In this study, the performance of two polymer resins was evaluated, one composed of methyl methacrylate-divinylbenzene (MMA-DVB) and the other of only divinylbenzene (DVB), for adsorption of oil in synthetic oily wastewater. The tests were carried out using two processes: (i) continuous flow, to assess the quantity of oily water that can be eluted until reaching the saturation point of resins; and (ii) batch, to obtain information about the best-fitting kinetic and isotherm models for the two resins. The results for both resins showed better fits to the Freundlich isotherm model and the pseudo-second-order kinetic model. The low activation energy values found suggest physical adsorption between the resins and oil. Although DVB resin has presented slightly better oil removal efficiency than the MMA-DVB one, the results showed that DVB resin can be industrially replaced by MMA-DVB resin, due to the latter advantages: lower cost, lower toxicity and easy regeneration, as indicated by the kinetic and isotherm studies.