Updated September 28, 2026

Repair or Replace Your Toilet? A Plumber-Grade Checklist

Usually a repair

• Running after it fills: almost always a worn flapper or a fill valve. Cheap parts, quick fix.
• Weak flush on a newer toilet: often a partial clog, a chain with too much slack, or a low water level in the tank.
• Handle that sticks: a handle or chain adjustment.
• One-time clog: a plunger, not a new toilet.

Time to replace

• Any crack in the porcelain, even a hairline. Cracks only grow, and a tank or bowl that lets go floods the bathroom and anything below it.
• It was installed before 1994. It uses 3.5–5 gallons a flush vs 1.28 for a WaterSense toilet. See what that costs with our old toilet calculator.
• It clogs over and over. Some early low-flow toilets just don't flush well. A modern toilet with a high MaP score fixes the problem at the source.
• You've replaced parts and it still runs or leaks. When the repairs keep coming, the toilet is telling you something.
• Water around the base. Usually a failed wax seal, sometimes a cracked flange or a crack in the bowl. Either way the toilet has to come up, which is the moment to decide if it's worth putting back.

Don't ignore these

A toilet that rocks

Every wobble flexes the wax seal. Eventually it stops sealing, and the leak goes into your subfloor, not onto your floor. Rocking needs shims and often a new seal now, not later.

Stains or soft spots on the floor or ceiling below

That's water that has already gotten past the seal. Toilet failures average about $5,600 per insurance claim after the deductible, according to an industry study of closed claims. A leak you can see is the cheap stage.

Is it old? How to tell

Lift the tank lid. Most toilets have a date stamped inside the tank, and many list the gallons per flush near the hinge on the bowl. Anything over 1.6 gpf, or dated before 1994, is an old toilet.