WaterHog vs Gorilla Grip

These two names get cross-shopped constantly and they are not really competing products. WaterHog is a commercial entrance-matting specification sold in domestic sizes. Gorilla Grip is a consumer brand with a catalog. One of them is a mat you buy once; the other is a mat you buy two of and put through the wash. Almost every disagreement about which is better is really a disagreement about which of those two things somebody wants.

This page compares them on published specifications only. We have not tested either brand, we do not own the mats, and we say so at the bottom of every page on this site. What follows is what each maker states, what the numbers mean when you convert them into the same units, and where both of them go quiet.

What we compared them on

Two different kinds of company

WaterHog is the mat you have already walked on in an office lobby without noticing. The commercial Classic line publishes a 24 ounce per square yard solution-dyed PET face made from at least 90 percent recycled plastic, a 78-mil SBR rubber backing containing 20 percent post-consumer recycled rubber, three-eighths of an inch of total thickness, a water-dam border rated to hold up to 1.5 gallons of water per square yard, and slip-resistance certification from the National Floor Safety Institute. It is sold in 58 standard sizes up to six feet by twenty. The domestic version sitting on the shelf next to Gorilla Grip is that construction in house-sized cuts.

Gorilla Grip is a consumer brand that sells several different mats under one name, and this is the thing that makes the comparison confusing. Its woven indoor mat, its chenille SoakSTOPPER and its WeatherMAX outdoor mat are three genuinely different products with three different specifications. People say Gorilla Grip and mean whichever of those three they own. When somebody tells you Gorilla Grip is not as absorbent as WaterHog, the first question is which Gorilla Grip.

The brands also publish differently. WaterHog states materials, weights and manufacturing origin, and states them the same way whether you are buying one mat or a lobby's worth. Gorilla Grip publishes strong specifics on some products and nothing at all on others - a 0.28-inch profile and a six-cup capacity on the woven mat, a 0.3-inch thickness on the WeatherMAX, and no thickness whatsoever on the chenille SoakSTOPPER that is arguably its best-known product.

Published specifications, side by side

The number that makes this comparison awkward

Both brands quantify capacity and neither of them uses the same unit, which is convenient for everybody except the buyer. WaterHog's domestic listing states that the ridged design and rubber border trap up to one gallon of water per square yard. Gorilla Grip's woven indoor mat states that it holds up to six cups of water, on a mat that measures 29 by 17 inches.

Put them in the same unit. A 29 by 17 inch mat is 493 square inches; a square yard is 1,296 square inches, so the mat is about 0.38 of a square yard. Six cups spread over 0.38 square yards is 15.8 cups per square yard, and there are 16 cups in a gallon. That is 0.99 gallons per square yard - within a rounding error of the figure WaterHog publishes for the domestic mat, and about two thirds of the 1.5 gallons per square yard the commercial Classic line claims.

Where the WaterHog premium is genuinely worth paying

The money buys three things, and all three are real. The first is outdoor tolerance. A WaterHog is designed to sit outside in weather and be hosed down, and the recycled-PET face on an SBR rubber backing is a construction built for that duty cycle. Both Gorilla Grip mats that hold water are stated by the maker to be indoor only. That is not a small caveat - the most valuable mat position in most houses is the one exposed to weather.

The second is crush resistance. Bi-level construction means raised ridges carry the walking surface while grit falls into the channels below, and WaterHog states the design resists crushing. That geometry is why the mat still works in year three: a mat that has matted flat has lost the space its trapped dirt used to live in, and a flat mat holds dirt on the surface where your socks find it. Face-fiber weight is the number that underwrites it - 24 ounces per square yard is a specification, not a claim.

The third is that everything is stated. Thickness, fiber weight, backing composition, recycled content, country of manufacture, and a slip-resistance certification from a named body. In a category where most listings publish a photograph and an adjective, being able to check what you are buying against a spec sheet is worth something on its own - which is the whole argument of our door clearance guide.

• Outside a front door, exposed to rain and sun. WaterHog is built for it; the absorbent Gorilla Grip mats are stated indoor-only.
• A high-traffic entry with several people using it daily. Bi-level construction and a 24 oz face are what keep it from matting flat.
• You would rather hose a mat than wash one. WaterHog's care instruction is shake, scrub, rinse and air dry - no laundry room involved.
• You want to buy once. This is a commercial specification in a domestic size, and it is priced accordingly.

Where Gorilla Grip wins outright

Washing. That is the headline, and it is not a small one. A mat stops working when it is full, and the cleaning method that people actually perform is the one that decides whether a mat gets cleaned at all. WaterHog is not machine washable; its published care routine is shake, vacuum, scrub, hose and air dry, which is an outdoor job on a dry day. Both absorbent Gorilla Grip mats go in a domestic washing machine, which means they get cleaned in February as easily as in July.

Buying two is the second win, and it follows directly from the first. Every washable mat spends part of its life in the laundry, and a household with exactly one mat is a household that eventually stops washing it because the doorway would be bare. At Gorilla Grip prices you can own one at the door and one in reserve for less than a single WaterHog, and a rotated pair of cheap mats outperforms one expensive mat that is permanently saturated. We make that argument at length in washable vs hoseable mats.

The third win is clearance certainty. The woven mat's 0.28 inches and the WeatherMAX's 0.3 inches both clear the tight half-inch end of a standard door undercut. WaterHog's three-eighths of an inch clears a three-quarter-inch gap comfortably and can catch on a half-inch one, which for an inward-opening interior door is the difference between a mat and a returned mat. On a front door that opens outward, none of this matters. On the door between a mudroom and a hallway, it decides the purchase.

• The mat has to fit under an inward-opening interior door. The woven mat at 0.28 in and the WeatherMAX at 0.3 in both clear the tight end; the WaterHog may not.
• You want to launder the mat rather than hose it. Only the Gorilla Grip mats go in a machine.
• A dog comes home wet. The SoakSTOPPER's chenille pile holds more per stride than any flat woven face, WaterHog's included - see best absorbent chenille mats.
• You need length. A 70 to 72 inch runner in either Gorilla Grip line buys walk-off distance, and walk-off distance is what actually determines how much soil gets stopped.

The comparison nobody sets up correctly

Most versions of this question pit one WaterHog against one Gorilla Grip, pick a winner and stop. That framing is the mistake, because these mats occupy different stages of the same entry. The commercial matting industry does not ask which mat; it asks how many feet of walk-off, in what order, and it runs a scraper outside and a wiper inside as a matter of course. The household version is the same idea at a smaller scale, and we set it out in layered entryway defense.

Read that way, the honest answer for a lot of households is one of each. A WaterHog or a WeatherMAX outside doing the scraping and the shedding, and a washable Gorilla Grip immediately inside doing the absorbing. The two mats are not rivals in that arrangement; they are stages. Buying two mats that each do one job well is the single highest-value change most entries can make, and it usually costs less than buying one mat that is supposed to do both.

Where both brands go quiet

Neither company publishes everything, and it is worth being specific about the gaps rather than pretending the spec sheets are complete.

• No test method behind either capacity figure. A gallon per square yard and six cups per mat are both stated without a stated procedure, so they are claims rather than measurements.
• Gorilla Grip publishes no thickness for the SoakSTOPPER, which is the mat most people mean when they name the brand, and the one most likely to be bought for a door swing.
• Neither brand publishes a capacity figure for its chenille or its rubber-backed mats. The only water numbers on this page belong to the WaterHog and the Gorilla Grip woven mat.
• Neither publishes a service life. Durability is the entire premium argument for WaterHog and there is no published figure behind it - only the construction detail, which is real but is not a warranty.
• Country of manufacture is stated by one brand only. WaterHog says made in the USA; Gorilla Grip says US designed, which is a different claim.

Choose this way

• One mat, outside, weather-exposed - WaterHog, or the WeatherMAX if budget is the binding constraint.
• One mat, inside, tight door gap - the Gorilla Grip woven mat at a published 0.28 inches.
• One mat, inside, past the swing, wet dog - the SoakSTOPPER, in the longest size the hallway takes.
• Two mats, which is what we would actually do - a hoseable mat outside and a washable one immediately inside.
• You want the spec sheet more than the saving - WaterHog, and the commercial Classic line if you can buy it in the size you need.