Radiance Original Ultra Concentrated Dishwashing Liquid

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I like being able to get most of what I need at just one store, so I can avoid making trips to multiple different stores. That means I often plan the week’s meals around ingredients I know I can purchase at Aldi. While I’m there, I also pick up other essentials such as laundry detergent, toilet paper, certain feminine hygiene supplies, certain household cleaning supplies, and even some vitamins or health care items.

One item I regularly buy at Aldi is dishwashing liquid. This is sold under the Radiance brand. Radiance is not a company but rather is the private label Aldi uses for various cleaning products such as dishwasher pacs, disinfectant wipes, and even dusting kits.

Radiance Original Ultra Concentrated Dishwashing Liquid is a Regular Buy, which means it’s in stores year round. It claims it is “tough on grease” and the bottle states it’s comparable to Dawn Ultra Original Scent Dishwashing Liquid. Dawn is the go-to brand for grease removal and is the product of choice for cleaning up wild birds after oil spills. Aldi also sells some antibacterial dishwashing liquid in orange and green colors for the same price, but I tend to avoid antibacterial soaps when I can, so this review focuses on the original blue bottle.

The Aldi Radiance dishwashing liquid cost $1.69 for a 24-ounce bottle at the time of writing. That comes out to about 7 cents per ounce.

For comparison, at the time of writing, Dawn Ultra Dishwashing Liquid cost $4.44 for 28 ounces at Aldi, which is about 16 cents per ounce. If you’re willing to buy larger bottles, you can get it for a bit less at Walmart, where I found Dawn Ultra Dishwashing Liquid in 38-ounce bottles going for 15 cents per ounce or a 70-ounce refill bottle for 14 cents per ounce.

This makes the Aldi Radiance dishwashing liquid the better deal in terms of price.

(FYI: the cheapest dish soap I’ve found anywhere is the LA’s Totally Awesome brand that goes for about 4 cents per ounce at Dollar Tree, but it has a more watery consistency that means you’ll have to use more to get the same cleaning effect.)

The back of the bottle. (Click to enlarge.)

This Aldi dishwashing liquid contains surfactants and is phosphate free. It was not tested on animals. You should not add bleach to it, and it is not for use in dishwashers. It’s a product of Canada.

I bought a bottle of Dawn dish soap to compare side by side with the Aldi version. One of the first things I noticed is that the Aldi dish soap doesn’t say much about what it contains. Meanwhile, the back of the Dawn bottle lists ingredients and says what those ingredients are there for, such as denatured alcohol (a stabilizer), sodium lauryl sulfate (provides cleaning), fragrances, and so on.

The real test is how well the Aldi dishwashing liquid gets dishes clean compared to the name-brand Dawn liquid. The first thing I noticed when squirting out a small amount of each brand is that Dawn has a thicker consistency. A little bit of Dawn seems to go farther than a similar amount of the Aldi dish soap. It’s worth noting that the Aldi dish soap is still thicker than the LA’s Totally Awesome brand from Dollar Tree, so the Aldi stuff is not the most watery product on the market.

Dawn dish soap also makes more suds than Radiance dish soap. I squirted similar amounts of Dawn and Radiance into each side of my double basin kitchen sink and filled the basins with water. In terms of suds, Dawn was the clear winner.

While Dawn has advantages, the Aldi Radiance dish soap is half the cost. So if you’re okay with a thinner consistency dish soap that doesn’t make quite as many suds but still gets dishes clean, the Aldi dish soap may be worth the tradeoffs. Another option some people choose is to purchase Dawn and dilute it some with water to make it last longer and attempt to make a dent in the price per ounce. As for me, I have been using the Aldi dish soap exclusively for years and will continue to do so.

The Verdict:

Radiance Original Ultra Concentrated Dishwashing Liquid claims to be comparable to Dawn Ultra Original Scent Dishwashing Liquid. We put the two brands to a side-by-side test. The Radiance dish soap has a slightly thinner consistency and doesn’t suds up as well as name-brand Dawn, but the Radiance brand still gets dishes clean. What’s more, the Radiance brand is half the cost of Dawn, even if you buy Dawn in larger bulk bottles. It’s a matter of personal preference, but the price difference might be enough to sway some people toward the Aldi brand.