The 5 best self-emptying robot vacuums for hands-off cleaning in 2025

UPDATE: May. 2, 2025, 5:00 a.m. EDT I'm currently testing the Roborock Saros 10 and Saros Z70 announced at CES in January, as well as a slew of new Roombas announced in March. If I find any solid new contenders, this guide will be updated accordingly.

The best self-emptying robot vacuums have one huge perk past the obvious act of vacuuming the floor for you. (Spoiler alert: It's in the name.)

When you outsource vacuuming to a robot, your floors get cleaned way more often, right? There's just one little downside to that extra attention: More debris off the floor means a dust bin that fills up faster, and emptying a vacuum's dust bin by hand is arguably the worst part of the chore.

Hence, auto-empty robot vacuums were born. These vacs do your vacuuming and emptying for you for weeks to months at a time, storing the debris collected on each trip in a larger compartment that's located in the charging dock. It's the obvious supplementary step for the full hands-off cleaning experience, and it's rare to see a robot vacuum from 2024 or 2025 that doesn't have automatic emptying. (That's why Dyson's move to skip self-emptying on its $1,199.99 robot vacuum was so bold, it's comical.)

Are self-emptying robot vacuums worth it?

Even the best upright vacuums are a pain to wrestle out of the closet sometimes. In a pinch, it's inarguably clutch to have an automated floor cleaner that does the work for you. And if you don't feel like vacuuming manually, it's only natural that you'll also decide you don't feel like manually dumping your robot vac's dust bin into the trash can every day. If we're doing this whole automated thing, let's do it the right way.

Automatic emptying quickly proves its worth in households where the layer of pet fur would otherwise have you dumping the vacuum's tiny dust bin after just a few rooms. The best self-emptying robot vacuum cleaners let you off the hook for months at a time. (Most brands claim to have capacities averaging between six to eight weeks, but almost every self-emptying dock I've tested in my 1,300 square foot apartment lasted much longer than that.)

For people with allergies, auto-emptying also spares you from inhaling the inevitable puff of dust that emerges when dumping a dustbin into the trash. Speaking of avoiding the grosser parts of the job, if you're specifically seeking a robot vacuum that mops, many self-emptying docks also take it upon themselves to wash and dry the dirty mopping pads after the job is done.

I've been testing the latest and greatest self-emptying robot vacuums released in 2024 and 2025 against my old favorites from years prior. These are my top picks for the best robot vacuum that empties itself.