Our Picks
A sharp, reliable knife is the backbone of any kitchen. If you cook regularly -- or just want to make the process less of a chore -- a good chef’s knife can seriously level up your prep game. The right knife cuts through veggies, meat and herbs like butter, making slicing and chopping quicker and more precise. A quality blade should feel balanced in your hand, with a comfortable grip and a shape that works with your cutting style. Finding the one comes down to sharpness, comfort and versatility -- because no one wants to struggle with a dull knife.
If you take care of it and sharpen it periodically, a premium chef knife will last many years. And while a quality knife costs a fair bit of money, it's an investment in your future chef self: using a good knife can make you a better cook. The more you use it, the more you'll understand how it feels and works. With that in mind, our CNET experts have picked out the best chef knives money can buy, all waiting to be picked up and used to slice and dice.
What's the best chef's knife overall?
When it comes to ordering a new knife online, it can be a challenge to navigate through the sea of options and identify the bad knives from the good and the truly exceptional. In-person shopping isn't much easier, especially if you're not an expert on knives. But with this guide, you can be rest assured that we have done the rigorous work for you. We have thoroughly tested over a dozen blades, and we have confidently identified the best chef's knife in every style and price range. So, which chef's knife should you buy? Let me be clear: the top choice is not necessarily the most expensive one we evaluated.
Below is an excellent selection of chef's knives, with some under $100 and perfectly suitable models as cheap as $25. If you're not satisfied with your current chef’s knife, read on to discover our hand-tested recommendations for the best chef's knives of 2025.
Read more: You're Using Your Chef's Knife Wrong
Best chef's knives for 2025
Best knife overall
Pros
- Lightweight
- Durable
- Decent price
Global's popular 8-inch chef's knife is a Japanese-style blade, which means it boasts a scary-sharp edge and a nimble-feeling lightweight body. Global's design is also unique: The handle and sharp blade are made of a single piece of high-carbon steel, and the handle is filled with sand to give it weight. Global's 8-inch chef's knife is well-balanced and will meet all your usual mise en place needs. Slicing, mincing, chopping, and even breaking down a chicken are all easy with the Global.
This chef's knife took the top spot in our original round of chef's knife testing and it has held up as one of the best all-around chef's knives you can buy, and at an approachable price. The blade on this knife is more durable than the easy-to-chip Mac described below and it just feels very comfortable in hand.
Best chef's knife under $120
Pros
- Decent price
- Durable feel
For me, this chef's knife from direct-to-consumer kitchen brand Made In ticks a whole lot of boxes and comes in at a reasonable $119. You may even be able to snag it closer to $100 on sale. The French-made blade is fully forged with a full tang through the handle, so it's solid as a rock. With an 8.5-inch blade, it's on the long side and it weighs exactly half a pound. For whatever reason, those proportions worked exceptionally well for us and this chef's knife feels like an extension of my hand when I'm using it. It has a fairly linear, rounded handle but one I find quite comfortable.
The knife also has excellent balance and feels somewhere between the German and Japanese styles. The blade is forged from a composition of steel known as X50CrMoV15, which is high in chromium, making it both strong and highly resistant to corrosion. I loved using this quality knife and think it offers some good value for the price.
Best Japanese-style knife
Pros
- Balanced weight
- Super-sharp performance
Cons
- On the more expensive side
- Easy to damage
This Japanese-style chef's knife lies at the higher end of the cost spectrum, but it rests at the top of several best lists online for a reason: it's an excellent knife. This Japanese knife was our top pick for a few months before being unseated by Global's knife.
Similar to a santoku knife, not only is the Mac super sharp (it slides through tomatoes without tearing and potatoes without sticking), but its blade is thinner than heavier knives like Wüsthof's, which makes slicing snappier veggies like carrots feel like cutting a ripe banana with a butter knife.
Mac's most popular chef knife is perfectly balanced, so you never feel at risk of losing control of the blade. Its belly is also comfortably rounded, which makes the rocking motion while mincing feels natural. If you opt for this knife, beware that the super thin blade can be somewhat easily damaged. Within a few months of regular use, a piece chipped off the tip of the Mac I was using when the knife nicked an open cupboard.
Best cheap chef's knife
Pros
- Perfect for beginners
- Well balanced
Cons
- Missing full tang blade design
- Not as long lasting as other products
The biggest surprise of our testing was the performance of Mercer's $18 Culinary Millennia 8-inch chef's knife. It's not as well made as the Zwilling or Wüsthof blades -- both of which feature a long-lasting full-tang design (meaning the knife's metal travels from the tip of the blade to the butt of the handle in a single piece). The handle design is perfect for teaching beginners how to hold and use a chef's knife, guiding your thumb and index finger to the base of the blade. It's well-balanced and honestly felt the most like an extension of my arm as we prepped various veggies, fruits, and meats for our tests.
The light-weight and cheap design mean you don't get a long life or the full versatility you'd get from a workhorse like the Wüsthof, but if you want a starter chef's knife to learn on for six months while you save for a bigger investment, the Mercer is a great option.
Best heavy knife
Pros
- Extra weight makes use easier
- Heavy, but not uncomfortable
Cons
- On the more expensive side
German knife brand Wüsthof's 8-inch classic chef's knife is a workhorse in the kitchen. It's one of the weightiest knives I tested, which helps it slice more delicate foods such as tomatoes as effortlessly as warm butter and cut through more robust foods like butternut squash without much exertion. The heavier knife weight helps guide the blade in uniform movements as you use it, but this Wusthof knife isn't so heavy that you ever feel controlled by the blade.
The Wüsthof classic is perfectly balanced between handle and blade, and has a heel to protect your fingers, which makes it safer to wield. One of the best measures of how comfortable a knife feels in your hand is breaking down a chicken, as it requires many cuts across skin, meat, fat and cartilage. Using this blade for that task was as easy and natural as any other we tested.
Top to bottom, this is one of the best available at a price that won't put you into debt. It's versatile and comfortable, and its high carbon steel forged blade will keep a sharp edge as well as nearly any other knife -- Mac and Global excluded -- in this price range.
Best midprice knife
Pros
- Affordable
- Well balanced
Cons
- Lightweight, so less guide when cutting
- Stamped blade, so not as long lasting
For its price, J.A. Henckels' Zwilling Gourmet 8-inch Chef's knife is a great budget option. It doesn't have the heel of a heavier-duty knife like the Wüsthof or J.A. Henckels Classic, but it's well-balanced and makes clean cuts on tomatoes and herbs, makes quick work of dicing onions, and breaks down a chicken with relative ease.
The Zwilling Gourmet is a stamped blade, rather than a forged one, which means it likely won't hold its edge as long as the Wüsthof. It's also lighter, which means your hand won't be guided quite as well through a tomato or similarly delicate food.
All that said, the Zwilling's cuts were consistently clean and it felt comfortable in my hand. For around $70, I'd be more than happy to add this knife to my block.
Best knife to splurge on
Pros
- Versatile
- Little to no resistance
Cons
- Expensive
- Longer blade which has a slight learning curve
I'll admit that I was intimidated by this knife when I first picked it up. It's more than 9 inches long and extremely sharp but also very light, which makes it more difficult to control. That all spelled disaster for my sometimes clumsy and careless self. Miraculously, I didn't lose any fingers during my testing, and I started to fall for the elegant Aura. At times, it felt more like a weapon of combat than a kitchen tool.
The extra-long Japanese-style blade makes it extremely versatile and a great knife for trimming bigger pieces of meat and large vegetables like squash or even carving and slicing cooked meats. It took me a little longer to get comfortable chopping and dicing vegetables, mostly because of the length, but after a few sessions, I got the hang of it. Breaking down a whole chicken with this knife was like carving butter and I felt like I could do almost anything I wanted without resistance.
I loved the contoured handle made from stunning maple. It doesn't hurt that these knives -- which are handmade in California -- are small works of art. The cost is a bit of an eye-popper. But if you've got above-average knife skills and are looking to treat yourself, this is a fun and beautifully made Japanese-style chef's knife to have at your disposal.
Best hybrid Western-Japanese style knife
Pros
- Good for a transition from western to Japanese style knifes
- Versatile
Cons
- Expensive
As we've outlined, there are two main styles of knives. German or Western blades tend to be heavier with a more pronounced belly and are ideal for a rocking style of use. Japanese knives, with less heft and straighter bellies, are more suited to fine slices or push cuts. If you don't want to buy two expensive chef's knives but do want a knife that can serve both styles, this Korin Nickel Damascus is a perfect pick.
This 8-inch blade is thicker than your average Japanese knife but thinner than a standard Western knife such as a Heckels or Wüsthof. If you're used to that type of heavy chef's knife but want to transition to a more delicate Japanese-style tool, try this blade. It has some heft but still feels very dexterous. I found it was one of the most versatile knives I tried and I could feel myself easily toggling between finer, precise cuts and more thunderous chops.
It's not a bargain blade at $239, but with 33 layers of V10 stain-resistant steel, it's likely to last you a very long time if you care for it properly.
How we test chef's knives
Our procedures involved five tests -- slicing tomatoes, dicing onions, mincing leafy herbs, chopping carrots, and breaking down chickens -- each with a 1-to-10 rating, with more general use and observation. We wanted to approach the tasks as the average home cook would, focusing on general use and experience. We also avoided overemphasizing sharpness, as factory sharpness doesn't tell you much about a blade beyond its first few weeks or months of use.
Putting reps in on the chopping block was the best way for us to get a sense of any single knife.
You'll likely want to invest in a knife sharpener to get a sharp edge once you buy a chef's knife. Taking sharpening seriously is key to a knife blade's edge retention.
We took into account the type of steel used in the knife's construction (most are high-carbon steel), the method (whether it was forged or stamped), and the general design (full-tang knives, for instance, last longer than blades attached to a distinct handle).
Weight and balance
Despite what some advertising lingo might tell you, balance is not easily measured, nor is one balance point in a chef's knife necessarily better than another. Some knives we tested had too much weight concentrated in the handle for our liking which can cause quicker hand and wrist fatigue. Beyond its measurable performance with various foods, we approached each knife as a package, experiencing how its weight and balance came together to create an experience that felt either intuitive or awkward.
Made In's 8-inch chef's knife had the most comfortable handle of the many we tested.
Handle comfort
This is another decidedly subjective category but we took careful note of each knife's handle shape and general comfort when gripped. Some knives sported handles with harder edges that felt less natural to grip. In general, more rounded handles won out when it came to comfort, and Made In's ergonomic handle earned the top spot in this category.
The rest of the field: Other knives we tested
Overall, we tested a dozen of the most popular chef's knives for home cooks, from Mac, Global, Artisan Revere, Victorinox, KitchenAid, Ninja, Cuisinart, Homefavor, Farberware, Zwilling, J.A. Henckels, Aura, Korin, Wüsthof, Material Kitchen, Misen and Mercer. Of these knives, there were a few clear leaders, but most were solidly designed and just one stood out as bad.
The Mac, Wüsthof, Made In and Global knives were standout favorites for quality and performance. If you're serious about adopting a high-quality chef's knife, any of these three will work. Mercer, Zwilling and -- to a lesser degree -- Victorinox offered solid performance and well-balanced products for beginners looking for a bargain buy (Victorinox's chef knife gets a lot of love online for its value and construction, but it's pricier than the Mercer and not quite as well balanced).
J.A. Henckels' Classic Chef's Knife looks similar to the Wusthof Classic, but its slight differences in balance and design make it a much less enjoyable knife to use regularly.
Cuisinart's, Material's and Homefavor's knives were sturdier than the cheaper competitors, but they didn't stand out in any single category. The J.A. Henckels classic, which seems like a natural winner given its reasonable price tag and similar design to the more expensive Wüsthof classic, really disappointed me. It's another workhorse of a knife, but its butt is heavier than it should be, so heavy prep gets tiring and mincing feels awkward.
Farberware's knife was the worst of the bunch. It's so poorly balanced that we ended the chicken test midway for safety. The handle is light, which leaves the center of balance for the knife an inch or two down the blade. That makes almost every type of prep, from slicing and dicing to mincing and chicken boning, feel awkward at best and dangerous at worst. In short, don't buy this knife, even if you're looking for a budget blade.
Just a few of the chef's knives we tested.
A chef's knife can be your best friend in the kitchen, especially if you find the right fit. Take your time, figure out exactly what you need from your chef's knife and make an investment in quality. You could keep buying those generic $10 knives from the store every time your knife gets dull, but if you're serious about upping your kitchen game, a high-quality chef's knife is one of the best investments you can make.
What to consider when buying a chef's knife
Choosing the right size
Most chef's knives have an 8-inch blade and that's a pretty safe bet if you're not sure what size to get. Depending on your skill level and the size of your hand, you might want a slightly longer or shorter blade for a good knife. There are chef's knives as short as 6-inches but you likely don't want to go shorter than 7-inches. You can also find blades as long as 9- or 10-inches, but those will be a bit more difficult to control and are not generally recommended for a beginner home cook.
The most common size for a chef's knife blade is 8 inches but there are plenty of larger and smaller knives available, too.
Consider the blade and handle materials
You can find chef's knife blades in alternative materials, including ceramic, but some composition of steel is the preferred material of 99.9% of knife makers the world over. For this list, we're only testing steel blades, of which there are lots of different grades. In general, a softer steel blade will be easier to sharpen but may not last quite as long. For an amateur home cook, the difference in durability is negligible and the ability to sharpen it should take priority for a quality knife.
The makeup of your knife handle is perhaps the more critical decision at hand. Chef's knife handles are made from a wide range of materials, including wood, bone, carbon fiber and steel. Wood and certain poly blends may be a little softer to the touch. There are also handles with contoured and ergonomic shapes, while some -- namely Japanese knives -- feature a more linear design. Hence, an ergonomic handle will depend on your personal choice.
The materials from which your chef's knife is crafted are worthy of careful consideration.
Difference between forged and stamped knives
A forged knife is made from one block of steel while a stamped knife is punched out of a sheet of metal. Forged knives are traditionally sturdier and more expensive. I've read some hot takes that modern knife-stamping technology has caught up to forged models and that there's not as big a difference as there once was. I'll be honest, I can feel when I'm wielding a stamped knife versus a forged one. In general, forged knives seem better balanced and they're often (but not always) stronger, meaning they'll last longer and keep their edge better.
Western (or German) knives vs. Japanese
German-style knives are generally heavier, with thicker blades and more pronounced bellies (the curve of the blade). This shape and weight are conducive to a rocking style of chopping. Japanese steel knives are generally lighter with thinner blades, making them a bit better for intricate slices, trims and push-chops. While it's certainly not necessary, I like having one of each at my disposal to use for certain tasks. To help decide between these two styles or whether you might want both at your disposal, here's more on the difference between a Western and Japanese chef's knife.
A good, sharp chef's knife should slice through tomatoes with ease.
How heavy should a chef's knife be?
This really depends on personal preference, experience level and what you intend to do with the knife. In general, Japanese-style knives are lighter and thus better suited for very precise chopping, mincing, dicing and the occasional chiffonade. German-style chef's knives are often thicker and heavier and might be a better choice if you're doing more basic chopping and dicing or breaking down bone-in chickens and such.