The Best Countertop Dishwashers for Small Homes

If your home is without a dishwasher, you're not without luck. These countertop dishwashers take your kitchen sink from dirty to clean in no time.

Give us laundry to fold, a floor to sweep and mop—we'd even take scrubbing the walls—but please save us from dishes. There's food floating around, it takes forever, and we're always soaked by the end. Having a dishwasher has saved us so much time and effort.

The best part about dishwashers these days is that you don't need to sacrifice a bunch of space anymore. Whether you live in a small house, tiny apartment, or roving band of bandits in RVs, you can still benefit from such a life-changing appliance.

Here are the best countertop dishwashers for small homes.

Stainless steel beauty

The hOmeLabs Compact Countertop Dishwasher is firing on all cylinders, culminating into a well-performing, efficient, and feature-rich appliance. At just 50.44 decibels, it’s also very quiet the entire time it’s working.

As long as you can look past the modern, minimalist design, the hOmeLabs Compact Countertop Dishwasher becomes everything you want in an appliance and more. Not only is it an efficient beast, but it’s also jam-packed with features such as extra cycles and Energy Star certification.

In addition to the most common wash cycles—normal, rinse, and quick wash—the hOmeLabs Compact Countertop Dishwasher has more specialized cleaning cycles like "heavy" and "glass." When it is in use, it never rises above 50.44 decibels, which is quieter than a normal conversation between two people.

However, the icing on the cake is just how little water the hOmeLabs Compact Countertop Dishwasher uses. Depending on the mode, it consumes between 4.3 and 12.5 liters per cycle, which is significantly lower than handwashing the same amount of dishes even if you were to use the highest setting. There’s nothing wrong with wanting an appliance that performs well and looks good doing it. And hey, you have a theme to uphold, right? The BLACK+DECKER Compact Countertop Dishwasher is not only a powerhouse against dishware, but it’ll also easily blend in with your kitchen, too.

One-two punch of style and performance

The BLACK+DECKER Compact Countertop Dishwasher performs as well as it looks, cleaning a variety of dishware at once with seven different wash cycles. It even features convenient options like a child lock and 24-hour delay.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting an appliance that performs well and looks good doing it. And, your home has a theme to uphold, right? The BLACK+DECKER Compact Countertop Dishwasher is not only a powerhouse against dishware, but it’ll easily blend in with your kitchen, too.

For starters, the BLACK+DECKER Compact Countertop Dishwasher comes packed with a variety of options. It features as many as seven wash cycles, one of which is an eco mode and pairs nicely with its Energy Star certification. The 24-hour delay option is also quite handy for getting the dishwasher started while you’re away.

What’s most impressive is how well the BLACK+DECKER Compact Countertop Dishwasher handles dishware. It doesn’t stop at plates—cups, bowls, and even a basket for silverware are all welcomed in a single load.

Efficient, compact, and easy to clean

The Danby Countertop Dishwasher strikes a great balance between performance, size, and options. As many as eight wash cycles are available to you, which feature a mix of both traditional and niche modes, like Baby Care.

You’re a bit of a stickler about water and energy use—no cost-saving measure is too far. To maximize the number of dishes you do with less water, the Danby Countertop Dishwasher is the obvious choice. With a combination of Energy Star compliance and low water consumption, it’s working for you, not against you.

The Danby Countertop Dishwasher is fashioned with six place settings, allowing for cups, plates, bowls, and even silverware using the basket in the middle. Once ready, you’ll have eight wash cycles to choose from, including the unique “Baby Care” mode to properly wash and rinse something like a baby bottle.

The best aspect of the Danby Countertop Dishwasher is its quick-connect feature. It’s compatible with a large variety of faucets, meaning most people have the means to make use of such an efficient dishwasher.

Not much louder than a quiet conversation

When you want to cut back on the collective noise of your home, the COMFEE' Countertop Dishwasher understands and respects your wishes. It isn't any louder than rain as it washes a wide variety of dishware.

When you’ve got a tiny place, the sounds of daily life—fridges, microwaves, kids, music, and so on—tend to feel amplified. If you’re hoping to keep the white noise to a minimum, the COMFEE’ Countertop Dishwasher can make that happen.

In your mind’s eye, dishwashers likely sound obnoxious, but that’s not the case with the COMFEE’ Countertop Dishwasher. It operates at the same decibel level as light rain or a conversation had in whispers, which is rather impressive given that it's washing the entire spectrum of dishware all at the same time.

To compound its great performance, the COMFEE’ Countertop Dishwasher also includes eight wash cycles, as well as a drying function. It’s incredibly handy to have if you hate dealing with wet dishes all the time, not to mention preventing the hand towel from getting damp and useless too soon. It never gets the dishes dry right at that point!

The embodiment of speed

When you don’t want to wait all day for clean dishes, the SPT Countertop Dishwasher is your go-to. Even if you fill all six of its place settings, the dishwasher only needs 20 minutes to get the job done right.

Imagine you’re throwing a party and, in your excitement, forgot to do the dishes the night before. “I’ll just use the dishwasher,” you say, but what if you oversleep? Well, even in tight situations such as this, the SPT Countertop Dishwasher ensures you’ll avoid paper plates and plastic utensils at your party.

You see, any old dishwasher typically takes 40 minutes to over an hour to wash a single load. However, using the speed cycle on the SPT Countertop Dishwasher—one of six cycles—you only have to wait a measly 20 minutes. Not only is it great to have on such short notice, like a party, but it ultimately helps save water if you rinse your dishes well beforehand.

What you’ll love just as much is how easy it is to use the SPT Countertop Dishwasher. With six place settings, you can toss together bowls, cups, plates, and silverware into a single load. And the interface itself is no more than three buttons, along with a few lights to indicate the various cycles. In just a few minutes, you'll be striking off another daily chore!

User-friendly dishwasher for tiny homes and families

Compact and versatile, the Farberware Portable Countertop Dishwasher argues its case well, especially when space is severely finite. It has a built-in water tank, along with five washing programs.

What if your home is smaller than small, like a tiny apartment? Even then, you won’t miss out on the advantages of a dishwasher; in fact, the Farberware Portable Countertop Dishwasher is designed for tiny spaces like RVs and boats.

First off, the Farberware Portable Countertop Dishwasher’s only measures 20.9 x 21.9 x 22.4 inches in size and weighs just 36 pounds. Being that compact, you’ll have no problem finding the ideal space, nor will its weight be a hassle when you’re moving it around the kitchen. While this does mean its capacity is much smaller, that won’t be a problem if it’s just you, your partner, and your little munchkin.

Speaking of children, the Farberware Portable Countertop Dishwasher is also quite accommodating to a variety of family lifestyles. With its built-in water tank, you don’t need a faucet, making it a great option for families that live life on the road. More importantly, you won’t miss out on useful wash cycles like baby care and fruit wash.

When you need something a bit more heavy-duty

The Magic Chef Countertop Dishwasher comes built with a larger chamber, capable of holding small pots and pans. It's also easy to install thanks to its quick-connection assembly.

When you design a more compact dishwasher, it turns out that pots and pans tend to get left out of the loop. However, that’s not the case with the Magic Chef Countertop Dishwasher. You don’t want to be left washing pots and pans, do you?

The secret comes down to the Magic Chef Countertop Dishwasher’s slightly larger chamber and space-saving design. In a single load, you can wash plates, bowls, cups, silverware, and small pots and pans, which is quite impressive given its size. That’s an entire family’s worth of dishes, and it’s only made possible by its six place settings.

Of course, the interface also deserves praise of its own. You get access to six wash programs: heavy, normal, light, speed, glass, and rinse, which covers the entire spectrum of dishware. It even incorporates a drying system that’s far more hygienic due to its use of air inside the dishwasher rather than pulling from the outside.

It took more than size to determine the best dishwasher for smaller living spaces. As it turns out, noise was a major factor with our picks. The smaller the home, the closer you'd be to the dishwasher, right? Of course, water usage was also an important consideration. If you aren't at least saving on water use, what's the point?

With all those factors considered, the hOmeLabs Compact Countertop Dishwasher came out on top. It provides a sizable capacity, Energy Star certification, and is hardly louder than a quiet conversation between two people. Its design isn't for everyone, but the stainless steel finish is easy to clean and blends in with appliances of the same color.

However, we completely understand the need to budget, in which case the COMFEE' Countertop Dishwasher becomes the obvious choice. It's even quieter than the hOmeLabs Compact Countertop Dishwasher (by nearly two decibels) and has one extra wash cycle, totaling eight altogether. The drying function is particularly helpful as it significantly cuts your time spent drying dishes, too.

Stainless steel beauty

The hOmeLabs Compact Countertop Dishwasher is firing on all cylinders, culminating into a well-performing, efficient, and feature-rich appliance. At just 50.44 decibels, it’s also very quiet the entire time it’s working.

Brady has been crafting buyer's guide for MakeUseOf since 2021, though his professional writing experience stretches as far back as 2018. He focuses primarily on gaming, using his background as a video game journalist to help readers find the right gadgets, accessories, and hardware to get the most out of their setup.