Sodium alkylbenzene sulfonate is a synthetic detergent, categorized into hard and soft types. It possesses surface-active properties such as detergency, wetting, foaming, emulsification, and dispersion.

An anionic surfactant. Due to its low production cost and excellent performance, it is widely used and is the most utilized synthetic surfactant in household detergents. It is also produced in part as inorganic salts like magnesium and calcium, as well as organic amine salts such as triethanolamine. Calcium dodecylbenzene sulfonate [27176-87-0] exhibits excellent emulsifying properties.