The Best Essential Oil Diffusers (2025)

An essential oil diffuser offers a simple way to make your home smell nice without the use of scented candles or incense.

After our tests of more than a dozen different diffusers, the Urpower 2nd Gen 300ml Aroma Essential Oil Diffuser—our pick since 2017—continues to be the best choice.

The Urpower 2nd Gen 300ml Aroma Essential Oil Diffuser is a simple white plastic cylinder in a field crowded with funny shapes and faux wood. It’s one of the least expensive diffusers we’ve looked at, yet it works better than models four or five times the price.

The medium-size tank provides water for around seven hours; you need to add more oil during that time for continued scent. The machine lights up in seven colors (two brightnesses each), but you have to cycle through all those options to turn the light off. It offers a timer function, it has LED indicator lights that aren’t distractingly bright, and it’s easy to keep clean.

If our top pick is sold out or you’d like a bigger tank, we recommend the Urpower 500ml Aromatherapy Essential Oil Diffuser, a larger version of our top pick. It produces the same strong, rich mist as its smaller counterpart does.

At nearly double the tank size of our top pick, this 500 mL diffuser requires fewer refills—and it has a low-output mode that can run for up to 16 hours. However, a diffuser of this size also takes up more space. Like our top pick, it comes with a faux-wood base or in all-white. It also lights up in seven colors, has a timer similar to that of our pick, and is easy to clean between uses.

We’ve frequently seen the price for this larger version be lower than that of our top pick, but often some colors are sold only via a third-party seller on Amazon instead of Urpower itself. (In general, we prefer not to link to third-party sellers; we have bought from this one, though, and have had no problems.)

If you’d prefer a diffuser that looks nicer and you don’t need to diffuse scent in a large space, we recommend the Vitruvi Stone Diffuser. With a ceramic shell available in several neutral colors, it’s a stylish diffuser that still emits a decently strong mist and is easy to use.

It’s one of the few diffusers we tested with a truly subtle indicator light (positioned on the back of the unit), making it the best choice if you want to run it while you’re sleeping. The tank is small, though, at 70 mL, so you have to refill it more often, and the two layers of lids make cleaning and refilling slightly more annoying than with our top pick and runner-up. At around $100, it’s also considerably pricier.

If you want a device that does the best job of dispersing scent in a large space or across multiple rooms, and you don’t mind spending more money, the Organic Aromas Raindrop 2.0 Nebulizing Essential Oil Diffuser is a nebulizer that mists pure oil. (In contrast, our ultrasonic picks dilute the oils with water.)

Unlike with our other picks, the colored lights on this diffuser are more subtle, and it doesn’t issue a constant visible stream of mist; instead, it produces a subtle intermittent spritz every other minute. Compared with other models of its kind, it’s less expensive, prettier, and far quieter, as nebulizers typically make loud grinding or buzzing sounds.

The Raindrop 2.0 runs for two hours, and an automatic shutoff helps you avoid overdoing the smell. Like all nebulizers, it’s annoying to clean.