Do Zorpads Work? What the Shark Tank Pads Actually Do

By Paul G.
Published: September 16, 2026

If you saw Zorpads on Shark Tank or ran into them on Amazon, the question is pretty simple. Do they actually work, or is it a slick pitch on a small piece of fabric?

Short version: they work, and the science behind them is real. But there's a limit built into how they work, and it's worth understanding before you buy a pack.

What Zorpads Actually Are

They're small adhesive squares you stick inside your shoe. The material doing the work is activated carbon cloth.

Activated carbon is full of microscopic pores. Odor molecules drift into those pores and get held there. It's the same idea as the carbon filter in a water pitcher or a fish tank, just built flat so it fits under your foot.

The part that makes theirs different: the cloth is made from viscose rayon and it's carbon all the way through, rather than a regular fabric with carbon coated onto it. That means more of the material is actually doing the absorbing. The company says one pad has more odor-grabbing surface area than a tennis court, which sounds absurd until you understand that carbon's surface area is measured inside all those pores, not across the face of the pad.

The underlying material came out of work NASA did on activated carbon cloth for air filtering. That's not a marketing stretch. NASA has a page about it.

The pad itself is layered. A porous face, a carbon layer, a moisture-wicking liner, another carbon layer, then the adhesive that holds it to the insole. Made in the USA.

Do Zorpads Work?

For what they're built to do, yes.

Stick one in a shoe that smells, come back the next day, and the shoe smells better. People report exactly that, and some of them use them in places that have nothing to do with feet, like under a trash can lid. Carbon doesn't care what the smell came from.

I'm not going to pretend they don't work. They do. That's a real material doing a real job.

The thing to be clear about is which job.

How Long Do Zorpads Last?

This is the question people ask most, and it's the one that explains everything else.

Carbon has a fixed amount of pore space. Odor molecules go in and stay in. When the pores are full, the pad stops pulling anything else in. It doesn't break, it doesn't wear out, it just runs out of room.

That's why they're sold in multi-packs and why the company gives a replacement window rather than saying "lasts forever." A pad is a consumable with a capacity, not a device with a lifespan.

How fast you use that capacity up depends entirely on how much odor is going into it. Heavy sweat, daily wear and hot weather fill a pad faster than occasional use.

Absorbing and Stopping Are Two Different Jobs

A carbon pad is a rain barrel. It catches what falls. It doesn't stop the rain.

Here's what I mean. Your shoe doesn't make the smell. Your skin does. Sweat comes out, bacteria on your skin break it down, and the byproducts are what you're smelling. The shoe is just the dark, warm, damp place where all of it collects.

So when you put a carbon pad in a shoe, you're catching the odor after it's already been made. Tomorrow morning your feet go back in and make more. The pad catches that too, until it can't.

That's not a knock on the product. It's doing exactly what an absorber is supposed to do. But if you only ever absorb, you're signing up to keep buying pads for as long as you have feet.

Worth saying plainly: the same logic applies to every absorber in this category. I went through it in more detail when I wrote about insoles and what they can and can't do. Pads, inserts, baking soda and charcoal bags are all doing the same thing from different shapes.

What Happened to Zorpads After Shark Tank?

People search this a lot, so here's what's actually checkable.

They appeared on Shark Tank, the company was started by founders with an aerospace engineering background, and they're still selling today on their own site and through Amazon. The product is still made in the USA.

If you're asking because you want to know whether it's a dead post-TV brand that'll disappear before your replacements arrive, it isn't. It's a going concern.

So What Should You Actually Do?

Depends on the problem you have.

If one pair of shoes got funky and you want them usable again, an absorber is a reasonable choice. Pads, baking soda overnight, or a charcoal bag will all pull the existing smell down. I wrote up the fastest ways to get the stink out of shoes if that's where you are tonight.

If your shoes smell again every few days no matter what you do, absorbing is the wrong tool. You're emptying the barrel while the rain keeps falling. You have to deal with the feet, not just the shoe.

That second one is where most people actually are, and it's usually the reason nothing has stuck. It's also why so many people end up trying regular deodorant on their feet, which I got into here.

What I Use

I dealt with this for years. I tried the inserts, the powders, the sprays off the shelf, and I made my own for a while. My uncle runs a cosmetic lab in Costa Rica, so eventually we sat down and made something together.

Two things. A spray for the shoes and a roll-on for my feet.

The spray goes in the shoes when I walk in the door. The roll-on goes on in the morning before my socks. About a minute a day total, and it's just part of getting dressed now.

The difference from a pad is not that one works and one doesn't. It's that a pad runs out and a routine doesn't. You're not waiting for capacity to refill or remembering to reorder before the smell comes back.

If your shoes are the problem, here's the shoe spray by itself. If your feet are the thing reloading them, the pair together is what I actually use every day.

Give it 7 days and keep it consistent.

FAQ

How long do Zorpads last?

Until the carbon fills up, which depends on how much odor goes into it rather than how many days pass. Heavy sweat and daily wear use the capacity faster. They're sold in packs because they're a consumable, not a permanent fix.

Do Zorpads kill the bacteria causing the smell?

No, and they don't claim to. They trap odor molecules that are already in the shoe. The bacteria on your skin that produce those molecules are unaffected, which is why the smell comes back after you've been wearing the shoes again.

What is the most effective shoe deodorizer?

Depends what you're solving. For a one-off rescue of a pair that already smells, an absorber works fine. For shoes that go bad again every few days, you need something that treats your feet as well as the shoe, otherwise you're repeating the job forever. I compared the options here.

Are Zorpads better than baking soda?

They're more convenient and less messy, and they stay put instead of needing a sock or a filter to hold them. Both work the same way underneath: absorbing what's already there. Baking soda is cheaper, pads are tidier.

Why do my shoes still smell with pads in them?

Two usual reasons. The pad has reached capacity and needs replacing, or the smell is coming off your feet faster than a pad can take it in. If a fresh pad stops working within a few days, it's the second one.