Nothing takes the wind out of your sails like that first paint scratch on a new car. The best car scratch removers can take care of many of those little blemishes with a little know-how and elbow grease rather than a pricey trip to the auto body shop.
We sought out the best car scratch removers and tested them while trying to brighten up a range of vehicular blemishes. The kits here can get rid of blemishes, from taking away that scratch left by your jeans button to that “kiss” from the other car in your garage that left a little paint behind or the bumper-tap exchange that someone left as a souvenir when you parallel parked overnight on a city street.
These scratch removers easily buff out the most common stuff. You won’t be able to erase the to-the-metal gouges, but this list has some excellent options for minor issues. If you’re eager to get to it, you’ll find our helpful comparison chart, buyer’s guide, and frequently asked questions at the end of the guide.
Lastly, a professional detailing shop will always nail this better than you can. They have speed-tunable buffers with different grits of sponges and sanding tools that a chamois, a bottle of goop, and your hand cannot simulate. So the “miracle” we’re promising here is a minor one — like a third-tier palm reading. But if that’s what you’re looking for, read on.
The Best Car Scratch Removers of 2024
- Best Overall Car Scratch Remover: Meguiar’s Scratch Eraser Kit
- Best Bargain Car Scratch Remover: Shine Armor Revive Scratch Repair
- Best Car Scratch Remover for Simulating the Pros: 3M Scratch Removal System
- Best for Hand Buffing: Formula 1 Scratch Out
Meguiar’s Scratch Eraser Kit
Specs
- Type Drill attachment kit
- Grit Fine
- Safe For All glossy paint, clear coats
- Price $30
Pros
- Easy to use with any household drill
- Quick and straightforward
- Got to scratches hand-only buffing can’t
Cons
- Doesn’t resolve deeper scratches in the clearcoat and beyond
Shine Armor Revive Scratch Repair
Specs
- Type Formula
- Grit N/A
- Safe For All glossy paint, clear coats
- Price $8
Pros
- Easy to use with a microfiber towel
- Application is simple
- Handled swirl marks and fingernail scratches like a champ
Cons
- Can’t get to deeper scratches
- Does not come with drill attachment
3M Scratch Removal System
Specs
- Type Drill attachment kit
- Grit 3,000
- Safe for All glossy paint, clear coats
- Price $30
Pros
- Definitely removed paint from door dings
- Best system for deeper scratches in the clear coat
- Lessened scratches into the car’s base coat
- Not as much work as manual rubbing
Cons
- Takes patience to yield great results
- Both polishing compounds come in tiny sleeves that cannot be resealed
Formula 1 Scratch Out
Specs
- Type Formula
- Grit N/A
- Safe For All glossy paint, clear coats
- Price $12
Pros
- Easy to use with a microfiber towel
- Application is simple
- Handled swirl marks, and even some deeper scars well
Cons
- Low viscosity can make it harder to apply
- Temperature sensitive
Carfidant Scratch and Swirl Remover
Specs
- Type Formula
- Grit N/A
- Safe For All glossy paint, clear coat
- Price $37
Pros
- Works on very minor scratches
- Application is simple
Cons
- Not as effective as alternatives
Car Scratch Removers Comparison Table
| Car Scratch Remover | Price | Type | Grit | Safe For |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Meguiar’s Scratch Eraser Kit | $30 | Drill attachment kit | Fine | All glossy paint, clear coats |
| Shine Armor Revive Scratch Repair | $8 | Formula | N/A | All glossy paint, clear coats |
| 3M Scratch Removal System | $30 | Drill attachment kit | 3,000 | All glossy paint, clear coats |
| Formula 1 Scratch Out | $12 | Formula | N/A | All glossy paint, clear coats |
| Carfidant Scratch and Swirl Remover | $37 | Formula | N/A | All glossy paint, clear coat |
How We Tested Scratch Remover Kits
Lead tester Michael Frank has plenty of old and not-so-old cars where the paint is toast. His love of old rides puts him squarely in the camp of believing that just about any paint job can be made better and that polishers really can be very effective at restoring the epidermal quality of just about anything you drive.
That all mattered for testing, too, because it meant he had a lot of varied paint to buff, from an old Honda Gold Wing from the 1970s to a Volvo P1800, to modern cars with metallic paint and plastic bumpers. A good polisher shouldn’t “care” if it’s painted plastic or painted metal, but modern cars and motorcycles tend to have more severely creased sheet metal and sharp angles can be hazardous to polish because you have to be careful with how much pressure you apply.
We tested not just for how easy these polishers were to use, how quickly they worked, or how many steps were involved, but also for ease of use. How hard might it be to over-polish and rip right through the clearcoat, pigment, and bare metal? Fortunately, the answer is they were all fairly user-friendly.
Bottom line, we were shocked at how effective each was, period. You can take some really tired paint and make it sparkle with almost zero work, which makes grabbing a bottle of this stuff and getting to work a no-brainer.
Buyer’s Guide: How to Choose a Car Scratch Remover
Ease is somewhat related to effectiveness on these. The hand-applied products can be decent at removing hairline blemishes and spiral marks left by car-wash brushes, fingernails, door rubs, and other blemishes. If all you have are a few tiny key scratches around a lock, these are your go-tos.
If you’re trying to go deeper to repair scratches caused by rock strikes in your bumper or hood that (importantly) didn’t penetrate to the car’s plastic or metal — but you can actually feel when you glide a finger over the surface — you want to go with a drill-buffer.
We found them more effective at blending away the bulk of these kinds of scrapes. It’s also less fatiguing to use them because you’re letting the drill do the work, not your hands rubbing away for several minutes at a pass.
Kinds of Scratch Removers
We tested two types of car scratch removers. There are rub-on ones you apply by hand and either let dry to a haze or ones that use a buffer that you attach to a cordless drill. But you can go farther.
Several companies sell orbital polishers that offer two advantages: 1. The pad’s surface area tends to be larger. 2. The speed control of the orbital can be set separately, so you’re not trying to modulate it the way you do with the trigger of a cordless drill. Also, the angle of the design allows easier use when applying pressure to doors, roofs, and car hoods.
If you’re really concerned with your car’s finish, that may be something you want to consider. Orbital polishers start at around $40, so they aren’t insanely expensive.
If you bought one, you could still use one of the polisher fluids we evaluated, such as the Turtle Wax Scratch Repair and Renew, which we found worked pretty well with a drill-based polishing pad.
Getting back to what we tested, even the pads that we used with a cordless drill were pretty impressively effective. None more so than the 3M system where you very lightly sanded the affected area and then used the two solutions and pads in the kit.
This hints at what more serious processes look like if you go the route of buying an orbital buffer, etc. It also tells us that you maybe don’t have to go all in unless you’re as OCD about having a really shiny car as we’ve now become.
How to Use Car Scratch Removers
No Sun, No Heat
Where you polish your car’s battered paint matters. Never take on this job in direct sunlight, or even on a car in the shade with hot paint. It changes the chemistry of the polishing compound so it dries too quickly and turns what should be a wet-sanding sort of process into a dry one — and that can vaporize your car’s clear coat.
(Thank us later: We tried polishing one car in direct sunlight just to see what would happen and it’s not only too abrasive, but the goop gets incredibly tough to move around, too.)
What They Don’t Do
Polishers essentially sand away some of the clear coat and a bit of paint pigment below that, and then polish it. After sanding the scratch nice and level, you restore the remaining paint with a polishing chemical in the agent you’re applying.
That said, we didn’t find that there was some miracle cure in a bottle and buffer that would restore rock strikes that went right down to bumper plastic or bare metal. For that, you’ll still want to seek the help of a professional.
Wash First
The other crucial detail here is that you want to work on a clean, dry surface unless the product instructs otherwise (as with the 3M, where you use the sandpaper on slightly wet-down paint). If a car is very dirty or the paint is especially haggard, you might want to use a clay bar on the car’s paint after it’s been washed and dried to pull out contaminants before trying to remove scratches.
Choose Your Polisher
Some hand-applied scratch removers worked really well for only micro swirls. But there was just no substitute for using the two buffers we tried that are meant for use with a cordless drill. That method removed scuffs and paint left by folks who “park by feel” in parking lots and curbside.
As long as a scratch wasn’t deep into the car’s pigment coat, we could easily clean up mars and blemishes that we feared only a professional detailer could fix.
Go S-l-o-w-l-y
Every polisher we tested worked better with light up and down, side-to-side passes using very light pressure, and then pausing to review the work and wiping away the polisher residue to check our progress. The more light passes we made, the more the area improved. And it was almost addictive to walk the perimeter of every car we were experimenting on to see which scratches we could remove and how much shine we could extract.
Yes, it was actually a lot of fun! All the cars benefited from removing the worst scar tissue and restoring some of their faded luster.
Buy What You Need
Does everyone need to go whole hog and get a buffer? Not really. If your vehicle is relatively new and you just have a few fingernail scratches, it’s easy enough to buy the cheapest polishing compound on our list and try it first. We were pretty amazed at how effective some of these were and how quickly they worked.
But if you have that one spot with a big scuff or paint from another car on the edge of a door, you shouldn’t hesitate to buy a system like 3M’s. We don’t love how the buffer and polisher are packaged, but deeper scratches require a bit more surgery to remove, and it was well worth finding out.
Plus, you can buy their fluids if you have a bigger job to tackle and then you’d have both the buffer and polisher sponges that come with that kit.
FAQ
The most effective way to remove light scratches and dings is with a drill-mounted orbital polisher and a good polisher fluid. We’re fans of the 3M Scratch Removal System and Meguiar’s Scratch Eraser Kit because they are both all-in-one kits that worked extremely well in testing.
They absolutely do, with the caveat that they won’t replace paint that isn’t there anymore. So, scratches in the clear coat and even slightly into the color coat can be reduced, even if they aren’t quite totally repairable.
Ensure you only wash and dry your car with clean microfiber towels and chamois. Ideally, you want to hose off any visible grit first and work downward from the top of the car when you’re first cleaning. This prevents inadvertently spreading the road grime that clings to your car’s sills and fenders and working that into the paint.
Try to knock off the bulk of dirt and grime with a high-pressure hose — not by hand — so you know that the paint is as dirt-free as possible. And, never wax a car in the sun.
Well, you won’t remove any scratch that is through the pigment layer or into the primer. That’s a job for a detail or body shop that will touch-up paint that spot. Even then, blending that perfectly is nearly impossible. But as we’ve said throughout, using a drill-based polisher — especially our 3M choice with a light sanding first — can do wonders for minor scratches that just slightly penetrate the color layer.
