet, vibrating brush has a smaller brush head and handle and comes with a two-minute timer, a long-lasting battery, and an interactive app, which may be encouraging to some kids. Replacement heads are widely available.

This oscillating (rotating) brush has a thick, rubberized handle that can be easier for little hands to grip, but it’s louder and heavier, and it doesn’t include an app.

An onboard timer helps to ensure that children brush for the amount of time that experts recommend.

A proper-size brush head can help kids more effectively brush all of their teeth—including the rear molars.

The Philips Sonicare for Kids Design a Pet Edition has the primary features that our experts said a children’s toothbrush needs: a smaller brush head and handle, plus a built-in two-minute timer. (Two minutes is the amount of brushing time that leading dental associations recommend.) Its two intensities of quiet vibrations are each powerful enough to provide a thorough cleaning by the time the brush automatically turns off after its two-minute timer is done; the brush pulses every 30 seconds as a reminder to move to another quadrant of the mouth.

The brush is rechargeable—so you don’t have to buy batteries—and can last at least two weeks on a single charge. It’s compatible with two different “kid-sized” Sonicare brush heads featuring rubberized backs: one rated for ages 3 and up, which comes in the box, and a larger one rated for ages 7 and up. This model pairs via Bluetooth with a fun and robust interactive app for kids, which could be helpful for those who need encouragement to brush.

Approximate cost of ownership ($30 brush handle plus four Philips Sonicare for Kids replacement heads) after:

This oscillating (rotating) brush has a thick, rubberized handle that can be easier for little hands to grip, but it’s louder and heavier, and it doesn’t include an app.

If your child dislikes the sensations of a vibrating toothbrush, which can feel unpleasant or ticklish to some, they may prefer the rotating Oral-B Kids Electric Toothbrush, which spins instead. It is louder and heavier than our top pick, and only one type of child-size oscillating replacement brush head is available. But some little hands might find the thicker, rubberized brush handle easier to grip than the plastic handle of our top pick.

This model has two modes, sensitive and daily clean, and like our top pick it has a built-in two-minute timer. However, while this brush does issue an alert to change mouth quadrants every 30 seconds, it doesn’t automatically turn off after all four quadrants are brushed and the suggested two minutes are up, so it’s the child’s or adult’s responsibility to keep track of time and then turn it off. Like the Philips Sonicare model, the Oral-B Kids brush recharges by plugging into a base. In our testing, we found that a single charge lasted about a week, or about half the time of our top pick. Unlike our top pick, this model does not sync to an associated app.

Approximate cost of ownership ($20 brush handle plus four Oral-B Kids replacement heads) after:

I’m a senior staff writer at Wirecutter covering health and grooming, and I am also the author of our guides to electric toothbrushes for adults and water flossers.

For this guide:

Kids don’t need an electric toothbrush to brush well. “The proper application of either [a manual or electric toothbrush] is fine for kids,” dentist Mary Hayes said.

But Hayes and dentist Joe Castellano told us that electric toothbrushes can make it easier for some kids to achieve good brushing habits. An electric toothbrush can also take some of the work out of moving the brush over the teeth and gums. In a small study with kids ages 3 through 9, electric toothbrushes were shown to remove more plaque than manual brushes.

Most electric toothbrushes for kids, including most of those we tested, have fun or cute designs—cartoon characters or animal themes as well as (sometimes) musical timers or flashing lights—which may help motivate young brushers. Some can pair with apps that track and reward good brushing. Neither we nor any of our sources are aware of data supporting the idea that the use of apps or interactive games helps kids maintain better brushing habits, so whether you decide to introduce an app into the brushing routine depends on you and your child. (You may well not; we had to wipe a lot of toothpaste spray off an iPhone screen during testing.)

Hayes cautioned that no matter the toothbrush type, most kids don’t have the dexterity or maturity to properly brush their teeth by themselves until around age 8. Using an electric toothbrush doesn’t take away the need for adult supervision and instruction in proper techniques. Some parents may worry that the rapid rotations or vibrations of an electric toothbrush could hurt their child’s gums, but Hayes and Castellano said that this shouldn’t be a concern with a brush from a well-known company.

Electric toothbrushes are more expensive than manual brushes. The brush itself typically costs at least $25, and replacement heads generally cost $5 or more apiece (we do not recommend buying knockoffs). You need to change brush heads at least every three months, and judging from our experience, more often, depending on how rough your kid is on the brush head.

As for adult-size toothbrush handles, a child can can use one, as long as they can hold and manipulate it comfortably. The Oral-B Pro 1000 and the Philips Sonicare 4100, the picks in our main electric toothbrush guide, are compatible with the respective brands’ kid-size replacement brush heads, and both Oral-B and Philips Sonicare confirmed that an entire family could use one handle with a different brush head for each person.

We’ve tested 66 electric toothbrushes in hundreds of trials at the bathroom sink. The minimalist yet effective Oral-B Pro 1000 is our top pick.

Like the bristles on adult brushes, those on kids electric toothbrushes can oscillate (rotate) or vibrate. There’s no consensus that one type of movement works better than the other at removing plaque or preventing gingivitis.

In selecting brushes to test, we look for the following features and attributes:

Kid-size brush heads: Our experts told us that the only thing a kids electric toothbrush really needs to be effective is a brush head that fits in a child’s mouth. Kids have less space between their back molars and jaws than adults, and a standard-size brush head may not be able to reach the crevices. “If it’s too big, you can’t brush the back teeth properly,” dentist Mary Hayes said. She also said that it’s fine to continue using a small brush head even as your child’s mouth gets bigger—some kids and even adults prefer it. (Former American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry president Jessica Lee told us that she proudly uses a manual baby toothbrush to brush her teeth.)

Two-minute timer: Most electric toothbrushes now come with an automated timer that can help a kid continue brushing for the full amount of time the ADA recommends. We prefer timers with 30-second quadrant pacing to help kids remember to brush all areas of their mouth.

We’ve been testing children’s electric toothbrushes with our own families since 2018, and we’ve tested 20 children’s brushes with 12 kids since then.

During each round of testing, we note how easily the child is able to move the brush around their mouth and if the handle is easy to grip. We also pay attention to how the brushes endure being chewed on, twisted, dropped, and occasionally thrown around the bathroom. And we note whether the brush heads can detach easily during use.

Each of the brushes has a two-minute timer, which the kids use during each session. We note how easy it is for kids to time themselves and to know when the brushing session is complete.

Some of the brushes we test wirelessly pair with apps meant to track and incentivize brushing. We test such apps on an iPhone.

The vibrating Philips Sonicare for Kids Design a Pet Edition is an effective and easy-to-use starter brush for children (and even some adults).

The handle is smaller and slimmer than most. Compared with most electric toothbrushes for kids, including our runner-up from Oral-B and our former pick from Philips Sonicare (the Philips Sonicare for Kids Sonic Electric Toothbrush), our younger testers found the slim and smooth plastic handle of the newer Design a Pet Edition easier to grip and maneuver. It comes with adorable animal stickers that children can use to customize their brush, and the stickers help to make the handle feel less slippery.

The brush heads are comfortable and sized for a child. This brush comes with one small, oval brush head with a rubberized back that most children over the age of 3 (or an adult who likes small toothbrushes) can easily move around their mouth to get into every nook and cranny. For children with bigger mouths, a larger replacement brush head is available for the same price, also with a rubberized back, which eliminates uncomfortable clanking from a plastic back bumping against teeth.

It has a built-in timer that shuts off automatically. Every 30 seconds, the toothbrush pulses and makes a sound to alert the brusher to move to a new quadrant of their mouth, which can be a helpful reminder when you’re teaching a kid how to pace their brushing over two minutes. After two minutes, the brush pulses again to signal that the cycle is over and then shuts itself off, a wonderful feature for any parent who has entered the bathroom after a busy morning only to find a toothbrush noisily crawling around on the tile floor.

It can pair with an optional, cute, and interactive app. This model can connect via Bluetooth to an app (iOS, Android) that’s designed to help children improve their brushing habits. As an animated character brushes its teeth, a voiceover gives encouragement; the app doesn’t track the brusher’s actual movements, but if you turn off the brush mid-session, the animation does pause to incentivize you to start back up again. Brushing by quadrant isn’t a necessary technique for oral hygiene; still, some kids may find it instructive to watch a visualization of the brushing process, and we noticed that one of our 5-year-old testers attentively followed the prompts when using the app. When you connect to the app, Philips Sonicare collects data about brushing habits as well as the information you provide, such as your email address and social media profiles. According to the company’s privacy policy, it reserves the right to disclose some of the information it collects to outside service providers, business partners, and other third parties.

A single charge lasts about two weeks. For most of our testers, the Philips Sonicare for Kids Design a Pet Edition held its charge longer than the other toothbrushes we tested. The toothbrush has two intensities that you can toggle between by pressing the power button.

Replacement heads are widely available. They come in a size rated for ages 3 and up and a larger version rated for ages 7 and up, both of which cost around $10 each.

This brush is available in only one color and sticker set. It’s covered under a replacement warranty for two years after purchase.

Some kids find vibrations uncomfortable or ticklish. This issue isn’t the brush’s fault; some kids simply prefer brushing with a rotating brush head like that of our runner-up from Oral-B.

It has less-durable brush heads. The rubberized backs of Philips Sonicare children’s brush heads quickly show teeth marks and may begin to rip off—they started wearing out after less than a month of regular use by some of our younger testers. If your child tends to be rough on brushes or to bite down on the brush head, you may need to replace the brush head more frequently.

There’s no storage case, and the protective cap is easy to lose. You can find many inexpensive alternatives, such as these silicone covers.

This oscillating (rotating) brush has a thick, rubberized handle that can be easier for little hands to grip, but it’s louder and heavier, and it doesn’t include an app.

The sturdy Oral-B Kids Electric Toothbrush has bristles that oscillate (spin) instead of vibrating like those on our top pick. It’s the best oscillating toothbrush for kids that we’ve tested.

It may feel less tickly than a vibrating brush. As we note in our guide to electric toothbrushes for adults, there’s no evidence that one motor type works better than the other, but if your child finds the sensations of vibrating brushes to be unpleasant or tickly, they may have a better experience with a rotating brush like this one from Oral-B.

It’s louder, though. The Oral-B kids brush makes more noise than our vibrating top pick.

It’s similar to our top pick for adults. The Oral-B kids brush is basically a scaled-down version of our electric toothbrush pick for adults, the Oral-B Pro 1000. The rubberized handle worked well for our 3- and 5-year-old testers’ hands and fine motor skills. They were able to move the brush around their mouths with more dexterity than they could with longer brushes like our previous also-great pick from Philips Sonicare.

Its brush heads cost a bit less. The head of the Oral-B kids brush is made of hard plastic with soft nylon bristles, and it held up better than the Philips Sonicare brush head after a couple of weeks of brushing in our tests. Oral-B’s kid-size brush heads come in only one size (for ages 3 and up) and cost about $5 to $9.50 apiece (depending on the theme), which is less than the $10 replacement cost for Sonicare brush heads.

A single charge lasts about a week. That week-long charge is about half the time of our top pick. The toothbrush has two spinning modes.

The Oral-B Kids Electric Toothbrush comes in a variety of colors, some with different licensed and brand-owned character stickers. Oral-B covers it with a replacement warranty for two years after purchase.

It has a built-in timer, but it doesn’t shut off. Like our top pick, the Oral-B brush has a built-in timer: Every 30 seconds, the brush pauses briefly to alert the brusher to move to a new section of the mouth. After two minutes, it pulses to signal that the cycle is over, but it keeps running; someone has to actively shut it off.

It has neither a brush cap nor a storage case. Brush caps are easily lost anyway, and off-brand options for brush-head covers abound.

If you want a vibrating toothbrush that’s larger (in girth or the brush head) than the Philips Sonicare for Kids Design a Pet Edition: The Philips Sonicare for Kids Sonic Electric Toothbrush was a previous pick in this guide, and it remains the same great brush. But in our recent testing we found the Design a Pet Edition to be better suited for smaller children. Older children, however, may like that the Sonic Electric Toothbrush comes with a brush head that has a rubberized back but is the standard size—the same size as the brush head you get with the company’s adult brushes. (It’s also compatible with the same, smaller-size replacement heads that come standard on our current top pick.) And kids who have a hard time gripping our current top pick may find this model’s thicker, rubberized handle easier to maneuver (though some find it unwieldy and bulky). This brush is also compatible with the Sonicare app.

If you want a rotating kids toothbrush that’s less expensive up front than the Oral-B Kids Electric Toothbrush: The Spinbrush Smart Clean, a battery-operated (not rechargeable) option, was beloved by most of our testing panel as a semi-disposable yet effective and technically long-lasting alternative. It’s compact and easy for children of all ages to grip, and it offers one mode and comes in two styles (glow in the dark and shimmery sparkle). Our entire panel considered the glow-in-the-dark pattern to be aesthetically neutral, and unlike most oscillating battery-operated toothbrushes, this model has a two-minute timer with 30-second pacing that turns off automatically upon completion. It’s noisy, at about the same level as our runner-up from Oral-B. It costs less than that model, at about $15 for the brush and $5 per replacement head, so if a kid inadvertently destroys it, loses it, or refuses to use it, the financial blow is less painful. However, it doesn’t come with a brush-head cover, and it tends to drain batteries (two AAs are required) quickly. Spinbrush suggests that batteries will last for four to six weeks of normal use, but in our experience we found that they often lasted less than half of that. Unless you’re already invested in rechargeable batteries, you need to factor in the cost—and waste—of regular batteries.

Our former longtime pick, the Quip Kids Sonic Toothbrush, is one of the quietest and gentlest brushes we’ve tested over the years, with a near-silent vibrating hum during use. However, compared with our kids picks from Philips Sonicare and Oral-B, the Quip kids brush requires more manual brushing action to achieve a complete cleaning, which seemed to make it less effective at cleaning our children’s teeth. (Its tamer vibrations did help to keep bathroom mirrors free of toothpaste spray, though.) Plus, replacement-head shipping is no longer free, which makes them cost over $9 per head, or more if bought on Amazon.

The Quip Kids Smart Sonic Toothbrush is, as the name suggests, the smart version of the Quip Kids Sonic Toothbrush and costs about double the price. The bright yellow, Bluetooth-enabled brush pairs with an app (available for Android and iOS) to track a child’s brushing technique and duration, with the aim of motivating and rewarding good habits. The accompanying app seems more grown-up and therefore is more likely to appeal to a tween or teen than the Philips Sonicare for Kids app, but it didn’t offer enough novelty or excitement to motivate our testers to keep using it. In addition, we frequently had issues pairing the app with the brush.

The inexpensive BriteBrush Interactive Smart Kids Toothbrush is actually a manual toothbrush (the brush head doesn’t vibrate or rotate) that uses sensors to track brushing motions and employs voice commands, music (beware, one version is “Baby Shark”), and games to encourage kids to brush in a proper manner and for the correct amount of time. We tested this BriteBrush model with 3-, 5-, and 7-year-old testers, and although the games and music caught their attention, the sensor-prompted brushing commands were often confusing—for example, the brush would repeatedly exhort “Brush up and down!” when the kids were brushing in a normal side-to-side manner.

The Brusheez Kids’ Electric Toothbrush Set, which runs on two AA batteries, hit many of the marks: It’s smaller than an adult brush and comes with a kid-size rotating brush head that worked well for our young testers. But our 3-year-old tester managed to break the brush head completely during normal use (she likely bit down slightly on the head, which is “normal use” for that age). The Brusheez brush head can also pop off easily. The brush comes with a bulky brush stand and attached sand timer, but the brush itself doesn’t have a built-in timer.

The 5-inch battery-powered Brush Buddies My First Soniclean is the smallest brush we tested: The packaging states that it’s meant for ages 6 months to 3 years. The brush head vibrates, but the bristles don’t appear to vibrate or move, so we doubt that it offers as much cleaning power as the other brushes we tested. The brush head attaches with a quarter turn, and we found that it detached easily.

We decided not to test the BURSTkids Sonic Toothbrush because of poor buyer reviews citing, for example, unstable brush heads and charging concerns.

We didn’t test the Foreo Issa Mikro or Issa Mini 2 silicone brushes because they were expensive and had poor owner reviews at the time of our research. A Wirecutter editor who previously used the Mikro with her toddler doesn’t recommend it for kids who still bite or chew their brushes, as they can easily bite through the silicone skin on the brush head—and the brush head isn’t replaceable. The Mini 2 does offer replacement heads, but they cost about $22 apiece. The company claims that the silicone bristles and brush head are gentle on the gums, but the experts we spoke to said that standard nylon-bristle electric toothbrushes shouldn’t damage gums, so we don’t see an advantage to using a silicone brush.

The Autobrush Sonic Pro Kids is a mouthguard-shaped toothbrush that claims to be capable of brushing a child’s entire mouth in 30 seconds or less. To use the Autobrush Sonic Pro Kids, the child inserts the entire brush into their mouth, closes their jaw, and presses a button that causes the bristles to simultaneously vibrate over all their teeth while a musical tune plays for 30 seconds, without requiring any active brushing on the child’s part. But we found the bristles incapable of reaching our testers’ gums and back molars, and they failed to fully clean the teeth they did reach, as food specks were still visible even after two rounds of use. This unusual brush is also difficult to clean thoroughly, and Autobrush recommends its own special foam toothpaste for use with it. At about $40 apiece, the replacement brush heads rank among the most expensive that we encountered in our tests.

Willo, a mouthguard-style automatic toothbrush attached to a heavy, cumbersome base, was equally as ineffective at cleaning teeth as the Autobrush model. The silicone mouthguard, even after multiple washings, had a strange aftertaste, and the uncomfortable machine-made sucking motions did not adequately remove plaque or food specks from teeth. It’s also difficult to clean and requires a lot of space on a bathroom counter. The version of the Willo that we tested was marketed as a $250 family-friendly toothbrush for up to five people. Since then the price has dropped to about $150, and the company has rebranded to be kid-centric, though this model still comes with five mouthguards for family usage. Replacement brush heads are roughly $10 each. The original Willo is no longer available; the company is planning to release an updated version at the end of 2024.

This article was edited by Amy Miller Kravetz and Kalee Thompson.

Mary Hayes, DDS, pediatric dentist and spokesperson for the American Dental Association, phone interview, May 31, 2018

Joe Castellano, DDS, president of the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry, phone interview, June 6, 2018

Jessica Lee, DDS, MPH, PhD, president-elect of the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry, phone interview, October 16, 2019

Nancy Redd

Nancy Redd is a senior staff writer covering health and grooming at Wirecutter. She is a GLAAD Award–nominated on-air host and a New York Times best-selling author. Her latest nonfiction book, The Real Body Manual, is a visual health and wellness guide for young adults of all genders. Her other books include Bedtime Bonnet and Pregnancy, OMG!

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Approximate cost of ownership ($30 brush handle plus four Philips Sonicare for Kids replacement heads) after:One year: Three years:Approximate cost of ownership ($20 brush handle plus four Oral-B Kids replacement heads) after:One year: Three years: Kid-size brush heads:Two-minute timer:The handle is smaller and slimmer than most.The brush heads are comfortable and sized for a child.It has a built-in timer that shuts off automatically.It can pair with an optional, cute, and interactive app.A single charge lasts about two weeks.Replacement heads are widely available.Some kids find vibrations uncomfortable or ticklish.It has less-durable brush heads.There’s no storage case, and the protective cap is easy to lose.It may feel less tickly than a vibrating brush.It’s louder, though.It’s similar to our top pick for adults.Its brush heads cost a bit less.A single charge lasts about a week.It has a built-in timer, but it doesn’t shut off.It has neither a brush cap nor a storage case. If you want a vibrating toothbrush that’s larger (in girth or the brush head) than the Philips Sonicare for Kids Design a Pet Edition:If you want a rotating kids toothbrush that’s less expensive up front than the Oral-B Kids Electric Toothbrush: