The best toilet brushes, compared

£9.76 from ecoLiving, with spare heads at £5.50, so £15.26 for a first year with one head change. The head is tampico, a plant fibre from agave, on an FSC beech handle, and the holder is an open-topped metal pail with two handles. Nothing here is plastic and nothing is treated. It wins because the pail tips out in a second, and the whole set costs less than one designer spare head.

The catch is that plant fibre holds water. ecoLiving is the only brand of the six that says to let the brush dry completely between uses, and one stockist warns it can go mouldy if you do not. A round head is poor under the rim, and ecoLiving does not say which metal the pail is. There are only four reviews, all five stars, and one owner expects the wood to “go funny” in time.

£26 at Dunelm or £30 direct, with a £7 screw-on spare head from simplehuman, so £33 for year one. Stiff bristles on a crescent head scrub harder than any silicone here, and 802 of 912 owners on simplehuman’s site give it four or five stars. The wedge cover is cut away down one side, so the head gets some air, and a magnet lets you carry brush and cover together.

The shape is the gamble. Owners with wide rims or deep pans say the head is too big to get under the rim or down into the bowl, the light base tips when you lift the brush, and a few say the handle unscrews mid-scrub. simplehuman calls it drip-free, but one Dunelm owner says it drips on the floor. Neither the bristle nor the cover plastic is named.

£28.75 in white from Brabantia, £30.50 in other finishes, with a £9.95 spare brush, so £38.70 for year one. The holder is steel, 39 per cent recycled, with a 10 year guarantee and spare parts promised for 20 years. It rates 4.4 from 520 reviews, and the handle has no collar for grime to collect under.

It does nothing to help the brush dry. The pot is closed, and Brabantia’s “easy to empty” means lift it and pour, as you would any pot. The spare brush is listed only as plastic, with a 2 year guarantee rather than 10. One Dunelm owner found the “corrosion-resistant” painted steel rusting, and another thought the bristles were marking the enamel.

£7.99 at Robert Dyas with no spare heads, so £15.98 if you replace the set at six months. It is the plain round brush in a lidless pot found in every supermarket, and it rates 4.6 from 59 reviews. The open top is the point: air can reach the brush, which no closed pot allows, and one owner calls it more hygienic for exactly that reason.

Addis says only “plastic”, with no polymer named, and as there are no spares the whole set goes in the bin. At 15cm across it is the bulkiest here, and a round head is the worst shape for under the rim. Most reviews are one line and say little about how it lasts. The pot still collects water, so tip it out after each use.

£28 in gloss white or £35 in matt, with spare heads at £15 for two, so £35.50 for year one. The widely spaced silicone head sheds dirt and water fast, which is the real advantage of silicone, and Joseph Joseph words it carefully: fast draining means less dripping. It separates for recycling and has a two year guarantee.

Owners rate it 3.7 from 107 reviews, low for the brand, and the one star reviews say the same thing: it looks good but does not scrub. One owner’s head fell out of the handle in seconds. The holder is a closed pot, Joseph Joseph does not name its plastic and Dunelm lists it as acrylic. Its “more hygienic” line is not backed by any test.

£7 at Dunelm with no spare head, so £14 a year at a six month change. It is a round silicone head on a steel and plastic handle, in a slim stainless tube 37.8cm tall and 6.6cm across. It suits a tiny cloakroom and looks dearer than it is, which is what most of its 18 reviews praise. It rates 4.06 overall.

Three one star reviews, all from this year, say the same thing: the silicone is stiff and does not clean. One arrived without the lid shown in the pictures. The tube is the narrowest closed pot here, the worst shape for letting a wet brush dry, and it is the shortest brush of the six. Dunelm says “effective cleaning” and its owners disagree.