Of the disposable plastics filling up our shower shelves and medicine cabinets, toothpaste tubes are among the most unavoidable. Soap, shampoo, conditioner, and shaving cream all come in bar form. A stainless-steel safety razor can replace countless single-use blades. You could even opt for silk or plant-based floss and trade your throwaway toothbrush for an electric one that’ll last years.
Despite Big Toothpaste working to make the billions of tubes that we churn through every year more readily recyclable, the idea of kicking plastic out of our dental care routines is gaining steam. Toothpaste tablets—dry toothpaste packed into pill-sized pucks—are a darling among the zero-plastic set. The chewable bits come in largely paper packaging, have many of the same pearly-whitening ingredients as tubed paste, and are available in both fluoride and fluoride-free formulations.
Starting at around $0.10 per use, however, these not-pastes come at a premium compared to conventional options. So if you’re considering the switch, it’s worth weighing your options. We brushed with five top-rated toothpaste tablets for a month—clocking everything from flavor and foaminess to how well they cut through coffee stains and sticky buildup—and dug into the Earth-related dealings of the companies behind them. Our champion kept both the planet and our chompers feeling fresh and clean.
one5c’s pick: Smyle Toothpaste Tablets
Once it’s bitten, chewed, and brushed for a few seconds, it might be a bit hard to tell a Smyle Toothpaste Tablet ($28 for a 4-month supply; wesmyle.com) apart from your usual pea-sized amount of paste. Flavored with a trio of natural mint extracts plus a hit of menthol, it left our testers' mouths feeling cool and fresh, while natural abrasives helped buff away plaque and stains. The tablets broke apart with a quick bite, foamed into a satisfying lather, and left only the tiniest bit of residue behind. While we’d like to see Smyle show their work more on the emissions front, we do appreciate that the tablets come in simple paper envelopes and ship via slow-and-sustainable means. It also doesn’t hurt that the bits are made in the Netherlands, where renewable energy is on the rise and greenhouse gases are falling.
The runner-up: UnPaste Tablets
The UnPaste Tablets ($13 for a 2-month supply; unpaste.us) were the flavor champion of the field. Post-brush, our testers’ mouths felt refreshed and their chompers delightfully smooth. Of all the tablets we tried, they were the only one to leave behind zero powdery residue. They successfully lifted coffee stains, but it took a few more seconds of scrubbing to get that particular job done than it did with Smyle’s tabs. UnPaste’s packaging is also completely compostable, and the company will let you mail in empties to make sure they land in a properly equipped facility.
What toothpaste tablets we tested
We curated a roster of five readily available and well-reviewed toothpaste tablets, focusing on options that come in both fluoride and fluoride-free formulas. All the tabs are free of sodium lauryl sulfate, a cleaning agent that can sometimes irritate skin, and other less-appealing ingredients like poloxamer 407, which is what helps give some drug-store pastes their mega-bright colors.
- Bite Toothpaste Bits
- The Humble Co Toothpaste Tablets
- Kaylaan Toothpaste Tablets
- Smyle Toothpaste Tablets
- UnPaste Toothpaste Tablets
How we picked the best toothpaste tablets
Our product recommendations are based on two parallel assessment tracks: one for performance and one for sustainability. These ratings combine to land on our final winner, which represents the ideal blend of a product that’s good for the Earth and for your life. Read more about our assessment process here.
How we tested toothpaste tablets
Whether or not you use a fluoride toothpaste is a matter of personal preference and best discussed with your dentist, but we opted to test the fluoride formulas of each tablet. Over the course of a month, we brushed with all the bits as part of our normal tooth-care routine, using both manual and electric toothbrushes. In addition to noting the presence (or absence) of that fresh-cleaned feeling and how well each tablet broke apart and foamed up, we also ran two controlled tests to simulate some dirtier dental situations.
- Stain removal test: We stained hard-boiled eggs with strong coffee, letting them sit in a pool of espresso for 12 hours. We then crushed each tablet, wet a toothbrush, lathered each powder into a foam, and scrubbed the stained shells in circular motions, timing how long it took the brown hue to lift.
- Plaque removal test: To create a rough facsimile of the sticky biofilm of plaque buildup, we mixed cocoa powder and veggie oil into a paste and used a spatula to spread a thin layer onto a piece of tile. After leaving the mixture to dry, we brushed each swatch with lathered toothpaste for one minute and rinsed the tile to see how much (if any) residue remained.
How we scored sustainability
Our sustainability ratings take into account three factors: a product’s environmental impact at its production, what happens at its end-of-life, and the manufacturer’s environmental behavior. Production factors in where, how, and with what raw materials a product is made, as well as how it’s transported through the supply chain. End-of-life considers any potential toxicity of the tablets’ ingredients when they’re washed down the drain. The final factor involves actions the company takes outside the life of a product to minimize its footprint or benefit the environment, and we award bonus points for transparency, as well. These scores are informed inferences based on available information, not full-blown life-cycle analyses.
How Smyle Toothpaste Tablets performed
Cards on the table: If you’re the sort of person who looks forward to brushing their teeth, you might not be quite as delighted by toothpaste tablets. Every pill-sized bit we tried got the job done, but the brushing experience isn’t exactly the same as with conventional toothpaste. The most-notable difference: Despite boasting natural foaming agents like sodium coco sulfate and sodium cocoyl isethionate (both derived from coconut), toothpaste tablets don’t froth up quite as well as that trusty tube of Crest. That said, the lather we got while brushing with the Smyle Toothpaste Tablets ($28 for a 4-month supply; wesmyle.com) tied for the best of the bunch.
That—coupled with plaque-busting calcium carbonate and scrubby hydrated silica—left our whites plenty pearly. All five contenders also aced the plaque-removal regimen, breaking down caked-on cocoa powder without the need for any gum-thrashing pressure. Smyle’s tabs stood out from the pack in their ability to quickly lift stains: They tied with The Humble Co Toothpaste Tablets ($9 for a 1-month supply; thehumble.co) for first place in our stain-removal test, brushing set-in coffee off an eggshell within just 10 seconds. Only the Bites Toothpaste Bits ($48 for a 4-month supply; bitetoothpastebits.com) required any real time and effort to remove those stubborn marks, which makes sense considering they foamed up the least of any of the tabs we tried.
When it comes to straight-up flavor, there’s also not a lot to complain about with Smyle. Their ingredients list boasts a range of flavor agents—including three kinds of mint, a dose of citrus, and a shot of cooling menthol—so the tabs’ so-fresh-and-so-clean feeling lasts. We can’t say as much for Kaylaan’s Toothpaste Tablets ($13 for a 45-day supply; kaylaan.com), which, despite smelling like a tin of Altoids, tasted like brushing with straight-up baking soda. We did get a fair hit of minty freshness from Humble Co’s bits, but it faded quickly.
Nothing’s perfect: Our testers didn’t find a ton of negatives about Smyle’s tablets, but they weren’t the tippity top of the pack across every performance measure. We had a couple issues with texture. After we’d foamed, brushed, rinsed, and spit, there was a hint of tablet residue left on our molars—but it came off easily with a quick once-over with the brush. You could also chalk (pun!) that up to the learning curve that comes with switching to a dry tablet from an already-hydrated paste. Smyle’s tablets also took a little extra oomph to bite down on, but the force was nowhere near what we needed to break apart Humble’s tabs, which were by far the largest and hardest of the bunch.
The other thing that might make you bristle? Smyle ships from the Netherlands, which means its price (around $0.12 a tablet) gets slightly inflated by a flat $8 fee for international shipping; though if you go with a subscription, the fee’s waived. Because the company opts for regular post-office mail, there’s also no order tracking and things can take a few weeks to make it across the pond.
Why Smyle Toothpaste Tablets are sustainable
Will any toothpaste tablet help you rid your tooth-cleaning routine of plastic? For certain. But there are a few things that set Smyle apart in terms of planet-friendliness. First, the company is based and produces all its tablets in the Netherlands, a nation that gets more than 40% of its energy from renewable sources.
Smyle tablets come in paper and cardboard packaging (including the shipping box), and the company keeps parcels small enough to fit inside a standard mailbox, which helps avoid unnecessary shipping logistics. Smyle does sell an adorable reusable bottle you can decant your tablets into, but you can just as easily skip it and use a jar or tin you have at home. It’s a subtle choice, but one we appreciate: Bite’s fluoride tablets, by comparison, are only available via a subscription that includes a glass jar—whether you need it or not.
As a company, Smyle is a B-Corp, meaning it meets strict thresholds for a range of factors, including worker treatment and environmental stewardship. The Toothpaste Tablets themselves are certified cruelty-free by PETA, and are one of two options we looked at to avoid xylitol, an antibacterial ingredient that’s safe for humans in toothpaste-sized doses but can be toxic to dogs if ingested.
Nothing’s perfect: Like you, we winced a bit at the idea of international shipping, but the fact that Smyle opted for slow-and-steady via existing postal-service routes put us a bit at ease. What we don’t love? Smyle's shipping partner buys offsets to neutralize its CO2 impact, which can delay taking on the actual work of decarbonization.
Smyle is also a bit of black box in terms of its climate impacts. The company hasn’t published any information on its emissions footprint or efforts to reduce it, and they didn’t reply when we asked for more info.
The runner-up: UnPaste Tablets
Once all our teeth were brushed and scores tallied, the UnPaste Tablets ($13 for a 2-month supply; unpaste.us) were in a dead heat with Smyle on the performance front. Testers enjoyed their flavor—which comes courtesy of peppermint extract and menthol—the most of all the bits we tried. The tablets are Leaping Bunny certified as cruelty-free and also avoid xylitol, which is good news for anyone with mischievous pups. Plus, at about $0.10 a tablet, they're the cheapest toothpaste bites we tried.
The tabs broke apart easily and foamed up well, and polishers including baking soda helped scrub without overpowering the mix. There was almost no residue on our chompers post-rinse, as well. The only spot UnPaste fell down a bit was how rapidly it lifted coffee stains: It took about 5 seconds longer to brush off the dark-brown hue than it did with Smyle.
UnPaste did falter a bit on sustainability, coming in third place in terms of eco-awareness behind Smyle and Humble Co. The tabs are made in Mexico—where renewables represent only a sliver of the energy mix—and corporate details on emissions, climate goals, or governance are a big white space. We do have to give them props for packaging, though: UnPaste’s tablets come in a paper envelope lined with compostable material, and the company allows customers to mail in empties if they don’t have access to a commercial composting facility.
one5c does not earn a commission on any product purchased through our reviews.
