Capacity and weight: 36 ounces, 1.5 pounds
Pros: Durable and keeps drinks cold for days
Cons: So big it doesn’t fit in cupholders and can be heavy
This article was originally published in 2018 and most recently updated on July 27, 2026, with current information.
No matter where we travel, we never leave home without a reusable water bottle. Single-use plastic bottles are bad: they’re harmful to you (a Columbia University study found a liter of bottled water included roughly 240,000 tiny pieces of plastic) and to the environment (the European Commission says plastic bottles take 450 to 1,000 years to decompose). Carrying a reusable water bottle is one of the easiest ways to be kind to the environment and stay hydrated while doing so.
Afar staffers have tried dozens of water bottles, putting them to the test on our commutes, hiking across national parks and among ancient ruins, and at beaches worldwide. The results are in: These are 10 of the best water bottles for keeping your drink ice cold, toting coffee, and filtering out bacteria, while traveling and at home.
Hydro Flask 21 Oz. Standard Mouth Water Bottle
The Hydro Flask standard mouth is large enough to fit ice cubes, but narrow enough that spills aren’t a concern.
Courtesy of Hydro Flask
Capacity and weight: 21 ounces, 0.75 pound
Pros: Keeps drinks cold for hours and lots of fun color options
Cons: Prone to denting if you drop it often
Best overall
Bend, Oregon–based Hydro Flask has long been a favorite for outdoor enthusiasts because the brand’s bottles boast excellent insulation, feature a comfortable, flexible plastic swing handle, a seriously leakproof lid, and come in a variety of sizes and bright colors.
Plus, Hydro Flask’s double-wall insulation will keep your drinks temperature-stabilized for a full day’s hike—24 hours for ice-cold beverages and up to 12 hours for hot ones.
The 21-ounce standard mouth bottle fits plenty of water, while also being lightweight enough to tote around all day. Afar contributor Sophie Friedman has been using hers almost daily for the past six years. The standard mouth is easy to sip from without drenching yourself if you hit a bump in a car or turbulence on an airplane. For longer, more active days, we’d also recommend the 32-ounce wide-mouth bottle with a straw lid option ($45).
Hydro Flask’s commitment to sustainability also includes eliminating single-use plastic packaging in more than 90 percent of its products and offering a water bottle–recycling program where consumers can return banged-up bottles to be recycled and receive a $5 voucher for a new bottle.
Yeti Rambler 36 Oz. Water Bottle
The Yeti Rambler will keep your drink cold for days.
Courtesy of Yeti
Capacity and weight: 36 ounces, 1.5 pounds
Pros: Durable and keeps drinks cold for days
Cons: So big it doesn’t fit in cupholders and can be heavy
Best insulated water bottle
The 36-ounce Yeti Rambler is impressively beefy. Want to go backpacking for a few days and find an ice-studded bottle of lemonade when you return to your car? This is your vessel. We’ve successfully transported ice cream in this bottle (after chilling the bottle with cold water).
As with many well-insulated bottles on the market, the Rambler is made with double-walled, food-grade stainless steel. But it’s tougher and hardier than most: You can drop this bottle from a first-floor balcony and find it undented from the fall. And unlike most double-walled bottles, which require hand washing, the Rambler is dishwasher safe.
The extra-wide opening is both a pro and a con: It means the lip won’t collide with your nose, but it does allow for a possible drink tsunami should you sip in bumpy conditions. Wider (3.8 inches) and heavier (1.5 pounds) than most comparable bottles, the body is too big for most cars’ cupholders. The simple screw-top lid is particularly comfortable to hold, in part because it accommodates three fingers, instead of one or two as other bottles do, and the rounded plastic doesn’t dig into your skin when the bottle is heavy with water.
If you love the look of Yetis but don’t love how heavy they are, the brand’s $28 Yonder 34-ounce BPA-free plastic bottle weighs less than half of what the Rambler does (just 0.7 pounds). Because it’s not insulated, it won’t keep your water cold long, but it’s plenty sturdy.
Related: The Ultimate Camping Checklist for a Comfy Night Under the Stars
A5 memobottle
The flat design of memobottles lets them slip into bags—or airplane seatback pockets—where bulky round bottles can’t.
Courtesy of Amazon
Capacity and weight: 25 ounces, 0.37 pound
Pros: Space-saving and sleek design
Cons: Doesn’t stand up easily on its own
Best flat water bottle
Melbourne-based memobottle pulls design inspiration for its flat water bottles from Australian paper sizes including the A7 (six ounces), A6 (12 ounces), and A5 (25 ounces). Like paper, these bottles lie flat inside your bag or in an airplane seatback pocket. Tiana Attride, Afar’s former social media editor, is a fan of this design for practical and aesthetic reasons. “They’re stylish and fit into bags much more easily than the big, clunky water bottles you usually see,” she says.
All memobottle sizes are available in a lightweight BPA-free plastic or a sturdier stainless steel design. For travelers who tend to down a lot of water and won’t be able to refill frequently, opt for the 25-ounce plastic A5 to maximize your hydration. A certified B Corp, memobottle donates five months of safe drinking water access for every bottle sold courtesy of a partnership with Water.org. So far, the partnership has provided more than 50 million days of safe water.
Klean Kanteen TKWide
If you plan on drinking more than just water, the TKWide has interchangeable lids for a variety of drinks.
Courtesy of Klean Kanteen
Capacity and weight: 16 ounces, 0.87 pound
Pros: Insulated and offers five different interchangeable lids
Cons: Stainless steel can hold on to flavors, so it can be hard to switch between coffee and water without lingering odors.
Best water bottle with interchangeable lids
Sure, you can fill the 16-ounce Klean Kanteen TKWide with water, and we do. But its five interchangeable lids make the TKWide bottle from Klean Kanteen ready for anything. We like the Café Cap; it has a small opening perfect for sipping coffee that twists closed, saving you and your bag from spills, plus a metal swing handle that makes it easy to tote along on hikes but snaps to the side when you don’t need it. The TKWide Straw Cap comes with a 0.4-inch, stainless steel–and-silicone straw that accommodates thicker beverages, like smoothies or frozen margaritas.
The BPA-free, food-grade stainless steel bottle is insulated, keeping contents hot for up to 14 hours or iced up to 47 hours. It’s also treated with Klean Kanteen’s proprietary, chip-resistant Klean Coat finish and is backed by the brand’s lifetime “Strong as Steel” guarantee.
A B Corp, Klean Kanteen is transparent about its environmental impact and efforts to reduce its emissions and energy usage and how much it spends doing so.
Vapur 0.7L Wide Mouth Anti-Bottle
The Vapur Anti-Bottle is a space-saving option for those who travel light.
Courtesy of Amazon
Capacity and weight: 23 ounces, 0.125 pound
Pros: This collapsible bottle is dishwasher safe, ultra-lightweight, and the most affordable option on this list.
Cons: Can be clumsy to drink out of
Best collapsible water bottle
The Vapur Anti-Bottle is one of the best travel water bottles for planes and an efficiency expert’s dream. When full, the water pouch holds nearly a liter of liquid, but empty, it weighs a mere two ounces and occupies about as much space as a wallet. The cap has a built-in carabiner for latch-and-go ease, and the body’s three-ply, BPA-free plastic is pliable enough to fold up into the clip.
Don’t let the flexibility fool you—this pouch is durable enough to resist leaks, regardless how many times it’s been rolled, twisted, or shoved in a full backpack. The Anti-Bottle can also stand on its own when full (or half full, or anything but empty, really).
Refills are a breeze with a hard plastic wide mouth at the cap’s base, and a much narrower mouthpiece protected by a flip top ensures spill-free sipping. This collapsible bottle alternative is dishwasher safe, so there’s no need to buy a special cleaning tool for the interior. It’s also freezable, meaning it can serve as an ice pack should you wish to bring home cheese from your trip to Scotland.
LifeStraw Go Series 22 Oz.
The LifeStraw Go Series includes a liter size of the BPA-free plastic bottle as well as an insulated stainless steel version.
Courtesy of LifeStraw
Capacity and weight: 22 ounces, 0.54 pound
Pros: This filter bottle is made with BPA-free plastic and is dishwasher safe (once filter is removed).
Cons: The filter can be hard to drink from, and it displaces liquid, so the bottle holds only 15 ounces of water at a time.
Best filtered water bottle
The 22-ounce LifeStraw Go Series is one of the best water bottles with a filter. It looks like a basic plastic bottle with screw-top lid, but the “straw” inside is a two-stage filter. Its hollow-fiber membrane traps bacteria, parasites, and even microplastics. Then, the included activated carbon neutralizes unpleasant flavors and odors. There’s also an insulated stainless steel version of this bottle ($50), if you want to keep your water chilled.
Yes, you have to suck a bit harder on this mouthpiece than you would from an unfiltered straw, but you’ll hardly grow faint: The hollow-fiber technology delivers a speedier flow than most other filters. The large, bottle-length filter also displaces a significant amount of liquid, so the 22-ounce capacity is misleading. With the filter inside, the Go holds more like 15 ounces.
The trade-off is convenience. The Go is super handy for city and country travel—especially in places where the drinking water isn’t always potable. It fits tidily into bottle pockets on backpacks and in cars’ cupholders, and the BPA-free plastic is thicker and tougher than most: LifeStraw builds each bottle for a long life of service.
Replacement filters cost $25, and since one can treat 4,000 liters, that’s less than the cost of buying a similar amount of bottled water. And LifeStraw really puts its money where its mouth is: For every bottle purchased, the company provides one child with a year’s worth of clean drinking water; so far, they’ve reached 14.3 million kids. For every 500 products it sells, the company installs a community filter at a school in need, providing five years of clean water for 100 people.
Afar contributor Sophie Friedman has seen firsthand the impact this has on rural communities with no access to clean running water; several years ago, she joined LifeStraw for a water filter installation trip to southwestern Kenya. “I was really moved to see how how excited the kids were by LifeStraw’s giant blue water filter,” she says.
Related: How Gear Libraries Are Making Outdoor Adventure More Accessible—and Affordable
Katadyn BeFree 1L
The silicone BeFree bottle from Katadyn is a collapsible filter bottle.
Courtesy of Katadyn
Capacity and weight: 33.8 ounces, 0.17 pound
Pros: This filter bottle takes up barely any space and weighs just over two ounces, making it great for backcountry adventures.
Cons: The bottle can be clumsy to hold, and because the plastic is pliable, there’s potential for pinhole leaks.
Best lightweight filtered water bottle
When empty, this collapsible water bottle packs down to the size of an apple, yet it delivers huge benefits: Its drinking spout sits on top of a (replaceable) filter that effectively traps protozoa and other disease-causing organisms. That means you can fill the silicone flask from any suspicious source and immediately enjoy clean water wherever you are.
The activated carbon filter delivers a pleasingly fast flow (two liters per minute) that’s genuinely thirst-quenching during exercise. Whereas some filters (including the LifeStraw, above) limit the flow to smaller sips, the BeFree releases a big, mouth-filling gulp—which we appreciated on 14,000-foot Colorado peaks where exertion and altitude left us too breathless to work hard for small returns on water.
We’ve used the one-liter BeFree to drink from roadside streams, backcountry lakes, hillside springs, and airport bathrooms—and can report no resulting ill effects. And you can count on a cartridge to last several trips: Each cartridge filters 1,000 liters (says Katadyn) and replacements cost $30.
The bottle’s squishy design has advantages (packability) and disadvantages (it can be clumsy to hold). Instead, the filter-as-you-sip system is perfect for trail running, backcountry trekking, and any trip where you’ll need plenty of water but don’t want to be burdened by surplus bottle weight.
Larq Bottle PureVis 17 Oz.
This high-tech water bottle is self-cleaning.
Courtesy of Larq
Capacity and weight: 17 ounces, 0.84 pound
Pros: This self-purifying bottle also offers double-wall vacuum insulation and is one of the most stylish ones available.
Cons: Expensive
Best self-purifying water bottle
It’s not always easy to remember to wash your water bottle while traveling, but the Larq does it for you. The bottle’s cap is fitted with an ultraviolet light that disrupts the DNA in bacteria and viruses, rendering them unable to reproduce (which is how they cause diseases). And not only does the UV light kill waterborne microorganisms, but it also does so regularly, by automatically firing the UV beam every two hours to kill germs that may have been introduced from your mouth or a questionable water source.
Unlike UV pens, the Larq doesn’t use mercury, which causes environmental problems when it’s tossed into landfills. Plus, the Larq’s UV bulb has more stamina, lasting 40 times longer than mercury-based technology (according to Larq). You can view the company’s 2020 lab test results here.
The bottle, available in 17 and 24 ounces, also uses a rechargeable lithium polymer battery that lasts one month on a single charge. Pressing the top of the cap activates the light: Tap once for normal purification, or twice for “adventure mode,” which is useful when you suspect your water may be loaded with harmful microorganisms.
Even if you never refill it with untreated water, the Larq is an attractive bottle that uses double-walled stainless steel construction to keep beverages cold for 24 hours or hot for 12. And if it also self-cleans between proper washes? That’s priceless.
The Purist Collective Maker looks like a stainless steel bottle but is lined with glass.
Courtesy of Purist Collective
Purist Collective Maker Mug 10 Oz.
Best glass-lined water bottle
Capacity and weight: 10 ounces, 0.58 pound
Pros: This lightweight glass-lined water bottle looks and insulates like a stainless steel one.
Cons: This bottle is not dishwasher safe.
Glass bottles are great at repelling flavors and odors and, unlike some plastics and metals, glass doesn’t leach chemicals into your drink. But glass is heavy and too burdensome for travel.
Purist Collective solves this problem by lining its stainless steel bottles with an ultra-thin layer of nonporous glass. We filled the 10-ounce Maker with coffee and cream in the morning, then refilled it with water, and discerned no java aftertaste. The glass veneer is so thin that the Purist weighs just over half a pound. That’s no more than other double-walled metal bottles, so it’s easy to tote around all day.
The 10-ounce Maker, which is more tumbler than water bottle, comes with a leakproof scope top that rotates to let you adjust the flow and sip from anywhere around the top. The 18-ounce Mover ($52) and the 32-ounce Founder ($58) come with basic screw-top caps with carrying loops. Additional caps can be purchased, including a flip-top one ($20) for more active adventures.
Even better than the clean, modernist design is the give-back program: Purist Collective partners with various social and environmental nonprofits, like the San Francisco Bay Area’s Hope Services, which supports employment opportunities for individuals with developmental disabilities (in this case, as part of Purist’s assembly process). So the good-looking bottle does good, too.
Thermos 16 Oz. Funtainer Water Bottle
The Thermos Funtainer opens with a push of a button for easy drinking.
Courtesy of Thermos
Best water bottle for all ages
Capacity and weight: 16 ounces, 0.6 pound
Pros: Push-button lid allows for one-handed drinking
Cons: Not designed for hot liquids
This vacuum-insulated stainless steel water bottle keeps drinks cold for up to 12 hours and is durable enough to withstand any matter of drops or dings. It’s technically part of Thermos’ Funtainer kids collection, but who says adults can’t use it, too? In fact, Afar’s editorial director Billie Cohen says she carries one around all the time. “It’s small, but that’s enough for city walks or just my usual day-to-day. Those big bottles get heavy, so a small one is a nice change,” she says.
Beyond its fun-size packaging, Cohen likes that the bottle opens with a push of a button so you only need one hand to drink. “And a must for me is that the spout is totally covered so that it stays clean when I inevitably drop it on the airplane floor,” Cohen says.
