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Best non-bio laundry detergents: eight compared, and the enzymes were never the problem

Non bio outsells bio in this country on a belief that turns out not to be supported. The enzymes are not what irritates skin. The fragrance usually is, and most of the big non bio bottles are full of it.

By Mrs House · Updated 12 August 2026 · 12 min read

Mrs House is independent. Nobody pays for a place in a ranking here, and no brand saw this page before it went live.

The short answer

Buy Bio-D Fragrance Free at 26p a wash if the reason you are here is somebody's skin. Seven ingredients, no perfume, no optical brighteners and no preservative.

Best overall: Bio-D Fragrance Free, 26p a wash. Allergy UK certification behind it.
Cheapest: Almat Non Bio at Aldi, about 7p a wash. The perfume and the brighteners come with it.
Skip: Persil and Fairy Non Bio, both 16p a wash. Fragrance, optical brighteners and benzisothiazolinone in each.

The words to look for are fragrance free, not non bio. The dermatology literature says the enzymes were never the problem.

How we assessed these

Eight detergents, one method, applied to all of them equally. UK detergents have to carry an ingredient declaration under the Detergents Regulation, so for once there is real information to work with, and the first thing we did was read all eight lists properly and line them up.

Then we asked four questions of each one. Does it contain optical brighteners, which make whites look whiter without cleaning anything. Does it contain fragrance, which is the ingredient class dermatology actually associates with contact dermatitis. Does it contain a preservative, and which one, because the isothiazolinones are recognised sensitisers. And does it, despite the label, contain enzymes anyway.

We worked out a price per wash for every product from the published pack size and wash count rather than comparing bottle prices, because the bottles are not the same size and the concentrations are not the same either. Where a brand does not publish a wash count we say so and we mark it down, because you cannot compare what is not stated.

We also went and read the evidence behind the non bio idea itself, which is the part of this category nobody writes about. Then we read owner reviews where a real pool exists, weighted towards the one and two star end. Every product is scored on the same five parts: does it work (35 per cent), what it is made of (25 per cent), value (15 per cent), everyday use (15 per cent) and honesty of the claims (10 per cent).

The ranking, at a glance

	Detergent	Price	Per wash	Fragrance	Optical brighteners	Preservative	Score
1	Bio-D Fragrance Free	£6.50 / 1L	26p	None	None	None listed	3.9
2	Ecover Zero	£12.35 / 1.43L	31p	None	None	None listed	3.7
3	smol Non-Bio Fragrance & Colour Free	£6.00 / 24 caps	25p	None	Yes, one	None listed	3.5
4	Surcare Sensitive Non Bio	£5.00 / 750ml	17p	None	None	Phenoxyethanol	3.3
5	Almat Non Bio (Aldi)	£2.79 / 1.47L	About 7p	Yes	Yes	Not published	3.2
6	Fairy Non Bio	£16.00 / 3.13L	16p	Yes	Yes	Benzisothiazolinone	3.0
7	Persil Non Bio	£11.00 / 1.84L	16p	Yes	Yes	Benzisothiazolinone	2.9
8	Ecoleaf Fragrance Free	£7.59 / 1.5L	Not published	None	None	Benzisothiazolinone	2.7

Not one of the eight is a biological detergent, so the enzyme column would read none all the way down. The columns that actually vary are the three above, and they are the ones nobody puts on the front of the bottle.

The two we would actually buy

Best overall

And the clean pick

1. Bio-D Concentrated Non-Bio Laundry Liquid, Fragrance Free

★★★★☆ 3.9 / 5

£6.50 for a litre, 25 washes, 26p a wash. The ingredient list is seven things long: vegetable oil soap, water, a glucose derived detergent, ethanol, a natural anionic detergent, trisodium citrate and citric acid. No perfume, no optical brighteners, no preservative declared, no enzymes. On a shelf where the average list runs to phosphonates, brighteners, benzisothiazolinone and perfume, that is a different kind of product.

It is Allergy UK certified, a certified B Corporation, Vegan Society approved and a King’s Award holder, and it is made in Hull. We could not find a certificate number for the Allergy UK claim, which is the one criticism that applies to almost every brand on this page, and Allergy UK’s own site does list Bio-D by name, which is more than most can say.

The honest limits are price and expectation. At 26p a wash it is close to four times the Aldi. And a detergent with no brighteners will not make your whites look brighter, because brighteners are the thing that does that. If you switch from Fairy your whites will look slightly duller and be exactly as clean, and it is worth knowing that in advance rather than concluding the stuff does not work.

Pros

Seven ingredients, and none of them is a fragrance, a brightener or a preservative
Allergy UK certified, and Allergy UK lists Bio-D on its own site rather than only the brand claiming it
B Corp, Vegan Society, made in the UK, and available in 5 litre and 20 litre refills
4.5 from 50 reviews on Ethical Superstore for this exact product

Cons

26p a wash, against about 7p for the Aldi
No optical brighteners, so whites will look duller than you are used to even when they are clean
No certificate number published for the Allergy UK claim
Two slightly different ingredient lists are published for the 1 litre and 5 litre of the same product

Buy it if somebody in the house has eczema or reactive skin and you want the shortest ingredient list on the shelf. Skip it if you are washing for a large family on a budget, because this is one of the dearest per wash here.

Runner up

Full INCI published

2. Ecover Zero Non-Bio Laundry Liquid

★★★★☆ 3.7 / 5

£12.35 for 1.43 litres, 40 washes, 31p a wash, and it is the only product on this page that publishes a full INCI list rather than the banded summary the regulations require. Water, sodium lauryl sulfate, laureth-7, alcohol, potassium oleate, sodium citrate, tetrasodium glutamate diacetate, a bio polyester, propylene glycol, citric acid and isopropyl alcohol. It even publishes its UFI code. That is the standard everything on this shelf should be held to.

No fragrance, no enzymes, no optical brighteners and no preservative named. Ecover markets it as approved by the British Allergy Foundation, which is Allergy UK under its older name, and as with everyone else here there is no licence number to check.

It is the most expensive per wash on this page. And a caution that is about the shop rather than the bottle: Ecover Direct sits at 4.3 on Trustpilot across more than a thousand reviews, and the negative ones are overwhelmingly about delivery waits, damaged parcels and unanswered emails rather than the detergent. Buy it in a supermarket and that whole problem disappears.

Pros

Publishes a full INCI list and a UFI code, which nothing else on this page does
No fragrance, no brighteners, no enzymes, no named preservative
Bottle is 100 per cent post consumer recycled
Widely stocked, so you do not have to order it direct

Cons

31p a wash, the highest on this page
Allergy UK approval claimed with no licence number published
Ecover Direct’s own Trustpilot reviews are largely delivery complaints, so buy it in a shop
Published wash counts for the same bottle differ between sources, which should not happen

Buy it if you want the shortest possible distance between what is in the bottle and what you can read. Skip it if you buy on price per wash.

The convenient one, and the sensitive skin specialist

Allergy UK seal

With a catch

3. smol Non-Bio Fragrance and Colour Free Capsules

★★★½☆ 3.5 / 5

£6 for 24 capsules, 25p a wash, delivered through the letterbox, and it holds the Allergy UK Seal of Approval specifically on this fragrance and colour free version rather than on the range as a whole. Allergy UK lists it by name on its own site. That is a genuinely good credential and smol publishes its full ingredient list for every variant, which puts it ahead of most of the shelf.

And publishing that list is how we found the catch. The fragrance and colour free capsule still contains disodium distyrylbiphenyl disulfonate. That is an optical brightener, a stilbene type fluorescent whitening agent, and it is in the version sold to people avoiding additives. smol does not flag it as a brightener anywhere on the page. Nothing here is hidden, because the name is printed, but you would have to know what that word means, and the entire point of a fragrance and colour free line is that you should not have to.

The wider picture on capsules is that dosing is fixed. One for a normal load, two for a big or hard water load, which is where the price per wash quietly doubles. Owners like the convenience and report that the scent fades on larger loads in the scented versions, which is not a concern for this one.

Pros

Allergy UK Seal of Approval on this exact product, and Allergy UK names it on its own site
Publishes the full ingredient list for every variant, which most of this page does not
No fragrance, no colourant, no enzymes
25p a wash and it comes through the letterbox

Cons

Contains an optical brightener, disodium distyrylbiphenyl disulfonate, in the fragrance and colour free version, and does not say so in plain words
Two capsules on a large or hard water load makes it 50p a wash
Fixed dosing, so you cannot use less on a light load
It is a subscription, and owners report friction cancelling

Buy it if you want the convenience and the Allergy UK seal and you are not fussed about a brightener. Skip it if you are avoiding additives on principle, because there is one in here you would not expect.

Nothing added

£5

4. Surcare Sensitive Non Bio Laundry Liquid

★★★½☆ 3.3 / 5

£5 for 750ml, 30 washes, 17p a wash, and it is the cheapest way on this page to get a detergent with no fragrance and no optical brighteners in it. Surcare has been doing exactly one thing for decades and the formulation shows it: surfactants, soap, phosphonates, a cationic surfactant and phenoxyethanol as the preservative. No perfume, no brighteners, no enzymes.

Two things stop it scoring higher. It is a banded declaration rather than a real ingredient list, so you are told there are 15 to 30 per cent anionic surfactants without being told which. And the hazard statement on the pack is causes serious eye damage, which is the strongest warning on this page and sits oddly on a product bought for sensitive skin. That is about splashing concentrate in your eye rather than about washed clothes, and it is still worth knowing if there are children in the house.

It is dermatologically approved with no body named and no number given, and the Tesco listing had no reviews at all when we looked, so there is no owner evidence to weigh either way.

Pros

No fragrance and no optical brighteners at 17p a wash, which nothing else here manages
Phenoxyethanol rather than an isothiazolinone, which is the gentler preservative choice
Widely stocked in supermarkets
A single purpose brand that has not chased trends

Cons

Banded declaration only, so you do not learn which surfactants are in it
Causes serious eye damage is the strongest hazard warning on this page
Dermatologically approved is claimed with no body named and no number
No reviews at all on the retailer listing we checked

Buy it if you want fragrance free and brightener free without paying the clean brand premium. Skip it if you want to read a real ingredient list.

The cheap one, and the one that sells the myth

Best value

About 7p a wash

5. Almat Super Concentrated Non Bio (Aldi)

★★★☆☆ 3.2 / 5

About £2.79 for 1.47 litres and 42 washes, which is roughly 7p a wash and less than a third of anything else on this page. Aldi’s own laundry range has taken Which? awards more than once, and this non bio liquid scored 61 per cent and a Great Value award rather than a Best Buy, which is a fair description of it.

The ingredients are the standard supermarket non bio set: anionic and non ionic surfactants, soap, phosphonates, polycarboxylates, optical brighteners and perfumes. So it has the two things the top of this page does not, and it has them at a fifth of the price. If nobody in your house reacts to anything, that is a perfectly rational trade and we are not going to sneer at it.

What we will mark it down for is that we could not get any of this from Aldi. Their site blocked us throughout, there is no published ingredient page we could reach, the price and wash count come from a price comparison site and a first hand reviewer, and there is no aggregated review pool for the product anywhere. For the cheapest thing on the shelf that is a shame rather than a scandal, but a shopper cannot check any of it.

Pros

About 7p a wash, less than a third of anything else here
A Which? Great Value award, at 61 per cent in their testing
Widely available if you have an Aldi
Does the job, and owners who have used it for years report no reactions

Cons

Contains both optical brighteners and perfume
Aldi publishes no accessible ingredient page, so the list here comes from a bottle somebody read
Preservative content not published anywhere we could find
No aggregated review pool exists for it, and the price has moved around

Buy it if price per wash is the number that matters and nobody in the house has reactive skin. Skip it if you need to be able to check what is in it before you buy it.

The market leader

Perfume and brighteners

6. Fairy Non Biological Washing Liquid

★★★☆☆ 3.0 / 5

£16 for 3.13 litres and 101 washes, which is about 16p a wash, and it is the bottle most of the country reaches for when a baby arrives. It cleans well, it is everywhere, and on value it is genuinely competitive at that size.

The problem is what it is sold on. Fairy carries a Skin Health Alliance seal and the line about being the number one laundry brand for sensitive skin, and the declaration on the back reads: anionic and non ionic surfactants, phosphonates, soap, optical brighteners, preservatives, benzisothiazolinone, perfumes. So the product bought to be gentle contains a fragrance, a fluorescent whitening agent and an isothiazolinone preservative, and the thing it is defined by removing, enzymes, is the ingredient the dermatology literature says was not causing the trouble in the first place.

None of that means it will hurt you. Benzisothiazolinone is used at a fraction of a per cent and most people wear these clothes without incident. It does mean the sensitive skin promise is doing work the formulation does not support, and if that promise is why you buy it, four products higher up this page keep it better and two of them cost less per wash.

Pros

About 16p a wash on the large bottle, which is good value for a major brand
Cleans well and is stocked absolutely everywhere
Skin Health Alliance seal and dermatologically tested
Publishes its declaration on the retailer listing

Cons

Contains perfume, optical brighteners and benzisothiazolinone, which is a recognised sensitiser
Sold on sensitive skin while containing the ingredient classes most associated with reactions
No enzymes, which is the thing it charges a premium for and which was never the problem
Barely any reviews on the retailer listings we checked, despite being the market leader

Buy it if you want a big brand that cleans and you have no skin concerns at all. Skip it if you are buying it because somebody in the house reacts, because this is not the formulation for that.

The two we would not buy

Two ingredient lists

Neither matches

7. Persil Non Bio Laundry Liquid

★★★☆☆ 2.9 / 5

£11 for 1.84 litres and 68 washes, about 16p a wash, 4.8 from 111 reviews, and it cleans. It is recognised by the British Skin Foundation, which is a real organisation, and as ever there is no reference number to check.

The declaration on the shelf edge reads: 15 to 30 per cent anionic surfactants, 5 to 15 per cent non ionic, and under 5 per cent perfume, phosphonates, soap, optical brighteners and benzisothiazolinone. The hazard statements printed alongside it are causes serious eye irritation, causes skin irritation, and may produce an allergic reaction. Those are on the concentrate rather than on a washed shirt, and they are still an unusual set of words to find on a bottle bought to be kind to skin.

What tipped it below Fairy is that Unilever publishes a different ingredient list for the same product on its own transparency site, naming methylisothiazolinone and octylisothiazolinone as the preservatives instead of benzisothiazolinone, and then disclaims that the list may not match the pack. Two published lists for one bottle, with a note saying do not rely on this one, is worse than publishing nothing at all.

Pros

4.8 from 111 reviews, one of the better review pools on this page
About 16p a wash
Recognised by the British Skin Foundation
Cleans as well as anything here

Cons

Perfume, optical brighteners and an isothiazolinone preservative, in a product sold as gentle
Two different ingredient lists published for the same bottle, one with a disclaimer attached
Causes skin irritation and may produce an allergic reaction printed on the pack
No reference number for the British Skin Foundation recognition

Buy it if you already use it, it works for you and nobody reacts. Skip it if you want to know which preservative is actually in the bottle, because there are two answers.

Last place

Good ethos, no numbers

8. Ecoleaf Non-Bio Laundry Liquid, Fragrance Free

★★½☆☆ 2.7 / 5

£7.59 for 1.5 litres, and this one is last for reasons that have nothing to do with ethos. Ecoleaf is a Suma product, Leaping Bunny and Vegan Society approved, an Ethical Consumer Best Buy, and on values it belongs near the top of this page.

It does not publish a wash count. That is the single most basic number on a bottle of detergent and without it you cannot work out what a wash costs, which means it cannot be compared with anything else here. We are not going to estimate one from a different sized bottle of a different variant and present that as a price.

The formulation is also odd for the market it is aimed at. It is fragrance free and brightener free, which is right, and then the preservative is benzisothiazolinone, the same isothiazolinone we have marked Fairy and Persil down for, in a product whose whole proposition is sensitive skin. And there were no reviews at all on either retailer listing we checked, so there is no owner evidence to set against any of it.

Pros

Fragrance free and no optical brighteners
Leaping Bunny, Vegan Society and an Ethical Consumer Best Buy
Refillable through Suma and independent shops

Cons

No wash count published, so a price per wash cannot be worked out at all
Benzisothiazolinone as the preservative, in a product sold for sensitive skin
No reviews on either retailer listing we checked
Banded declaration only, and a short one at that

Buy it if you buy on values and you already know how far a bottle goes for you. Skip it if you need to compare what a wash costs, because Ecoleaf will not tell you.

Prices checked 12 August 2026 and may have changed since. Price per wash is worked out from the published pack size and wash count.

The clean pick, and the honest catch

Our clean pick

Bio-D Fragrance Free

Seven ingredients, made in Hull

Why it wins on materials

✓

Seven ingredients, and you can read them

Vegetable oil soap, water, a glucose derived detergent, ethanol, an anionic detergent, trisodium citrate and citric acid. No perfume, no brightener, no preservative declared.

✓

Allergy UK lists it by name

Most brands claim a seal and hope you take it. Allergy UK’s own site names Bio-D and its laundry products, which is a check you can do yourself in a minute.

✓

It removes the ingredient that actually matters

Fragrance is the ingredient class dermatology associates with contact dermatitis from laundry products. This has none. The enzyme question, which the rest of the shelf is built on, is a red herring.

✓

B Corp, and refillable

A certified B Corporation making it in the UK, sold in 5 and 20 litre refills, so the bottle does not have to be part of the purchase every time.

What you give up

✕

26p a wash

Against about 7p for the Aldi. Over a year of five washes a week that is roughly £50 rather than £18, which is a real amount of money for a lot of households.

✕

Your whites will look duller

Optical brighteners are what makes whites look bright, and this has none. The clothes will be just as clean and they will not look as white, and people who do not know that conclude the detergent has failed.

✕

Still no certificate number

The Allergy UK claim has no licence number published, same as every other brand on this page. Being listed on Allergy UK’s site is better than nothing and it is not the same as a number you can look up.

The catch, said plainly. The clean pick wins this page, and the reason it wins is not the reason most people are shopping. Nobody arrives at a non bio detergent looking for a short ingredient list. They arrive because a child has eczema, or a rash appeared, and somebody told them bio detergent is harsh.

That belief does not hold up. The reference paper is Basketter and English, Enzymes, detergents and skin: facts and fantasies, published in the British Journal of Dermatology in 2008. Its finding is that the raw enzyme concentrate is a genuine hazard to factory workers handling it, and that this does not carry over to consumers using the finished product, which has around forty years of safe use behind it. It describes the belief as largely a British myth, and reports that when people blaming bio detergent for skin problems are actually investigated, the enzymes were not responsible. A placebo controlled trial in atopic dermatitis patients found no significant difference between enzyme and enzyme free detergent.

So the useful word on a bottle is not non bio. It is fragrance free. Four of the eight products here are fragrance free and three of those four are in our top four. If somebody in your house reacts to laundry, that is the change worth making, and it works whether the detergent is biological or not.

What to look for when you buy one

Non bio is not a legal term. UK detergents are governed by Regulation 648/2004, which sets the biodegradability rules and the banded ingredient declaration you see on the back of every bottle. It says nothing at all about biological or non biological. Those are trade conventions. They are used consistently, so non bio does reliably mean no enzymes, but nobody is policing the label.

Fragrance free is the claim that does the work. If somebody in the house reacts to laundry, this is the change to make. Fragrance is the ingredient class dermatology actually associates with contact dermatitis here, and the 26 declarable EU fragrance allergens have to be named on the pack when they are above the threshold. A bottle with no perfume in it has none of that to worry about.

Optical brighteners do not clean anything. They are fluorescent compounds that stick to the fabric, absorb ultraviolet light and re emit it as blue, so the fabric looks whiter than it is. They are a cosmetic effect sitting on your sheets. There is no established evidence of harm to people at the levels used, and there is also no cleaning benefit, so if you would rather not have them the only cost is that your whites look a little less white.

Read the preservative. Benzisothiazolinone and methylisothiazolinone are the common ones and both are recognised skin sensitisers. Phenoxyethanol is the gentler alternative and some of the shortest formulations declare none at all. On a page of products sold for sensitive skin, this is the line worth finding.

Work out the price per wash, not the price. The bottles are different sizes and different concentrations. Divide the price by the stated wash count. On this page that ranges from about 7p to 31p, which is more than a fourfold difference and completely invisible from the shelf edge. If a brand does not publish a wash count, that is a mark against it.

And use less than it says. Dosing instructions are written for a heavily soiled load in hard water. Most washes are neither. Under dosing costs you nothing on ordinary laundry and it is the cheapest way to make an expensive detergent affordable.

Final verdict

Fragrance free, not non bio

The whole of this category rests on an idea that the dermatology literature does not support. Enzymes are not what irritates people, and a country that has spent thirty years buying non bio to avoid them has largely been buying perfume and optical brighteners instead. If we change one thing on this site, we would like it to be that.

For a household where somebody reacts, buy Bio-D Fragrance Free at 26p a wash, or Surcare at 17p if that matters more, and stop worrying about whether the box says bio. For a household where nobody reacts, buy the Aldi at about 7p a wash and put the difference somewhere useful. Both of those are better answers than the market leader, which costs about 16p a wash and contains the three things you would remove first.

One practical warning if you switch to a brightener free detergent. Your whites will not look as bright. They will be as clean. That is not the detergent failing, it is the illusion ending.