Best At-Home Covid Tests: Where to Buy and How to Use

COVID-19 is everywhere and public health experts have made it clear this virus isn’t going away anytime soon. Because of this, it’s important to keep home COVID tests handy just in case you or someone in your household develops symptoms.

While there used to only be a few options for home COVID tests, you now can choose from a slew of different products. Sure, more options are better but that also makes it difficult to know which is best. Just know this: The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted an emergency use authorization (EUA) to several tests and, at baseline, the test you choose should meet this criteria. (An EUA, in case you’re not familiar with it, essentially says that the known benefits of using the product outweigh any potential cons. However, it’s not a full authorization—that process typically takes years.)

Of course, many people want to know how accurate home COVID tests are. In general, these tests are reliable, says William Schaffner, M.D., an infectious disease specialist and professor at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. However, he adds, “you have to know how to interpret them.”

“If you think you were exposed yesterday, you test yourself today, and you're negative, that does not give you the all clear,” he says. “It takes some time for there to be enough virus in your nose to turn the test positive.” That’s why it’s best to wait up to three days to test yourself after an exposure, he says.

Home COVID tests are typically more accurate when you have symptoms, although they can pick up asymptomatic cases, says Thomas Russo, M.D., professor and chief of infectious disease at the University at Buffalo in New York. “They’re also less sensitive than a PCR test—that’s considered the gold standard of COVID testing,” he says. (However, he points out, a PCR test needs to ship to a lab and can take days for you to get your results compared to an at-home test, which gives results in minutes.)

But at-home COVID tests are “very good at detecting contagious amounts of virus,” says Amesh A. Adalja, M.D., a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “So, if a test is negative, that person is not likely to be contagious at that given time,” he adds.

Research has found that home COVID tests are pretty accurate overall, though. One March 2021 meta-analysis found that rapid antigen tests—which is the technology used by home COVID tests—picked up about 72% of symptomatic cases that were confirmed positive by a PCR test. The tests didn’t perform as well in people who were asymptomatic, though—only 58% of those cases were confirmed by PCR.

Luckily, you can find home COVID tests at most pharmacies, grocery stores, big box chains, and online retailers. Most are easy to use—you simply take a swab of both nostrils, put it in a special solution, insert it into a test card, and read your results about 15 minutes later.

Each test kit is slightly different and every company has done its own research. With that in mind, these are the best (and most accurate) home COVID tests on the market. Pick up one or several of these to keep at home for the just-in-case.

Our Top Picks

Best Overall Home COVID Test: BinaxNOW COVID-19 Antigen Self-Test
Best Home COVID Test With App: On/Go COVID-19 Antigen Self-Test
Best Home COVID Test for Fast Results: QuickVue At-Home OTC COVID-19 Test
Best Inexpensive Home COVID Test: Flowflex COVID-19 Rapid Antigen Test
Easiest Home COVID Test to Use: InteliSwab COVID-19 Rapid Antigen Test
Best Molecular Home COVID Test: Detect COVID-19 Test
Best No-Frills Home COVID Test: iHealth Rapid Antigen COVID-19 Test