PAPER towels have gotten pricier over the years, but there are still affordable options to help keep your home tidy and your hands dry.

When you're at the store, you'll often need to do the math to find out what gives you the best value.

Some brands sell two rolls and say they're the same amount as four rolls.

But another brand is advertising one roll that actually gives you the same quantity of three rolls.

On top of that, it doesn't matter how much you get if they aren't absorbent or if they constantly rip.

To help, The U.S. Sun's latest installment of our Bang for your Buck series tested four brands of paper towels.

We compared Bounty, Up and Up from Target, Paper Bird from Shop Rite, and the Dollar Tree brand.

In order to figure out which one is worth the money, we gave each one a score from one to 10 for value, size, and absorbency.

We also pulled on each towel after they got wet to test if they ripped easily.

Below are the results from worst to best.

The Sun contacted all the brands for comment.

As always, keep in mind that prices and availability vary between stores.

The Up & Up brand available at Target was the biggest and most expensive roll from the whole bunch.

The rolls were drastically bigger than the other brands, offering 132.5 square feet of paper towels in total.

These felt thick and like they had a lot of texture, but they did rip during the strength test.

Paying $4.99 for a generic brand definitely feels like a bit much, even for the amount you get.

The Paper Bird towels were also pretty expensive for a generic brand coming in at $4.19 at Shop Rite.

However, there was a lot less in this pack with only 99.15 square feet of towels.

These felt and looked almost identical to the Target paper towels, but they were a lot more absorbent and didn't rip when we pulled them.

Dollar Tree was the only store that didn't sell two packs, so we had to buy a single roll.

This was $1.25 and it only had 52.96 square feet, making it about half as big as the other rolls.

It felt softer than the other ones and the individual towels were much bigger as well.

When it came time to dunk it in the water it was actually super absorbent and it stayed intact.

It was honestly very surprising to me that Bounty was the cheapest two-pack at just $3.19 at Target.

The roll was also pretty soft and the first sheet tore when I was getting the roll started.

They looked really thin, but they absorbed the most water and they did it quickly.

At 111 square feet, this offered the best price and performance of the other options.

Besides the Dollar Tree paper towels, Bounty was the most affordable option.

It definitely absorbed the most water, meaning you'd be able to use less.

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