6 Best Baby Bottles, According to More Than 1,100 Parents

Dr. Brown’s Options+ Baby Bottles are a particular favorite among babies, parents and doctors. (It's no surprise they won Best Baby Bottle in the What to Expect Feeding Awards and What to Expect Mom Must-Have Awards.) Every element of the bottle was thoughtfully designed for babies and improving digestion. 

The bottle has a special internal vent system that’s designed to help preserve milk nutrients and aid in smooth digestion for your baby. And parents say it really works, with many saying they notice a significant decrease in gas, burping and spit up after switching to Dr. Brown’s bottles. The nipple design on Dr. Brown’s bottles also slows the flow of milk, which can help prevent spit-up, burps and gas. 

Olivia DeLong, What to Expect’s Senior Editor, adds how well Dr. Brown’s bottles help with acid reflux, which her daughter dealt with as a baby. 

“We tried every single type of bottle and kept coming back to Dr. Brown’s because she took to those the best,” Olivia says. “They seemed to be the ones that minimized her reflux the most and were easy to use.” Another thing Olivia likes about Dr. Brown’s bottles was how easy it was to up the nipple size, because the brand is available pretty much everywhere. 

Leah, Rocketto, What to Expect's Associate Commerce Director, had a similar experience. She also appreciated that the bottle's tall, narrow shape makes them incredibly easy to store on a shelf or stack nicely in a bag or bin. 

“Dr. Brown’s bottles were our go-to when we’d leave the house because of how easily they fit into a bag or suitcase without taking up too much real estate,” she says. The slim bottle shape is also very easy for babies to hold, too. We used these bottles with my older son, and he was able to self-feed with Dr. Brown’s bottles much earlier than he could with other brands.

The only complaint parents tend to have, including Leah, is how many parts there are to clean. While some bottles on this list have just three parts, Dr. Brown’s has five. All parts, however, are top-rack dishwasher and sterilizer safe to make for easier cleaning. And in my experience, the bottle works perfectly fine without the tubing system, so you don’t have to use it if you find it doesn’t make a difference for your baby or she outgrows the need for it.

I alternated between a few different bottles with my two children, but found myself reaching for Philips Avent bottles most often: In part because my sons took to them very well. Both of my breastfed sons had no issues transitioning back and forth between this bottle and the breast. The wide, flat nipple releases milk only when your baby actively sucks, mimicking the way he nurses. Philips Avent also offers more nipple flow rates than most other brands, which can give you more options to find the perfect fit for the stage your baby is currently at.

The design of this bottle also scores points for being well suited for babies with colic or gas. It’s gently curved, a feature Dr. Resnick recommends to reduce how much air baby swallows while drinking, but not dramatically so, which means the bottle isn’t overly bulky. When your baby is older, the shape allows for little hands to easily hold their own bottle.

Another reason Philips Avent became my go-to: They’re so much easier to clean and use than a lot of other brands. The glass is heat- and shock-resistant, so bottles can be safely warmed or sterilized in the microwave and put in the dishwasher. And while plastic bottles tend to get a little milky-looking after many months of use, parents say they’ve been able to use Philips Avent glass bottles for years with different babies by purchasing new nipples. So while they’re a little more expensive than their plastic counterparts, you might get long-term use out of them.

One final consideration with glass bottles is that some day care centers don’t allow them. So if your little one will be going to daycare at some stage, it may be worth having a few plastic bottles on hand (Philips Avent also has an excellent plastic version of the Natural bottle).

It’s common for breastfed babies to resist the bottle at first. And although every child is different and a lot comes down to preference, many parents in the What to Expect community say Nuk Simply Natural bottles are the best bottles for breastfed babies. 

The nipple on this bottle in particular is designed with breastfed babies in mind. It has multiple holes to help the flow of milk feel more like nursing. (There are three, six or nine holes in the nipple depending on which size your baby is using.) It’s soft and flexible with a flat edge, a feature that’s meant to feel more like a mother’s nipple during breastfeeding.

“My daughter wasn’t too picky with bottles, but I found she transitioned from breast to bottle easiest with Nuk bottles,” says Leah Rocketto, What to Expect’s Associate Commerce Director. “With other bottles she took a minute or two to adjust, but with the Nuk she would start sucking instantly.”

Leah also loved that the Nuk bottles were wide for easier cleaning, but not so wide that they took up significant space in the cabinet. She does note, however, that you have to give your baby the bottle with the flat side of the nipple down, otherwise they’ll struggle. 

Nuk Simply Natural bottles also seem to be a good fit for little ones who have colic. They include an anti-colic air vent that many reviewers call out as helpful for reducing colic symptoms. EThe SafeTemp indicator on these bottles, which changes color when milk is too hot, is a nice bonus. They are also a great fit for babies who are already comfortable with Nuk pacifiers.

Some parents do say this bottle doesn’t feel quite as high-end or well-made as some others. But at just over $6, this is also one of the most affordable bottles on our list.

If your little one seems to be suffering from gas or colic, Dr. Resinck says the shape of your bottles might be a contributing factor. “Curved bottles are designed to reduce the swallowing of air and to cut down on gas and fussiness,” he explains. 

Tommee Tippee Advanced Anti-Colic bottles are curved and have a special tube insert that drives air bubbles to the back of the bottle, further reducing gas. The wide-necked design also helps baby maintain a good latch during feedings. And if you're a nervous new parent, you'll also love that the anti-colic tube has a temperature check to let you know if your baby's bottle is too warm for comfort. (It turns pink if things are too hot, a signal you’ll notice no matter how sleep-deprived you are.)

The texture and shape of the nipples are similar to a real nipple, so it's easy to switch from bottle to breast. The brand also has two newborn nipple options — a slow flow and extra slow flow — which makes it easier to find the right one to suit your little one.

The bottle shape is narrower at the bottom and wider at the top for easy handling, allowing the bigger bottles to be shorter (and easier to drink from) compared to comparably sized bottles. The 5- and 9-ounce sizes are great for preparing 4 or 8 ounces of formula, as they give you room to shake up the formula.

This five-bottle set includes three in the 9-ounce size and two that hold 5 ounces, as well as one bottle brush, two nipples, two formula dispensers, a set of removable handles, two pacifiers and a travel bottle warmer.

It’s worth noting that some reviewers say they’ve had leaking issues with these bottles. Other parents say making sure the vent is positioned correctly seems to prevent leaking. 

Moms who exclusively pump have an epic number of breast pump and bottle parts to transfer milk between and clean.The Kiinde System helps streamline this process by letting you pump directly into storage bags that then attach to bottle frames that your baby can drink from.This starter pack includes everything you need to collect pumped milk and feed it to your baby: It comes with 20 pouches, two bottle frames, a breast milk organizer, three different nipples with a storage case for each and two nipple brushes.

Parents in the What to Expect community rave about this system, saying it’s incredibly convenient and helps eliminate a step in the milk-pumping process, since you no longer have to transfer breast milk from whichever container you pumped into back to a bottle.

But in addition to being an innovative system, the Kiinde products themselves are great, parents say. The cleverly designed bottle frames, which hold bags of the pumped milk and can be purchased on their own, have ridges that make it easy for baby to hold. And if your little one doesn’t do well with the Kiinde nipple, you can purchase adaptors to use your preferred brand instead.

Kiinde’s storage bags are pre-sterilized, stand up straight (other breast milk storage bags typically do not, which can make storing and using them frustrating) and have sturdy twist-top caps. While bottles with disposable liners are less environmentally friendly than other options on the market, Kiinde bags are recyclable.

The biggest downside with this system is that you need to continuously purchase more bags for as long as your baby is bottle-fed, which can be expensive. Some parents say they make their supply of storage bags last longer by pumping directly into a plastic baby bottle occasionally, such as when they plan to feed the pumped milk to their baby immediately.

Comotomo's unique bottle design is easy for baby to adjust to and What to Expect parents love how easy these are to clean. The wide mouth and collapsible sides mean you don't need a special brush to de-gunk these bottles by hand, and all parts are microwave-, dishwasher- and sterilizer-safe, too.

Alexandra Bisonó, Senior Art Director at What to Expect, tried several bottles with her daughter, who would spit up at every feeding. Eventually, they tried Comotomo which limited spit up and came with a few other features Alezandra loved. 

“We liked that Comotomo’s nipple shape is most similar to the breast and the fact that they’re all silicone,” Alexandra says. 

Since the silicone is squishy and soft, older babies like holding and squeezing these bottles during feedings, which can keep them engaged in the matter at hand. Alexandra says her daughter “loved holding that bottle and it seemed easy because of the texture since they were soft and easy to squeeze.” You’ll also appreciate the vents at the top of the nipples to release air outside instead of going into baby’s belly. The bottles themselves are also easy to put together and take apart, so you're spending less time making baby's bottle.

I didn’t discover Comotomo bottles until I had my second baby, and he used them often and loved touching the bottle base — the soft texture actually seemed to calm him when he was fussy. And like many parents in our community, I appreciated that they have just three large parts and are extremely easy to clean. For this reason, we used Comotomo bottles more and more often as my son got older; since he was drinking less milk, I found it easier to just clean the same bottle by hand before each feeding rather than clean multiple bottles at the end of the day.

This set comes with two 5-ounce bottles. At $14 each, they are definitely on the pricier side for baby bottles. But many parents report that since they’re so easy to clean, you actually need fewer of them, especially as your baby gets older and drinks less milk throughout the day.

The one downside of Comotomo bottles, in my opinion, is that they aren’t the easiest baby bottles to store. The roly-poly design, while lovely to touch, takes up an annoying amount of space in kitchen cabinets. I found them particularly frustrating to travel with because they don’t stack well against each other in a bag. So while they’re an excellent daily baby bottle, they may not be the best choice if you have limited kitchen storage or need to travel with your baby often.