9 Best Baby Bottles, Tested by Experts and Parents

Since your baby doesn't speak words yet and can't give you any hints on their preferences, it's up to you to decide which bottle to try first. These tips can help you sort through the options:

✔️ Material: Many new parents, who are eager to avoid plastics whenever possible, initially want a glass bottle for feeding a baby breastmilk or formula. However, glass bottles are heavier, sometimes a little harder to grip, tougher for an independent-minded older baby to hold themselves and more expensive. For all those reasons, the top-selling bottles in the U.S. continue to be BPA-free plastic versions. Several of our recommendations are sold in both plastic and glass versions, including our best overall and best value bottles.

Silicone is a new option and also popular. It's soft, lightweight and durable, and it's tough to crack, unlike plastic or glass. Two of our options are silicone baby bottles.

✔️ Size: Newborns drink less but need to be fed more frequently than than 6-month-olds. It's useful to read the AAP guidelines on how much babies eat. Many parents start their baby on a 2-, 4- or 5-ounce bottle and then work up to 8-, 9-, 10- or 11-ounce size as their baby grows. Every baby is different, so keeping all of your well-baby appointments will help you and your pediatrician track your baby's growth and discuss feedings.

✔️ Nipple: New parents may not know that nipples are sold with different flow speeds, meaning milk comes out faster or slower depending on the number and size of milk openings. Check the packaging to see which nipple is included and consider buying a few of the brand's other nipples just in case. Then, if your baby seems to be mad about the bottle, swap out the nipple for one with a faster or slower flow speed to see if that helps. Younger babies need a slow flow so they don't get a face full of milk; older babies can handle a faster flow and might act hangry if they can't gulp as much as they want.

"If you are trying a bottle and the baby spills, coughs or chokes, the flow may be too fast," said Beth Iovinelli, B.S.N., R.N., IBCLC, a registered nurse and certified lactation consultant who owns the Milk Street Lactation Support Center in Norwalk, Connecticut. "If the baby takes a long time to take the bottle, you may need to try a different nipple with a faster flow."

✔️ Pump compatibility: If you'll be expressing breastmilk, you can pump into storage bags or pump directly into a bottle. Most major plastic and glass bottle brands can screw right onto a traditional breast pump, though some require an adaptor. Silicone bottles don't work with many pumps although there are exceptions. Wearable breast pumps each have their own milk-collection containers. The bottom line is: Don't stress too much about this. If your baby loves a bottle but it doesn't screw onto your pump, you'll need to do some delicate milk transfers but it will all work out.

There are several methods for cleaning, but whichever you opt for, it's important to follow these guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control:

• Be sure to wash your hands before handling your baby's bottles for cleaning and drying.
• Baby bottles must be cleaned with soap, not just rinsed, after every use.
• At room temperature, expressed breastmilk or formula is safe for only two hours. If you come across a bottle that's been sitting out for that long or longer, you need to toss the milk or formula that's inside and clean the bottle thoroughly.
• Feeding items should be sanitized once a day if your infant is younger than 2 months, a preemie or health-compromised. As your baby grows older, a regular cleaning after each use is enough, with occasional sanitizing for peace of mind.

The easiest way to clean any baby bottle is in the top rack of the dishwasher. It helps to have a dishwasher basket to hold small parts, like bottle nipples. The CDC says that if you use a sanitizing cycle and heated dry cycle, you’ve effectively sanitized everything. If you wash baby bottles on a normal, quick or eco cycle and opt to air dry, you’ll want to occasionally sterilize in addition to using the dishwasher.

Hand-washing a baby bottle and its parts also works and is necessary if you don't own a dishwasher, and it's bound to happen when your dishes get backup up. The CDC suggests you put the parts in a large, clean bowl and add soap and water before scrubbing, rather than letting parts fall into the sink, in case the sink harbors germs. There are many bottle brushes you can use and any dish soap is good, though there are some brands such as Dapple Baby Bottle Soap that specifically target fatty milk residue to help remove stubborn stains.

You might want to hang onto your bottle's packaging for clear directions on how to sterilize your bottles.

That said, the inexpensive, old-fashioned way to sterilize is to boil a pot of water and add the bottle parts to it for five minutes; remove the items with clean tongs. However, many of us have a story of needing to tend to the baby halfway through the process and the parts being accidentally left to melt. New parenthood is truly a fog!

Another method is to invest in a microwave steam sterilizer; with just a bit of water and about two minutes, you can sterilize bottles and parts quickly. Some bottle brands sell their own sterilizers such as the Avent Microwave Steam Sterilizer.

Finally, there are electric sterilizers that will keep your baby's accessories off your stove and out of your microwave. These plug in and heat all the parts to kill germs. They're also sold by some bottle brands; the Dr. Brown's Deluxe Electric Sterilizer is one such model.

If you're a first-time expectant parent you might be swayed, confused, impressed or overwhelmed by the claims made by baby-bottle manufacturers. Here, we've compiled a litany of attributes you'll likely read about and might question.

• Anti-colic: After Dr. Brown's debuted a vented bottle, many others began to follow suit and offer anti-colic features and claims. It's not all talk: Various bottles now have vented nipples or interior vents that help keep air out of baby's tummy. Gas needs to be burped or farted out, often with crying beforehand, so keeping air out is welcome. Venting can also help prevent reflux, which is when stomach contents come back up and your baby spits up. When you see a bottle that's "anti-colic," you should read further about how or why the maker says that it achieves that.

Ready for the confusing part? Colic is not actually caused by gas or reflux. Parents may be quick to say a crying baby is "colicky," but as noted by the Mayo Clinic, Dr. Karp and many other experts, colic is defined as frequent, prolonged and intense crying for no apparent reason. So if you clear up your baby's crying by switching bottles, they probably didn't have colic, just bad gas or reflux. If your baby is actually suffering from colic, a bottle switch will not make a difference. What can help, says Dr. Karp, are his five S's: swaddling, swinging, sucking, shushing, and holding your baby in the side/stomach position.

• Most like mom: This is a newer claim that nearly every bottle company makes. Some bottles are literally shaped more like a breast than others, and some say their technology works closest to a breast as far as flow, texture and number of nipple holes. (For the record, the number of ducts varies woman to woman, but the Susan G. Komen foundation says that most women have "about 10" milk ducts.) Given that every woman's breasts are different, any claims to be "like mom" are a gamble, but our Lab experts appreciate that bottle companies are looking to the original milk-delivery system for inspiration.

• Easy latch or "accepted" by baby: "Latch" is the term for when a breastfeeding baby successfully gets on the breast to nurse. Bottle companies also talk about babies being able to latch onto their bottle nipple. Acceptance means a baby takes the bottle. Trust us, it's a huge disappointment when your baby goes on a bottle strike and refuses a brand or, when things are really dire, refuses any bottle. We appreciate that there are studies showing that many babies accept a certain bottle or nipple but, to be candid, only your own baby's preference is going to matter to you.

• Nipple confusion: Brands sometimes claim that they can prevent nipple confusion, again by having a bottle nipple that is similar to a human one. Unfortunately, this sows seeds of worry in parents who are afraid that once their baby takes a bottle or pacifier, they will forget how to breastfeed.

"The notion of nipple confusion does not give baby enough credit," Iovinelli says. "If breastfeeding is going well and baby is latching well, most can go back and forth between bottle and breast without much issue." See the tips in the box above for pairing nursing with bottle feeding, which pediatricians have assured us can be done successfully more times than not.

For more than a century, the experts in the Good Housekeeping Institute have educated consumers on making good product choices for their homes and families. In our Parenting Lab, we regularly review products that parents will want and need while raising their children, from the initial baby cribs and bassinets to toys they'll be using later such as swing sets.

Between raising three children ages 6 and younger and leading data collection at the Institute for more than 15 years, Chief Technologist & Executive Technical Director Rachel Rothman has had extensive first-hand experience with baby bottles in her home and at the Lab. She's also pored through consumer reviews from Good Housekeeping testers. Rothman is a trained mechanical engineer who has also helmed reviews on breast pumps and baby monitors.

This article was written by contributing writer Jessica Hartshorn who nursed and pumped for bottle-feeding her two kids for two years each. She covered the baby-gear market most recently for Parents magazine and prior to that, for American Baby magazine. You can also see her write-up of the best baby carriers.