A reliable, fast, comfortable three-hole punch makes organizing all your paperwork in binders a breeze. And who doesn’t need to be more organized? Binders are easy to label, easy to flip through, and inexpensive. Below, find our favorite three-hole punches for a range of preferences—and get those stacks of paper off your floor!
1. Swingline Low Force Three-Hole Punch
This unobtrusive gadget can powerfully punch up to 20 sheets at a time without requiring you to put your whole body into it. In fact, the soft grip in the center makes it downright pleasurable to punch. It has a good weight and looks sleek on a desk, and holes in the base provide windows into the chip tray so you can easily tell when it needs to be emptied. The one downside of this punch is the alignment guide, which is not adjustable and too low to easily use for big stacks of paper. If 20 sheets at a time isn’t enough, Swingline also makes a punch with a 45-sheet capacity.
2. Officemate Medium Duty Three-Hole Punch
Perhaps you remember the industrial-looking hole punches of yore from your time in school. This medium-duty punch from Officemate looks the most like those old-fashioned models, but it doesn’t need any frills to prove itself. The long handle isn’t as compact as other models but provides the leverage needed for easy punching. It can bite through 30 sheets at a time and works well on heavy paper. Also notable is the adjustable paper guide, which can extend to align sheets up to 17 inches long.
3. WorkLion Three-Ring Hole Punch
Unlike our other picks, WorkLion’s three-hole punch can slip inside a three-ring binder to punch on the go. In exchange for its sleek profile, the tool had to forgo springs. Simply press—hard—on the top of the punch strip to cut through up to five sheets of paper at a time.
4. Bostitch Office HP12 Three-Hole Punch
The Bostitch three-hole punch hits a sweet spot between portability and load capacity. Its compact size is good for small desks or for sticking in a bag, but it can still punch through 12 sheets of paper at a time without trouble. The chip catcher prevents the nuisance of small paper punch-outs flying everywhere.
5. Eagle Desktop Three-Hole Punch
The holes made by this Eagle model are reliably clean thanks to sharp stainless steel punch heads. It’s a low-force model, so cutting through 20 sheets of paper at once is surprisingly easy. A nonskid rubber base covers the whole bottom so it will sit firmly on your desk. The opening for paper is relatively narrow, so there’s little chance that you’ll put more sheets in than the punch can handle. Finally, the alignment edge is well proportioned so your sheets will be perfectly aligned every time.