Are laundry booster dupes worth the savings? 💰

Discover how a home brand laundry booster can save you money while delivering results similar to expensive brands.

Comparison of Australian laundry booster prices, June 2026
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This week, we are looking at ways to save money in your wash routine by swapping out expensive laundry boosters and soakers for their cheaper counterparts. You might call them generics, supermarket brands or even ‘no frills’ products, but these days such budget-friendly alternatives to name-brand products are called dupes (from ‘duplicates’).

Even though they’re cheaper, dupes mimic the performance, aesthetic, and ingredients of higher-end products. Unlike knock-offs or counterfeits, dupes don’t try to fake the original brand’s logo. Instead, they use near-identical packaging and similar product claims, and pair that with their own branding.

MCoBeauty products on display shelf.
Before its products hit the shelves, MCoBeauty follows a stringent process when developing cosmetics. (ABC News: John Gunn)

Finding dupes for your laundry

Like in cosmetics, laundry formulations are incredibly difficult to patent unless there is a completely unique, ground-breaking active ingredient. This means anyone can legally reverse-engineer a similar texture, finish, or scent profile. 

Laundry boosters are an easy place to find high-performing dupes. They are called boosters because they ‘boost’ your wash, improving stain removal.

Each supermarket has a variety of laundry boosters, from the eye-watering, expensive name-brand Vanish NapiSan Oxi Action (AU$17/kg RRP) to far more affordable options such as Aldi Di-San, Coles Ultra Oxy, and Woolworths Clean Triple Enzyme Stain Remover Power Soaker (all selling around AU$3.50).

Comparison of Australian laundry booster prices, June 2026
Comparison of Australian laundry booster prices, June 2026

Manufacturers do not have to disclose the exact ingredients, which makes direct comparison difficult in some situations. However, for laundry boosters, the bulk of their performance comes from only one active ingredient: sodium percarbonate. This is the chemical name for oxygen bleach. It is a cheap, abundant commodity chemical, and the supermarket brands can easily create products with the same concentration as Vanish.

A dupe enthusiast can look at the percentage of active ingredients and see that the supermarket brands contain the same (or higher) percentage of sodium percarbonate. But if you don’t spend all your waking hours thinking about laundry like we do, don’t worry, we’ve done the legwork for you.

Carrie Bradshaw typing
We couldn’t help but wonder, was it time to switch from NapiSan to Di-San?

Product comparison of sodium percarbonate concentration

  • Clean Laundry Soaker & In-Wash Boost — 25.7% sodium percarbonate
  • Clean Boost Triple Enzyme Power Soaker – 32% sodium percarbonate
  • Coles Simply Laundry Soaker In-Wash Booster — 28% sodium percarbonate
  • Coles Ultra Oxy Advanced Booster & Soaker — 32% sodium percarbonate
  • Di-San Oxy Laundry Soaker — 32% sodium percarbonate
  • Frend — 14.8% sodium percarbonate
  • Lectric Washing Soda — 0% sodium percarbonate (contains 100% sodium carbonate)
  • Sard — 20% sodium percarbonate
  • Sard Super — 20% sodium percarbonate
  • The Pink Stuff — 15%–30% sodium percarbonate
  • Vamoose Colours — 33% sodium percarbonate
  • Vamoose Whites — 29.7% sodium percarbonate
  • Vanish Gold Multipower — 33% sodium percarbonate
  • Vanish Gold Multipower Whites — 29.7% sodium percarbonate
  • Vanish Gold Pro — 25% sodium percarbonate
  • Vanish NapiSan Oxi Action – 33% sodium percarbonate
  • Vanish Pink — 25.7% sodium percarbonate

Comparison of sodium percarbonate in laundry boosters found in Australian and New Zealand supermarkets, June 2026.

Add up the savings

Swapping from Vanish to a supermarket brand makes a big difference to your weekly shop. The suggested dose for Vanish is a 60g scoop in each wash. Switching to a supermarket brand saves $0.30–$0.81 a pop.

  • Vanish NapiSan: $1.02 (full price) per 60g
  • Vanish NapiSan: $0.51 (sale price) per 60g
  • Woolworths Clean Triple Enzyme Power Soaker: $0.21 per 60g

Do the missing ingredients matter?

Name-brand products do offer slightly improved performance behind the premium price tag. Just like a MCoBeauty dupe from Chemist Warehouse isn’t a one-to-one match for Charlotte Tilbury’s Hollywood Flawless Filter, supermarket booster formulas are not identical to Vanish. 

Vanish includes anionic and non-ionic surfactants as well as enzymes like protease and amylase. These ingredients are expensive to source and require sophisticated stabilisers to keep them active in a dry powder form. This added complexity demands a higher price tag, and so do their nationwide advertising campaigns.

While the added ingredients improve cleaning performance, they are not needed in a booster. For the average user, the visible difference is debatable. Even if Vanish edges out the supermarket offerings slightly on performance, the gain is marginal. It costs three times as much, but it is not three times more effective.

For the price, you are better off buying a budget laundry booster and putting the savings towards a higher-performing detergent that already includes quality surfactants and various enzymes.

If you use a laundry booster to help soften your water, look into dedicated water softening products or supplementing with a budget laundry powder that contains mostly water softeners instead.

Our final verdict

This verdict is an easy one to make: laundry booster dupes are worth the swap. They are a simple way to save some money without extra effort or losing cleaning performance.

If you’re already using a booster dupe, let us know if you have a favourite! They do come in different fragrances and powder texture, and most people have opinions on that. 😉