We independently review all products we recommend. When you buy through our links, we may earn a commission. learn more>
Even if you are not a secret agent and think you have nothing to hide, you need a paper shredder.
Trash cans and recycling bins filled with bank statements and credit card offers are a treasure trove for identity thieves. Your best defense: a shredder that can shred sensitive documents to shreds.
After reviewing over 25 document shredders and using nine of them to shred over 4,000 sheets of paper (including staples, CDs, and credit cards), we recommend the Royal 14MC 14-Sheet Micro-Cut Document Shredder for personal and home office use for most people. If you typically shred volumes of paper, such as a single novel, you might want to consider the Aurora AU120MA 120-Sheet Auto-Feed Micro-Cut Document Shredder.
This highly reliable document shredder offers the best combination of ease of use, paper capacity, and price. However, the pull-out paper tray isn’t as large as other models we tested.
Save time and eliminate hassle with this quiet document shredder featuring an automatic feeder that can handle large volumes of paper.
Compared to cross-cut document shredders, micro-cut document shredders produce smaller and therefore safer sheets of paper rather than strips.
Our selection allows you to shred anything in one go: from a few pages of bank statements to several years of tax returns.
Pull-out bins are easier, cleaner, and safer to empty than the pull-out lids on small, cheap disposers.
Wipe the disposer with special oil tablets every time after emptying the container to extend its service life.
This highly reliable document shredder offers the best combination of ease of use, paper capacity, and price. However, the pull-out paper tray isn’t as large as other models we tested.
The Royal 14MC 14-Sheet Micro Shredder is a Costco exclusive (for non-members, the price is about $4 extra) that holds nearly twice as much paper as similarly priced micro shredders and comes with a longer warranty. In other words, it’s a great value for the money.
Like other micro shredders, the Royal 14MC document shredder also shreds documents into tiny pieces, making it nearly impossible to reassemble sensitive documents. We put it through its shredding test several times, and it ran smoothly, was quiet (for a shredder), and had large buttons and indicators that were easy to read.
While the Royal 14MC document shredder’s paper bin isn’t the largest we tested, its slide-out bin is easier to use and safer than the flip-top bins found on cheaper, more compact shredders.
Save time and eliminate hassle with this quiet document shredder featuring an automatic feeder that can handle large volumes of paper.
If you frequently have to process large volumes of confidential documents, then the best choice would be the Aurora AU120MA document shredder with automatic feeding and a 120-sheet micro-cutting function.
As the name suggests, its automatic document feeder can handle up to 120 sheets of paper at a time. Simply place a stack of paper in the paper tray, close the lid, and in less than two minutes you’ll have colored paper. For smaller jobs, you can use the manual feed slot, which holds 10 sheets and has an auto-reverse mechanism that kicks in if you insert too many sheets at once.
Not only is the Aurora AU120MA incredibly easy to use thanks to its automatic feeder and simple buttons, it’s also the quietest shredder we’ve tested.
Senior writer Melanie Pinola researched, tested, and wrote about all types of home office gear for Wirecutter from 2019 to 2024. Before joining Wirecutter, she spent more than a decade covering tech and productivity news at publications like Consumer Reports, Lifehacker, PCWorld, and Laptop Magazine.
Even if you receive electronic bills from your bank and utility companies, you will still need a document shredder. Spam and credit card fraud are inevitable, and a shredder is the most convenient and secure way to avoid identity theft (PDF files) by destroying any document containing personal data, including medical records.
Of course, you have other options for handling files containing sensitive information. You can throw them in the fireplace, shred them by hand and throw the pieces out with your food or pet waste, or even wash them with a mixture of bleach and water until they turn into a paste.
Many communities offer free document shredding events from time to time, but there are usually limits on the number of documents that can be shredded. You can also pay to have documents sent to a company like FedEx Office or Staples for shredding, but doing it yourself will give you more peace of mind than putting your documents in a regular box and waiting for the company to shred them.
Since we started testing shredders in 2014, our testing methods have changed and we now focus only on micro-cut shredders. This is because they are much safer than cross-cut shredders and their prices have dropped to a level where they are not much more expensive.
Micro-cut document shredders can shred letter-size paper into more than 2,000 pieces, while cross-cut shredders can only shred 400 pieces or less. They are also more likely to have a higher P4 security rating (there are seven levels of security for document shredders), which is especially important if you need to destroy documents containing highly sensitive information, such as medical or financial information.
To determine which models to test, we looked at owner reviews on Amazon and other retail sites, as well as specifications on manufacturer pages, and took into account the following factors:
All of the document shredders we reviewed can handle bound documents, paper clips, and plastic credit cards, and some can also shred paper clips and CDs, which we think is a bonus.
We have not tested document shredders with materials not recommended by the manufacturer, such as cardboard, labels, folders, envelopes with plastic windows, laminated cardboard, x-rays, or greeting cards containing audio chips or batteries.
This highly reliable document shredder offers the best combination of ease of use, paper capacity, and price. However, the pull-out paper tray isn’t as large as other models we tested.
The Royal 14MC Micro-Cut 14-Sheet Document Shredder is the best value for money solution for home offices and families.
It’s affordable, has a large capacity, and can handle just about anything. This 14-sheet shredder can handle nearly twice as much paper at one time as similarly priced shredders, including our previously recommended AmazonBasics Micro-Cut 8-Sheet Shredder. It has enough room to shred multiple banknotes and credit cards at once.
Although the 14MC’s rated capacity is 14 sheets, we were able to process batches of up to 17 sheets, including stapled stacks, without jamming. (Note that we don’t recommend doing this at home.) It handles stapled credit card bills, folded documents, and plastic credit cards with ease, leaving behind pieces of paper and plastic so small they’re hard to distinguish. The only thing it can’t handle is CDs.
If a paper jam occurs, it’s easy to clear. When we loaded an 18-sheet stack of paper into the shredder, it eventually jammed, but we cleared the jam easily using the round forward and reverse buttons. We prefer the buttons on this shredder to the more common slider switch for forward and reverse control, as the buttons allow for more precise control of the gears, which reduces wear.
In contrast, some document shredders, such as the Aurora AU870MA, do not have a manual feed feature, which can make clearing jams difficult.
It can shred paper continuously without overheating. We fed paper into the shredder continuously for about 15 minutes until the dustbin indicator showed it was full. At this point, we need to empty the Trash before continuing.
As a result, we were never able to overload the shredder and forced it into a 40-minute cool-down mode. After emptying the 14MC paper tray, we continued shredding, but the shredder still showed no signs of stopping.
It has a switch. A special power switch on the back prevents the machine from being turned on accidentally, giving you peace of mind even if there are pets or children nearby.
Quiet operation. In our tests, this disposer produced extremely low noise levels of about 60 psi (similar to a washing machine). This is second only to our upgraded product, which produces more than 50 decibels. We also found that the sound of this disposer is not as harsh as most other models, which can resemble an aggressive clanking sound.
Comes with a long warranty. The Royal 14MC comes with a three-year blade warranty and a one-year parts and labor warranty. Many paper shredders do not come with an extended blade warranty.
As a Costco exclusive, this shredder comes with a 100% customer satisfaction guarantee. Non-Costco members can purchase the shredder for just $4 (at the time of writing).
Save time and eliminate hassle with this quiet document shredder featuring an automatic feeder that can handle large volumes of paper.
The Aurora AU120MA 120-sheet auto-feed shredder with micro-cutting is a game-changer for those who need to shred large volumes of documents, thanks to its high-performance automatic feeder.
It shreds paper hands-free and processes 10 times more documents than our recommended shredders. Using the automatic document feeder, this shredder can shred up to 120 sheets of paper in about 90 seconds. The 5-gallon paper bin is large enough to shred two more documents, and with the 10-sheet manual feeder, you can shred even more paper before you have to empty it.
After running two tests in a row (1,080 sheets total), we were able to set the shredder to a cool-down mode that requires a 45-minute pause. If you need to shred 1,000 sheets or more per day, you’ll want to consider a commercial shredder, but for most people, the Aurora AU120MA will be more than enough.
It is easy to operate. Like our recommended Royal product, the Aurora AU120MA also has forward and reverse buttons for easy paper jam clearance. It also has a jam clear function that automatically reverses the gears if the machine detects that the manual feeder is overloaded.
When using the automatic feed, make sure all sheets are in one stack; when we tried using a mixture of folded and unfolded sheets, the shredder picked up the unfolded sheets and left the rest in the tray.
The LED indicator is clear and easy to use. However, the power button is further away than on our recommended document shredders, making it a little harder to reach. This may be a good idea if you have pets or children at home.
This is the quietest shredder we’ve ever tested. The Aurora AU120MA shreds very quietly, measuring between 58 and 62 decibels in our tests. While it’s not completely silent, it’s unlikely to wake sleeping pets or other people in the next room.
It has a very long warranty. In addition to the standard one-year warranty on the rest of the shredder, the manufacturer also offers a five-year warranty on the cutting drum.
If you need to shred CDs or DVDs, or the Royal 14MC is out of stock, the Amazon Basics 8-Sheet Paper, CD, and Credit Card Shredder with Micro-Shredder is a good choice. This previously recommended model can handle multiple bank or credit card statements at once, or a single CD or DVD, and it worked without jamming or overheating in our tests. However, the gears can spin unnecessarily for about a minute after the paper has passed through the feeder, and the 4-gallon paper tray is on the small side.
If you want to shred paper into smaller pieces, you might want to consider the Bonsen ShredPro S3106. This model has a P5 safety rating, and it shreds the smallest pieces of paper we tested: about the width of a strand of spaghetti, compared to the width of two strands of spaghetti in the shredders we tested. However, the extra safety also comes with some inconveniences: The Bonsen shredder creates a lot of dust when shredding paper, and when we emptied the shredder, most of the shredded paper spilled out the back and bottom of the bin. The shredder we tested also made a whirring noise occasionally after shredding a batch of paper.