About Graco
Graco Inc. traces back to 1926, when brothers Russell and Leil Gray founded the Gray Company in Minneapolis to build an air-powered grease gun that could work in freezing weather. The company adopted the Graco name in 1969 and now trades on the NYSE (GGG) as a public manufacturer of fluid and powder handling equipment. Graco built the first airless paint sprayer in 1958, a design that still defines how the category works: an electric pump forces paint through a tiny tip at high pressure instead of mixing it with air, atomizing it directly from a bucket. The company remains headquartered in Minneapolis and sells spray-finishing, pumping, dispensing, and lubrication equipment across industrial, contractor, and homeowner markets worldwide.
The consumer-facing Magnum line is Graco's homeowner airless range, and it's the line that shows up on job sites and in rental counters at Home Depot and Lowe's. Bob Vila's review team tested the Magnum X5 hands-on and called it a DIYer's dream, and in our own paint sprayer testing at DIYRated it was the same story: the PowerFlush garden-hose adapter turns cleanup, the step that kills most sprayers through neglect, into a five-minute job instead of a disassembly project.
Brand website: graco.com
What Graco makes
Graco's range runs wider than the products we review. The lines we know best from our own testing are marked with a star:
Magnum homeowner airless sprayers
X5, X7, and Project Painter Plus — the DIY-facing airless line, featured on DIYRated — featured on DIYRated
Contractor & pro airless sprayers
ProX and Ultra series with swappable pumps and higher annual-gallon ratings — featured on DIYRated — featured on DIYRated
Industrial fluid handling systems
pumps, meters, and dispensing equipment for manufacturing and process applications
Lubrication equipment
grease guns and automated lubrication systems, the original Gray Company product category
Protective coatings & fireproofing equipment
plural-component spray systems for industrial and construction coatings
Contractor sealant & caulk applicators
cordless and pneumatic dispensing tools for trade contractors
Why we recognized Graco
The DIYRated Top Brand recognition isn't paid for and can't be applied for. We award it to the brands whose products consistently stand out in our hands-on category reviews. Graco earned it on the strength of the products below, evaluated the same way every product on this site is: bought, put to work on real jobs, and judged on merit.
Graco products we rated highly
Graco Magnum X5 Airless Paint Sprayer
Our top pick in DIYRated's paint sprayer roundup for whole-house walls and exteriors. It's a simple plug-and-spray unit with no air compressor to manage, pulls unthinned latex and stains straight from a 5-gallon bucket, and covers large surfaces evenly. The PowerFlush garden-hose adapter gets the whole system rinsed out in about five minutes, which is the single biggest reason a homeowner sprayer survives past its first project.
Read the 7 Best Paint Sprayers of 2026 guide →
Graco Magnum X7 Cart Airless Paint Sprayer
One of our top picks for multi-story exteriors. The cart-mounted design and stronger motor handle thicker paints and larger tip sizes than the X5, the hose supports runs up to 100 feet so a single setup spot can cover second- and third-story peaks, and PushPrime gives reliable startup every time without fussing with priming valves.
Read the 7 Best Paint Sprayers of 2026 guide →
Graco ProX19 Cart Airless Paint Sprayer
Our pick for contractors and rental-property owners in the same roundup. The InstaClean pump filter cuts down on tip clogs from debris in the paint, the pump itself is swappable on the job for zero downtime, and a 150-foot supported hose reaches four-story buildings from a single setup. In our testing it's the most capable consumer-facing airless unit Graco sells, built for annual volume well beyond a typical homeowner's use.
Read the 7 Best Paint Sprayers of 2026 guide →
Graco Project Painter Plus Airless Paint Sprayer
The lightest airless sprayer Graco makes at 13 pounds, and the most affordable way into genuine Graco airless performance. It still sprays unthinned latex and stains straight from a 5-gallon bucket, and in our review data it carries over 7,500 reviews backing up its reliability for the occasional big project — a fence, a shed, a one-time repaint.
Read the 7 Best Paint Sprayers of 2026 guide →What earned Graco the recognition
- Four Graco airless sprayers appear in DIYRated's paint sprayer testing, spanning homeowner, upgrade, and contractor-grade use — more coverage across pick roles than any other brand in the roundup.
- Graco built the first airless paint sprayer in 1958, and the airless mechanism it pioneered is still the basic design behind every airless unit sold today, including competitors' models.
- The PowerFlush garden-hose cleanup system, standard across the Magnum line, turns the step that kills most sprayers through neglected cleaning into a five-minute job.
- Bob Vila's review team tested the Magnum X5 hands-on and called it a DIYer's dream, echoing what we found in our own testing.
- Nearly a century of continuous operation as a fluid-handling manufacturer headquartered in Minneapolis, with the Magnum, ProX, and Ultra lines all built on the same core airless pump platform.