Industrial Degreaser vs All-Purpose Cleaner for Shops

The short answer on industrial degreaser vs all-purpose cleaner: a degreaser is built to dissolve and lift petroleum soils (grease, oil, carbon, lubricant film) and is what you reach for on equipment, drivetrains, shop floors and parts. An all-purpose cleaner is built for broad, lighter soil on many surfaces (fingerprints, dust, light film, spills) and is what you reach for on counters, walls, fixtures, cabs and daily wipe-downs. Use the degreaser where grease is the problem and the all-purpose cleaner everywhere else, and most of your chemical spend sorts itself out.

This guide is for facilities managers, fleet and truck shops, maintenance crews and cleaning contractors buying by the gallon and the case rather than by the bottle. Every product named is in our Degreasers or Multipurpose Cleaners collection, and the size, form and pack facts come from each product listing.

Where a degreaser wins and where an all-purpose cleaner wins

Think about the soil, not the surface. The same concrete floor needs a degreaser in the service bay and an all-purpose cleaner in the parts counter area.

Reach for an industrial degreaser when:

• The soil is oil, grease, hydraulic fluid, chain lube, cutting fluid or carbon.
• You are cleaning engines, drivetrains, forklifts, compressors, conveyor frames or machine beds.
• Shop floor coatings are slick from drips and the all-purpose cleaner just moves the film around.
• Parts need to be clean before inspection, paint, weld or reassembly.

Reach for an all-purpose cleaner when:

• The soil is dust, handprints, food and drink spills, light film or general grime.
• You are cleaning offices, break rooms, restroom fixtures, vehicle cabs, counters, glass-adjacent trim or painted walls.
• Staff will use it unsupervised on mixed surfaces, so a milder formula lowers the risk of damage.
• You want one trigger sprayer on every cart.

Where it gets blurry is the middle: light oil on a painted wall, a cab floor with road grime, or a stainless prep table in a plant. A heavy-duty cleaner from the multipurpose range (several products below are stocked as both degreaser and cleaner) covers that middle without stepping up to a full solvent product.

Solvent vs water-based degreaser: which one for your work

This is the specification that matters most and the one buyers most often skip. The product form on the listing (spray, liquid, foaming) is your first clue; the manufacturer label is your second.

Water-based (aqueous) degreasers and cleaners

• Supplied as liquid in 1 gal (128 fl oz), 2.5 gal (320 fl oz) and 5 gal (640 fl oz) containers, or as ready-to-use trigger sprays.
• Rinse with water, work in mop buckets, floor scrubbers, pressure washers and parts washers.
• The default choice for floors, walls, equipment exteriors, fleet wash bays and anything a crew touches daily.
• Lower shipping restrictions. Most of the bulk liquids in our range carry no hazardous material flag.

Solvent degreasers

• Usually supplied as aerosol spray cans, 11 to 20 oz, often in packs of 6 or 12.
• Used where water cannot go or must not stay: electrical contacts, brake assemblies, precision parts, bearings and anything that must flash dry.
• Aerosols in our range typically carry a ground-shipping-only hazardous material note on the listing, which also makes them final sale.
• Higher cost per ounce, so keep them for spot work rather than floor-scale cleaning.

A simple shop rule: water-based bulk liquid for anything you can rinse, solvent aerosol for anything you cannot.

The 5 label specs to read before you order

Our product listings show a spec table pulled from the manufacturer data. These are the fields that change the purchasing decision.

1. Item form. Liquid means you dispense it yourself (bulk, dilution, sprayer fill). Spray means a trigger bottle or aerosol, ready to use. Foaming means it clings to vertical surfaces, useful on walls, hoods and vehicle sides.
2. Size and unit count. Listed in fl oz or oz. 128 fl oz is 1 gal, 320 fl oz is 2.5 gal, 640 fl oz is 5 gal. For aerosols, the unit count on a multi-pack is the total ounces in the case.
3. Pack size. Pack of 1, 6 or 12. A pack-of-12 trigger spray case is one SKU for the whole crew; a single 5 gal pail is one SKU for the whole floor.
4. Hazardous material flag. No means it ships normally. Yes, ground shipping only, means no air shipping, longer transit to remote sites, and final sale. Plan reorders earlier for those.
5. Scent. Not cosmetic in a shop. Unscented products are easier to use in enclosed cabs and near food or healthcare areas; citrus and lemon scents are common on heavy-duty cleaners and some sites prefer them in bays.

What you will not find in the spec table is dilution ratio, pH, or any NSF or food-contact rating. Those live on the manufacturer label and safety data sheet. If a rating matters for your site, confirm it there before you standardize.

Aerosol degreaser vs bulk degreaser concentrate: cost per use

Buying format drives cost more than brand does. A 5 gal (640 fl oz) pail of liquid feeds refillable trigger sprayers, mop buckets and parts washers for weeks. A case of twelve 32 oz trigger sprays (384 oz total) is convenient but you are paying for twelve bottles and twelve sprayer heads.

A reasonable split for a mid-size fleet or maintenance shop:

• One 5 gal liquid heavy-duty cleaner or degreaser as the floor and equipment workhorse.
• One 1 gal liquid or a case of trigger sprays for the carts and benches.
• A small quantity of solvent aerosol for electrical, brake and precision work.

Then track how long each lasts and reorder on that cycle rather than when a bottle runs dry.

Comparison table: degreasers and heavy-duty cleaners we stock

All specs below are from the product listings. Sizes are as listed; gallon equivalents are standard conversions.

Product	Form / size	Pack	Hazmat flag	Best for
Simple Green 13225	Liquid, 320 fl oz (2.5 gal)	1	Not listed	Bulk degreasing, sprayer refill
Simple Green 19005	Liquid, 640 fl oz (5 gal), unscented	1	Not listed	Floor-scale cleaning, unscented sites
Oil Eater OILEATERP	Liquid, 640 fl oz (5 gal), lemon	1	No	Shop floors, equipment, parts washers
Krud Kutter KK05	Liquid, 640 fl oz (5 gal), unscented	1	No	Heavy-duty cleaning across mixed surfaces
Spray Nine DYM 26832	Spray, 32 oz, citrus	12 (384 oz)	No	Crew carts, benches, ready-to-use
Nu-Calgon S1-428708	Liquid, 128 fl oz (1 gal), citrus	1	Yes, ground only	HVAC and mechanical rooms, 1 gal refill
CRC 05050PS	Spray, 20 oz, unscented	1	Yes, ground only	Solvent spot work, flash-dry applications
WD-40 Specialist 300070	Spray, 18 oz, unscented	1	Yes, ground only	Solvent spot degreasing on equipment

Common mistakes when buying shop cleaning chemicals

Buying the degreaser for everything. It is tempting to stock one strong product. On painted surfaces, soft plastics and cab interiors, heavy degreasers can dull or mark finishes, and staff end up using more product than the job needs. Keep an all-purpose cleaner on the cart.

Buying aerosols for floor work. Twelve 12 oz cans do not clean a bay. Aerosols are for spots. Floor and equipment work belongs to bulk liquid and a sprayer or scrubber.

Ignoring the hazardous material note. Ground-only shipping adds transit time and the items are final sale. If a remote site runs out of solvent aerosol, the replacement is not arriving overnight. Carry a buffer.

Mixing scents across a facility. A lemon degreaser in the bay and an unscented all-purpose cleaner in the office is fine. A citrus product in a healthcare or food area may not be. Pick the scent profile per zone deliberately.

Letting every tech pick their own brand. You end up with eight half-used products, no safety data sheet file that matches the shelf, and no volume pricing on anything.

How to standardize cleaning chemicals across a facility

The goal is one degreaser, one all-purpose cleaner and one solvent aerosol, each in the right format for its zone.

1. Walk the site by zone. Bays, parts area, warehouse floor, offices, restrooms, vehicle cabs. Note which zones have petroleum soil and which do not.
2. Assign one product per zone type. Water-based bulk liquid for bays and floors, trigger spray case for carts and counters, solvent aerosol for electrical and precision work.
3. Set the container size to usage. A 5 gal pail where a crew cleans daily; 1 gal where one person refills a sprayer weekly.
4. Put the MPN on the cart and the shelf label. When the person reordering can read KK05 or DYM 26832 off the label, they reorder the right thing.
5. Reorder by SKU. Save the handles once and reorder from the quick order page by part number. Open a business account for Net-30 terms, and if a multi-site rollout is on the table, send the list for a bulk quote before the first order.

Standardizing also fixes the safety data sheet problem: three products means three sheets on file, not fifteen.

Our picks

Oil Eater OILEATERP, MPN OILEATERP. A 640 fl oz (5 gal) liquid listed with no hazardous material flag, which makes it the easy default for a shop that needs floor-scale degreasing shipped without ground-only restrictions. Lemon scent per the listing, so plan it for bays rather than offices.

Krud Kutter KK05, MPN KK05. Also 640 fl oz (5 gal) liquid, unscented, no hazmat flag. The unscented profile makes it the better choice where the same pail will cover both the shop floor and the mixed-surface areas around it.

Simple Green 19005, MPN 19005. A 640 fl oz (5 gal) unscented liquid stocked in our multipurpose cleaners range. For facilities that want one bulk product covering the middle ground between degreaser and general cleaner, this is the one to trial first. The 320 fl oz (2.5 gal) Simple Green 13225 is the same brand in a smaller bulk size for lower-volume sites.

Spray Nine DYM 26832, MPN DYM 26832. A case of twelve 32 oz trigger sprays, citrus scent, no hazmat flag. One SKU equips every cart and bench in a mid-size shop with a ready-to-use heavy-duty cleaner.

CRC 05050PS, MPN 05050PS. A 20 oz unscented spray that carries the ground-only hazardous material note on the listing. This is the solvent spot product to keep on the shelf for work that water-based cleaners cannot do, bought in small quantity and reordered early because of the shipping restriction.

Browse the full Degreasers collection, or start from Cleaning Chemicals to compare all 90-plus active products side by side.