Period underwear, cups and pads: what each is actually good at

These three get argued about as though one has to win. They suit different days, different bodies and different circumstances, and most people who have settled the question use more than one. What follows is what each is genuinely good at, including where the reusable options are less convenient than their marketing suggests.

Capacity, in terms that compare

Product marketing uses its own vocabulary — “light,” “heavy,” “three tampons' worth” — and none of it is standardised across brands, which we went into in what to know about period underwear.

Roughly, and treat these as orientation rather than specification: a regular tampon or pad holds around 5ml. Most period underwear holds somewhere between 10 and 30ml depending on the style. A menstrual cup typically holds 20 to 30ml, and larger sizes more. So a cup generally holds the most, underwear varies enormously by design, and disposables hold the least individually but are changed more often.

Period underwear: the low-effort option

Good at: overnight, light and medium days, backup alongside a cup or tampon, and anyone who does not want anything internal. There is nothing to learn and nothing to insert.

Less good at: changing away from home, which requires a complete change of underwear and somewhere to put the used pair. Heavy days, unless you buy a style specifically designed for them. And they are bulkier than the photography suggests, which matters under close-fitting clothes.

The catch nobody mentions: care decides how long they work. The absorbent layer is fabric technology, and fabric softener coats it and stops it absorbing — permanently. That single mistake ends more pairs early than wear does.

Menstrual cups: the steepest learning curve and the biggest payoff

Good at: heavy flow, long days where you cannot change, swimming, and cost over time — one cup lasts years, which makes it by a distance the cheapest option.

Less good at: the first few cycles. Insertion, the seal and removal all take genuine practice, and it is normal for it to leak while you are learning. People give up in the first cycle and conclude it does not work for them, when what happened is that it has a real learning curve.

Also genuinely awkward in a shared or public bathroom, where emptying and rinsing is not private. And it requires sterilising between cycles.

Worth knowing: size is not about age or whether you have had children alone — cervix height matters and varies through the cycle. Getting a cup that does not fit and concluding cups do not work is the most common failure in the category.

Pads and tampons: convenience, at a running cost

Good at: being available everywhere, needing no thought, and being easy to change anywhere. For travel, unpredictable days and anyone who does not want to manage a system, they remain the practical answer.

Less good at: cost over a lifetime, which is substantial, and waste. And tampons specifically should not be worn longer than the packet says, which is a real constraint on long days.

What most people actually end up doing

Combining. A cup on heavy days with period underwear as backup; underwear alone overnight; disposables kept for travel and days out. The choice is not a permanent allegiance and treating it as one is why the arguments about it go nowhere.

If cost is the deciding factor, the cup wins over any multi-year horizon and it is not close. If effort is the deciding factor, period underwear wins. If flexibility is, keep disposables in the bag whatever else you use.

One thing to check whichever way you go: PFAS. It has been found in some reusable period products, it is not detectable without laboratory testing, and “PFAS-free” printed on a box is an unregulated claim — the only meaningful answer is a third-party test report, which is the same pattern as every other unregulated term in which labels actually mean something.