Dish soap is a mild degreaser by design — it's meant to touch your hands and food-contact surfaces repeatedly without irritation. That mildness is also its limit: baked-on oven grime, range hood buildup, or a stovetop that hasn't been wiped down in a while usually needs something formulated to cut harder.
What regular dish soap handles well
Everyday dishes, pans with light grease, and general kitchen wipe-downs. The surfactants are strong enough to lift oil off a dinner plate but gentle enough for repeated hand contact — that trade-off is intentional, not a shortcoming.
When to reach for a dedicated degreaser
Baked-on stovetop grime, oven interiors, range hoods, and grease that's been sitting long enough to oxidize and harden are where dish soap starts to struggle. Degreasers are formulated with stronger solvents or higher alkalinity specifically to break down grease that's no longer fresh — expect to wear gloves and ventilate the room when using them, since that strength comes with stronger fumes.
A concentrated formula goes further per bottle and handles everyday grease without the harsher chemical profile of a dedicated degreaser.
Worth keeping on hand specifically for stovetops, oven exteriors, and range hoods — not meant for daily dishwashing.
A note on "natural" or plant-based formulas
Plant-based dish soaps clean effectively for everyday use but generally aren't formulated to match a heavy-duty degreaser's cutting power on baked-on grime. If the label doesn't specifically market it as a degreaser or heavy-duty formula, treat it as a daily-use product rather than a deep-cleaning one.
The bottom line
Keep both on hand: dish soap for daily washing, a degreaser reserved for the stovetop and oven a few times a month. Using degreaser on everyday dishes is overkill (and harsher on your hands); using dish soap on baked-on grease just means more scrubbing than necessary.