Professional pest control services run $150–400 per visit. But the single most effective pest control strategy — exclusion — costs almost nothing and prevents the majority of infestations before they start. The products listed here are the same items pest control operators install or recommend during every residential service call.
This isn't a list of gimmicks or "natural repellents" that smell nice and do nothing. Every item below has direct, measurable impact on pest entry and survival. We've ranked them by cost-effectiveness so you can prioritize if you're working with less than $100.
Copper mesh + silicone caulk is the foundation of every professional exclusion job. Copper mesh (like Stuff-It or Xcluder) gets packed into gaps around pipes, dryer vents, and utility penetrations where mice, cockroaches, and spiders enter. Unlike steel wool, copper doesn't rust. A 30-foot roll costs $8–12 and covers most homes.
Silicone caulk ($5–8 per tube) seals the mesh in place and fills smaller cracks around window frames, door frames, and foundation joints. Use 100% silicone — not latex caulk, which shrinks and cracks within a year. Focus on the exterior first: our exclusion guide walks through the 12 most common entry points.
Door sweeps ($6–12 each) close the gap under exterior doors. A house mouse needs only a quarter-inch gap to squeeze through. Most garage doors, back doors, and side doors have enough clearance for mice, cockroaches, and spiders. Brush-style sweeps work best on uneven thresholds.
Glue boards ($8 for a 12-pack) placed along walls in the basement, garage, and behind appliances serve as an early warning system. They catch mice, spiders, cockroaches, and silverfish before populations grow. Check them monthly — what you catch tells you what's getting in and where.
Yellow sticky traps ($7 for a 20-pack) near houseplants and windows catch fungus gnats, fruit flies, and whiteflies. Monitoring isn't treatment — it's intelligence gathering that tells you whether your exclusion is working.
CimeXa dust ($12 for 4 oz) is 92% amorphous silica gel — a desiccant that kills crawling insects by destroying their waxy cuticle. Applied with a hand duster into wall voids, behind outlet covers, and along baseboards, it remains effective for 10+ years as long as it stays dry. One bottle treats an entire home. It kills cockroaches, silverfish, bed bugs, ants, and spiders on contact. Read our complete CimeXa guide.
Advion cockroach gel bait ($10 for a 4-tube pack) is what professionals use for German cockroach infestations. Small pea-sized dots in cracks and crevices eliminate entire colonies through secondary kill — roaches that eat the bait die, and roaches that eat those dead roaches also die. See our gel bait protocol.
TERRO liquid ant bait ($8 for a 6-pack) handles sweet-feeding ant species like odorous house ants, Argentine ants, and ghost ants. Place stations along active trails and don't kill the ants you see — they need to carry the borax bait back to the colony.
Moisture attracts cockroaches, silverfish, centipedes, earwigs, springtails, crickets, and carpenter ants. Two cheap fixes make a big difference:
Fix dripping faucets and pipes — usually just a washer replacement ($2–5). A single dripping faucet provides enough water to sustain a cockroach colony indefinitely.
Dehumidifier — if your basement runs above 60% humidity, a basic dehumidifier ($15–20 used, or budget a future purchase) eliminates the moisture that silverfish, centipedes, and mold mites need to survive.
Ventilation — run bathroom exhaust fans during and 15 minutes after showers. Ensure dryer vents are clear and connected. These cost nothing but eliminate the damp conditions pests need.
Clear the foundation perimeter. Pull mulch back 6 inches from the foundation. Remove leaf litter, firewood, and debris from against the house. This eliminates harborage for ants, cockroaches, spiders, earwigs, and millipedes — and it costs nothing.
Yellow LED bulbs ($8–10 for a 2-pack) for porch lights reduce flying insect attraction by 80%+ compared to standard white bulbs. Insects navigate by UV light — yellow LEDs emit almost none. Fewer flying insects at the door means fewer coming inside when you open it. This also reduces cricket and spider pressure, since spiders build webs near light sources that attract prey.
That leaves $18 of budget for extras like a UV blacklight flashlight ($15) for detecting scorpions, rodent urine trails, and bed bug evidence — a genuinely useful inspection tool.
Ultrasonic plug-in repellers — the FTC has taken enforcement action against manufacturers for false advertising. Independent testing consistently shows they don't work.
Bug bombs / foggers — they kill less than 1% of cockroach populations, scatter survivors deeper into walls, contaminate surfaces, and create fire hazards. Our detailed breakdown: Why Bug Bombs Don't Work.
Peppermint oil spray — pleasant smelling but evaporates within hours. No residual effect. Mice walk through it. Our peppermint oil assessment has the research.
Mothballs for anything other than moths — naphthalene and paradichlorobenzene are toxic, the fumes are a health hazard in living spaces, and using them as rodent or snake repellent is actually illegal (off-label use of a registered pesticide).