Gallup weed killer: which one is which, and what to mix
Gallup is not one product. It is five separate authorisations plus a ready-to-use retail bottle, across two legal tiers, at 360 or 490 grams of glyphosate a litre, and only one of them is approved for you to use. Here is each one named at its published strength with its MAPP number, the real mixing rate per litre, and the coverage arithmetic four retailers get four different answers to.
By The Weed GuyLast updated
The short version
One Gallup is yours: Gallup Home & Garden, MAPP 17672, 360 g/L glyphosate, mixed at 24 ml per litre of water. Everything else in the range, XL, the two Biogrades and Hi-Aktiv Amenity, is authorised for professional use, which means the person spraying legally needs a certificate of competence or supervision by someone who holds one. Home & Garden is not a watered-down version of the professional bottle: it is the same 360 g/L, and its 24 ml rate is the one the pro labels save for their hardest weeds.
Every Gallup, named at its real strength
Five separate authorisations and two concentrations, split across two legal tiers, plus the ready-to-use bottle on the retail shelf. The MAPP number in brackets is the only reliable way to tell which one is in front of you.
| Product | Glyphosate | Who can legally use it | Its own label rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gallup Home & Garden (MAPP 17672) | 360 g/L | Anyone. It is amateur-approved | 24 ml per litre of water, treating 40 sq m |
| Gallup XL (MAPP 17663) | 360 g/L | Certificate holders, or someone they supervise | 16 ml per litre general use, 24 ml where perennial broad-leaved weeds are present |
| Gallup Biograde 360 (MAPP 17612) | 360 g/L | Certificate holders, or someone they supervise | The same 16 ml and 24 ml rates as XL |
| Gallup Biograde Amenity (MAPP 17674) | 360 g/L | Certificate holders, or someone they supervise | The same 16 ml and 24 ml rates, on an amenity and aquatic label |
| Gallup Hi-Aktiv Amenity (MAPP 17681) | 490 g/L | Certificate holders, or someone they supervise | 12 ml per litre general use, 18 ml where perennial broad-leaved weeds are present |
| Gallup Biograde Weedkiller, ready to use (retail 4 litre bottle) | 7.2 g/L as listed | Anyone | Nothing to mix. It is already diluted |
Every concentrate in that table makes spray that covers about 40 square metres a litre, whichever rate you mix it at, because the stronger rate buys you a harder weed rather than more ground. One more to know about if you shop across the Irish Sea: Gallup Hi-Aktiv K is an Irish registration at 540 g/L as the potassium salt and has no GB MAPP number, so it is a different product again from the 490 g/L Hi-Aktiv Amenity sold here.
Which Gallup have you actually got?
This is the real question behind the search, and it is the one nobody answers. Some people type it as gallup and plenty type it as gallop, and either way they are usually holding a bottle or looking at a listing and cannot tell what tier it sits in.
The front of the pack will not settle it. Retail listings sell the 5 litre XL under titles like "super strength professional glyphosate weed killer", which sounds like a grade Barclay sells and is really just a seller stacking keywords. Meanwhile the amateur 1 litre gets sold as industrial strength by people who have never read the label on either.
The MAPP number settles it in about a minute. Every authorised plant protection product in Great Britain has to carry one, and HSE keeps two separate databases: a garden and home one, and a professional register. Put your number into the garden database. If it comes back, the product is amateur-approved and you may use it. If the garden database has never heard of it and only the professional register lists it, you are holding a professional product and the certificate rule below applies to you.
For this range the answer is short. MAPP 17672 is Gallup Home & Garden and it is yours. MAPP 17663 (XL), 17612 and 17674 (the Biogrades) and 17681 (Hi-Aktiv Amenity) are not. That test works on any brand, which is why it is worth learning once: a MAPP number is a legal requirement on every bottle sold here, including supermarket own-labels, so it is never a mark of quality and always a way in to the paperwork.
360 or 490: the bit everyone gets backwards
The assumption is that the professional bottle is the strong one and the garden bottle is the diluted version for people who cannot be trusted. On this range that is wrong, and it is wrong in a way you can read straight off the two labels.
Gallup Home & Garden is 360 g/L glyphosate. Gallup XL is 360 g/L glyphosate. Same manufacturer, same active, same loading, same isopropylamine salt. What differs is the authorisation printed on the bottle and the size it comes in.
Now the part that turns it around. XL gives two rates: 16 ml per litre of water for general use, and 24 ml per litre where perennial broad-leaved weeds are present. Home & Garden gives one rate, and that rate is 24 ml. So the amateur bottle, mixed to its own label, is running at the professional label's harder setting all the time. Nobody has handed you a weaker product.
There is exactly one genuine step up in the range, and it is Gallup Hi-Aktiv Amenity at 490 g/L. Because it is packed stronger you use less of it, 12 ml per litre for general use and 18 ml where perennials are in the mix, to land in the same place on the ground. That is the whole meaning of a higher concentration: a smaller dose, not a better kill. The cross-brand version of that argument, with Roundup and Rosate alongside, sits on the glyphosate concentrate strengths and mixing rates resource rather than here.
What to put in your actual sprayer
Both Gallup concentrates at 360 g/L, scaled to the tanks people really own. The 24 ml column is the Home & Garden rate and also XL's perennial rate; the 16 ml column is XL at general use.
| Tank | At 24 ml per litre | At 16 ml per litre | Ground covered |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 litre | 24 ml | 16 ml | 40 sq m |
| 5 litre pressure sprayer | 120 ml | 80 ml | 200 sq m |
| 10 litre knapsack | 240 ml | 160 ml | 400 sq m |
| 15 litre knapsack | 360 ml | 240 ml | 600 sq m |
| 16 litre knapsack | 384 ml | 256 ml | 640 sq m |
Hi-Aktiv Amenity is the odd one out because it is 490 g/L, so it runs at 12 ml and 18 ml per litre instead. A 16 litre knapsack takes 192 ml of it at general use and 288 ml where perennials are present.
Those numbers come off Barclay's own knapsack rate estimator, which states the general XL rate as 4.0 litres per hectare in 250 litres of water, or 160 ml in a 10 litre tank. Everything above is that figure multiplied out. The method for doing that with any label, and the mixing order that stops concentrate sitting in the bottom of the tank, is on the mixing rates resource, and the calibration that makes a rate mean anything is on how to choose and use a knapsack sprayer.
What a bottle really covers, and what that costs per square metre
Ask four sellers how much ground a 1 litre bottle of Gallup Home & Garden treats and you get 600 square metres, 1,666, 2,000 and 2,500. They cannot all be right, and the label does not settle it directly, because it prints no per-bottle coverage figure at all.
What it does print is enough. 24 ml of concentrate per litre of water, and 40 square metres per litre of made-up spray. So: 1,000 ml divided by 24 is roughly 41.7 litres of spray, and 41.7 multiplied by 40 is about 1,667 square metres. That is the only one of those four numbers that falls out of the label, and now you can check it rather than take my word for it.
Run the same arithmetic against prices and the ranking is not what you would guess. Using specialist merchant prices I saw in August 2026, and mixing every product at its perennial rate so the comparison is like for like:
- Gallup Home & Garden, 1 litre at £13.24. About 1,667 square metres, so roughly 0.8p per square metre. At the £16.20 I saw elsewhere, nearer 1p.
- Gallup XL, 5 litres at £42.50. About 8,300 square metres at 24 ml per litre, so roughly 0.5p per square metre. At its general 16 ml rate it drops to about 0.34p.
- Gallup Hi-Aktiv Amenity, 5 litres at £66.00. About 11,100 square metres at 18 ml per litre, so roughly 0.6p per square metre.
The strongest product in the range is not the cheapest way to cover ground. XL beats Hi-Aktiv per square metre despite being the weaker concentrate, because the price gap between the two 5 litre packs is wider than the concentration gap. And the amateur bottle is roughly half as cost-effective again as XL, which is a real premium for the legal right to use it rather than a con: you are buying a 1 litre pack instead of a 5 litre one and an approval that lets you get on with it.
For a typical 40 square metre drive, all of this is pennies of chemical either way. Prices move, those were the figures on the day, and the reason to know them is to stop paying garden-centre ready-to-use money for the same active ingredient.
What I'd actually buy
Of everything carrying the Gallup name, one bottle is both the strongest concentration an amateur can buy and the one you are allowed to spray without a certificate. The rest of the range is above, to identify and rule out.
What I’d use
Glyphosate concentrate, 360 g/L
Gallup Home & Garden Glyphosate Weedkiller (1 litre)
The one Gallup a homeowner can legally buy and use: a 1 litre glyphosate concentrate at 360 g/L, approved for home and garden use under MAPP 17672.
It is the same active, the same 360 g/L loading and the same isopropylamine salt as the professional Gallup XL, and its single label rate of 24 ml per litre of water is exactly the rate the professional labels reserve for perennial broad-leaved weeds. The difference between the two bottles is the authorisation printed on them, not the chemistry inside, and this is the side of that line you are allowed to stand on.
- Active ingredient
- Glyphosate, 360 g/L, as the isopropylamine salt
- Formulation
- Soluble concentrate you dilute yourself
- Approval
- MAPP 17672, labelled for use only as a home and garden weedkiller
- Mixing rate
- 24 ml per 1 litre of water, per the label
- Coverage
- 40 sq m per litre of made-up spray, so roughly 1,667 sq m per bottle
- Rainfast
- Rain within 6 hours may reduce effectiveness, per the label
- Size
- 1 litre of concentrate
Watch out for
- No measuring cap in the bottle. Check a cup arrives, or the dose is guesswork.
- One re-treatment a season, and it takes four weeks. Do not go again early.
- Not for lawns. It is non-selective and takes the grass too.
- Resellers dominate the listing, so check the label that arrives is Barclay.
- "Super strength" is keyword stacking. It is 360 g/L, same as professional Gallup XL.
That’s an affiliate link: buy through it and I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. It doesn’t change what I recommend or what I say is wrong with it. More on how that works in the affiliate disclosure.
No brand pays for a mention here, and nothing on this page is a paid-for opinion. The card above is an affiliate link, so I earn a commission if you buy through it, at no extra cost to you. It buys no product a kinder write-up, which is why the watch-outs sit on the same card as the reasons to buy.
Do you need a certificate to use Gallup XL?
To use it legally, yes, and it is worth naming the actual rule rather than hedging. Regulation 8 of the Plant Protection Products (Sustainable Use) Regulations 2012 says no person may use a plant protection product authorised for professional use unless they hold a specified certificate of competence, or are working under the direct and personal supervision of somebody who does.
Two things follow that catch people out. There is no domestic exemption, so it reads the same on your own driveway as it does on a farm. And the old provision that exempted people born before 1965 stopped having effect in November 2015, so it no longer helps anyone. HSE put the same point in plainer words in their guidance for home gardeners: professional products should never be used by the untrained amateur gardener.
Now the part that gets missed. Buying it is covered too. The same regulations make it an offence to buy a professional plant protection product unless you hold the certificate or somebody who does will be supervising the use. No rule requires the merchant to check first, which is exactly why so many people conclude that a successful order means they were entitled to it. A completed checkout is not a permission.
I am qualified to spray professional weedkiller, so I sit on the other side of that line and I am not being sniffy about it. The honest point is that the certificate buys you almost nothing here in kill terms: Gallup Home & Garden is the same 360 g/L active at the same 24 ml rate. What it buys is a bigger, cheaper pack. That is a poor reason to spray something you are not entitled to.
What Gallup will not do, straight from the labels
- It will not finish horsetail. The XL label says outright that it does not give acceptable control of Equisetum arvense, which is the plant most people call mare's tail. A manufacturer telling you their own professional concentrate will not do a job is worth more than any review, and it matches what horsetail does to everything else you throw at it.
- It will not spare your lawn. The Home & Garden label says not to use it on lawns, and that is not a caution, it is the point. Glyphosate is non-selective and kills every green thing it lands on. Gallup also put their name on a selective lawn weedkiller, which is a completely different product with a completely different active, so check what you have picked up.
- It will not work through rain. At least 6 hours without rain, preferably 24. That is on the XL label in those words, and the Home & Garden label warns that rainfall within 6 hours may reduce effectiveness. More on why six is a floor rather than a target in spraying weeds when it is raining.
- It will not work twice in a season. The Home & Garden label allows re-treatment only once per season. Slow is not failed, and going back over the same ground because nothing looked different after four days is how people run out of allowance before the weeds have finished dying.
- It will not touch Japanese knotweed as a DIY job. Whatever any label permits, knotweed is regulated, specialist territory and the wrong place to be experimenting. If that is what you are looking at, start with identifying it properly and get a specialist in.
Where Gallup is sold, and what owners report
B&Q list the Home & Garden 1 litre. Amazon carry it too, almost always through resellers, which is why the brand field on those listings is frequently the reseller rather than Barclay Chemicals and why so many of them bundle a measuring cup. Screwfix is the odd one: a lot of people go looking for Gallup there, and when I looked in August 2026 I could not find it listed at all. The professional line, XL, the two Biogrades and Hi-Aktiv, goes through amenity and agricultural merchants instead of the sheds.
On the review question, I have not run these products against each other and I am not going to pretend otherwise. What I can tell you is what comes up repeatedly from people who use it and write about it afterwards, and the themes are consistent enough to be useful.
The most repeated line is that nothing happens for three to five days, always followed by somebody explaining that this is the mechanism rather than a dud bottle. The second is how long a bottle lasts, because a knapsack takes so little concentrate that people genuinely lose track of how much is left. The steadiest complaint is price rises rather than performance, and after that it is needing a second pass on thick, established growth. And one small practical gripe worth knowing before you order: the Barclay bottle has no measuring cap of its own. That is why sellers bundle a cup, and eyeballing a 24 ml dose into a 5 litre sprayer is a good way to end up with a mix that underwhelms you and no idea why.
About this resource
I'm The Weed Guy, one bloke who is qualified to spray professional weedkiller. Every concentration, MAPP number, mixing rate, coverage figure and restriction on this page comes off Barclay Chemicals' own approved labels and the HSE pesticide databases, both of which anyone can look up. The legal position is quoted from the Plant Protection Products (Sustainable Use) Regulations 2012 and HSE's own guidance for home gardeners, not paraphrased from a forum.
The coverage and cost-per-square-metre figures are arithmetic done on those label numbers and on merchant prices I saw in August 2026, and the working is printed so you can check it. Prices move. Where I could not verify something it is not here: the XL label's maximum rate for hard surfaces came back two different ways from two sources, so this page states no hectare cap at all rather than pick one.
Straight disclosure: nothing here is a paid-for opinion and no brand sponsors this site, but the Home & Garden card above is an affiliate link, so I earn a commission if you buy through it at no extra cost to you. It buys no brand a kinder write-up, which is why the watch-outs sit on the same card as the reasons to buy, and why this page spends as long warning you off the ready-to-use bottle and the professional 5 litre as it does on the one I can actually sell you. The full position is on the affiliate disclosure page.
Common questions
How much Gallup weed killer do I put in a litre of water?
It depends which Gallup you have got, and the two most common ones are different. Gallup Home & Garden, the amateur bottle, gives one rate: 24 ml per litre of water, covering 40 square metres. Gallup XL, the professional 5 litre, gives two: 16 ml per litre for general use and 24 ml per litre where perennial broad-leaved weeds are in the mix. Gallup Hi-Aktiv Amenity is a stronger concentrate at 490 g/L rather than 360, so it takes less, 12 ml per litre general and 18 ml per litre for perennials. Read the MAPP number on your own bottle before you measure anything, because using one product's rate on another is the single most common way people end up with a mix that does nothing.
How much is Gallup XL per litre of water?
16 ml per litre of water for general use, and 24 ml per litre where perennial broad-leaved weeds are present. That comes off the label's own knapsack rate estimator, which sets the general rate at 4.0 litres per hectare in 250 litres of water, so 160 ml goes into a 10 litre tank. Scaled to real sprayers that is 80 ml in a 5 litre pressure sprayer, 240 ml in a 15 litre knapsack and 256 ml in a 16 litre one at the general rate. One litre of the made-up spray covers about 40 square metres either way, because the stronger rate is meant for harder weeds rather than more ground.
What is the difference between Gallup Home & Garden and Gallup XL?
The approval, not the strength. Both are 360 g/L glyphosate from the same manufacturer. Home & Garden holds MAPP 17672 and its label reads "for use only as a home and garden weedkiller", so anyone can buy it and use it. XL holds MAPP 17663 and is authorised for professional use, which means the person holding the lance legally needs a certificate of competence or has to be supervised by someone who holds one. The practical differences are pack size and price: Home & Garden comes as a 1 litre bottle, XL as 5 or 20 litres and cheaper per square metre treated.
Is Gallup Home & Garden weaker than the professional Gallup?
No, and this surprises people. It is 360 g/L glyphosate, exactly the same loading as Gallup XL and Gallup Biograde 360. Its single label rate of 24 ml per litre is actually the rate the professional labels reserve for their harder job, perennial broad-leaved weeds, rather than their general-use 16 ml. So mixed to its own label, the amateur bottle puts more glyphosate on the ground per litre of water than XL does at general rate. The only Gallup that is genuinely a stronger concentrate is Hi-Aktiv Amenity at 490 g/L, and that one is professional-use only.
Do I need a licence or certificate to use Gallup XL?
To use it legally, yes. The Plant Protection Products (Sustainable Use) Regulations 2012 say that nobody may use a plant protection product authorised for professional use unless they hold a specified certificate of competence, or are working under the direct and personal supervision of somebody who does. It applies on your own driveway exactly as it applies on a farm, there is no domestic exemption. The provision that used to exempt people born before 1965 ceased to have effect in November 2015. Gallup Home & Garden carries no such requirement at all.
Can I just buy Gallup XL anyway?
Plenty of merchants will sell it to you, and that is not them confirming you may use it. The same regulations make buying a professional plant protection product an offence unless you hold the certificate yourself or a holder will be supervising, and no rule obliges the seller to check before taking your money. So a completed checkout tells you nothing about where you stand. If you do not hold a certificate, the product that is actually meant for you is Gallup Home & Garden, and it is the same active ingredient at the same 360 g/L.
How much does 1 litre of Gallup Home & Garden cover?
About 1,667 square metres of ground, and you can check the arithmetic yourself rather than trusting a retailer. The label does not print a per-bottle coverage figure. What it prints is 24 ml of concentrate per litre of water, and 40 square metres per litre of made-up spray. So a 1,000 ml bottle makes 1,000 divided by 24, which is roughly 41.7 litres of spray, and 41.7 multiplied by 40 is about 1,667 square metres. Retail listings quote 600, 1,666, 2,000 and 2,500 square metres for the same bottle. Only one of those numbers falls out of the label.
Do Screwfix or B&Q sell Gallup weed killer?
B&Q list Gallup Home & Garden, the 1 litre amateur bottle. Plenty of people go looking for it at Screwfix, but when I looked in August 2026 I could not find Gallup listed there at all, so if you have seen it on that shelf it is worth checking the bottle really is Gallup and not another 360 g/L concentrate. The professional line, XL, Biograde and Hi-Aktiv, is sold through amenity and agricultural merchants rather than the sheds. Amazon carries the amateur bottle through resellers, which is why the brand field on those listings is often the reseller rather than Barclay.
How long does Gallup take to work?
The Home & Garden label says visible effects appear from a few days up to four weeks, depending on the weed and the weather. That is the normal glyphosate story rather than anything specific to this brand: it is systemic, so it is carried down into the root system instead of burning the leaf, and nothing much looks different for the first few days. If a weed wilts within hours of being sprayed, that was not glyphosate doing it. Do not treat slow as failed and go back over it, the label allows re-treatment only once in a season.
How long does Gallup need before rain?
At least 6 hours, and preferably 24. The Gallup XL label puts it that way outright, and the Home & Garden label says rainfall within 6 hours of application may reduce effectiveness. Six hours is the floor rather than the target. It is the same figure Barclay's competitors publish, so it is a glyphosate property and not a Gallup quirk, and it is the single easiest way to waste a tank on a British afternoon.
Will Gallup kill mare's tail or horsetail?
Not properly, and Barclay say so themselves. The Gallup XL label states in as many words that it does not give acceptable control of horsetail, Equisetum arvense, which is the plant most people mean by mare's tail. That is an unusually straight admission to find on a label, and it is worth more than any review: the manufacturer of a 360 g/L professional concentrate is telling you their product will not finish this weed. Horsetail needs a different approach entirely rather than a stronger mix of the same thing.
Is Gallup better than Roundup?
On the thing that actually matters, they are the same product with different names on them. Roundup ProActive is 360 g/L glyphosate and so is Gallup XL, so mixed to their own label rates and sprayed properly there is no meaningful difference in what dies. Where they genuinely differ is the shelf: the Roundup name covers garden bottles as weak as 7.2 g/L and some that contain no glyphosate at all, while every Gallup except the ready-to-use bottle is a straight glyphosate concentrate. Compare the grams per litre and the legal tier, never the brand.
Is Gallup weed killer any good?
It does the job it says, and the honest caveats are about expectations rather than the product. What owners report on the concentrate is consistent: nothing visible for three to five days, then yellowing, and a bottle that lasts far longer than expected because a knapsack takes so little. The complaints are also consistent, and mostly about price rises and about needing a second pass on established growth. One practical gripe worth knowing before you order: the Barclay bottle itself has no measuring cap, which is why so many sellers bundle a cup with it, and eyeballing a 24 ml dose is exactly how people end up with a mix that disappoints them.
How do I tell if a weedkiller is amateur or professional?
By its MAPP number, which every authorised product in Great Britain has to carry on the label. HSE runs two separate databases, one for garden and home products and one for professional ones. Put the MAPP number into the garden database: if it comes back, it is an amateur product and you may use it. If it returns nothing and only the professional register knows it, that is a professional product and the certificate rule applies. It takes a minute, it works for any brand rather than just this one, and it settles the question far better than the wording on the front of the bottle.