The 13 Best Kitchen Knives for Home Chefs of All Skills

The ideal balance of price, performance and materials. Knife emporium ChefsKnivestoGo describes Tojiro’s DP series as “the gateway into the world of high-end Japanese cutlery.” Simply put, you will be hard-pressed to find a blade that’s made better than this one for under $100. The Tojiro DP Gyuto is a full-tang VG10 stainless steel knife. At just under 2 millimeters wide, the blade is thin like a Japanese knife, but the knife is heavier than most Japanese knives, solving the common issue many new Japanese knife owners have with their blades (traditional Western knives are beefy in comparison). The steel type is fairly common for a mid-priced knife, but because the core of the knife is laminated with a softer steel, it’s much easier to sharpen than most. Altogether, there isn’t a knife — Japanese or otherwise — that offers as much performance for the money.

Mac makes a number of more affordable blades, but its Pro series is when the brand starts to become superlative (it's about $50 more than the more popular Mac chef's knife, but it's worth it). The full-tang construction feels solid in the hand without being needlessly heavy, and the laminated steel used in the Pro version is miles better for edge retention and general sharpness.

This knife's base thickness is 2.5 millimeters, which is more than 20 percent thicker than our top pick, the Tojiro Gyutou. This makes it more of an all-purpose knife (starches and hardy vegetables are not an issue), but also means it doesn't glide through softer fruits and vegetables as gracefully. The higher carbon content in the blade makes small rust spots commonplace if you don't wash and immediately dry the knife after use (unlike true carbon steel knives, though, highly acidic items like lemons or limes don't immediately stain the knife). After using this knife for more than a year, it's the best higher-end knife we recommend. We also like Mac's 25-year warranty against material and construction defects.

When we first tested this knife, we thought the price was a mistake. The feel and look is that of a more premium knife, and given Mercer's track record with making strong-value chef's knives, that's not a huge surprise. The edge is taper-ground, meaning it's thicker at the base than it is near the tip. This makes for easier honing and a more stable blade (which is of enhanced importance when dealing with budget materials). We also appreciate the bend of the heel on the knife, which creates ample room for a pinch grip.

Many of the best knives we tested fold attributes from Japanese knife design into Western knife design, and Misen's budget-friendly blade is no exception. The bolsters at the base of the blade slope and allow for an easy pinch grip. Most traditional Japanese knives will not come with this, opting instead for the handle of the knife to move directly into the blade, which can be awkward for cooks used to having a designated spot to grip. Curving down from the top and up from the bottom, the blade shape itself is also Western in origin and makes rocking the blade up and down on the cutting board easier.

The shape and handle are rooted in Western design, but the thinness of the blade is Japanese, and this makes the Misen knife one of our top recommendations. Thicker, clunkier knives at this price point can, after a month or two of use, start to feel more like a chisel than a knife; tools to break vegetables open with. The extremely thin build of the Misen knife makes for an experience more akin to surgery than brute force.

The blade did eventually dull to the point that it needed sharpening (about three months of everyday use for us). Thankfully, the brand guarantees free sharpening for life. Mail it back to them and you'll have it back within a week.

Direct-to-consumer brand Made In started with cookware, which remains its bread and butter, but the brand’s debut chef’s knife (released in 2018) is stellar. The blade is quite big and made with X50CrMoV15 steel (a mixture of carbon, chromium, molybdenum, vanadium, manganese and silicon), which is a staple for high-end Western blades. It is best described as a high-carbon stainless steel, meaning it carries some traits from carbon and stainless steel knives.

According to our tester, Made In's 8-inch full-tang chef's knife is hefty yet not too heavy. He found that the even distribution of weight helped drive into what he was cutting, even if it was squash, allowing for clean, safe cuts even when moving fast. The knife itself is also easy to clean, whether by hand or with a brush. The handle doesn't harbor excess moisture, and it's easy to grip. The pointed tip helps tackle smaller tasks — like juliennes — while the curved blade makes for easy chopping.

The one downside noted by our tester wasn't actually on the knife itself but rather the sheath it comes with, which he described as far from on par with the actual tool, leading him to search for a compatible replacement.

Very, very similar to our best overall pick, the Tojiro knife, Mercer Culinary's MX3 is a thin Japanese-style knife with a hardwearing stainless steel core and a sharp (and sharpenable) high-carbon steel exterior. It's also full-tang and comes with a limited lifetime warranty. A strong backup option if the Tojiro knife is sold out, which happens every now and then.

Global’s kitchen knives are really weird. Here’s why that’s a good thing.

The design is both Japanese (the blade is very light and very thin) and anti-Japanese (its balance isn’t pushed toward the cutting end and the whole thing is one piece; most Japanese-style knives taper into a wooden handle). This means it has the nice slicing properties you’d expect from a great Japanese knife but in a much more durable, familiar package. Its stainless steel makeup (exact properties are proprietary) resists staining or corrosion and remains wicked sharp during use.

In testing, we tried comparably priced Mac knives ($94) and a few other more premium options, but only Tojiro’s Good Design Award-winning knife ($85) balanced the features of a typical Japanese knife with lower maintenance, reasonable prices, edge retention and smart design quite like Global’s G-2.

A Western-style knife (sometimes called a German-style knife) is typically going to be heavier and have a thicker blade than a Japanese-style knife. Most Western-style knives sport more defined handle ergonomics as well (more details here). The category of Western-style chef’s knife is very, very large, but after testing two dozen of them, Zwilling’s 8-inch takes the cake. It is a stainless steel knife (the exact properties of the steel are proprietary) that’s stain- and corrosion-resistant. After months of testing, the blade didn’t chip or show signs of dulling in any way.

The largest differentiating factor between Zwilling’s 8-inch and Wüsthof’s highly-recommended forged 8-inch ($170) was the bolster. The Zwilling knife’s bolster fades into the blade less dramatically than the Wüsthof which, when using a pinch grip, was a lot more comfortable. That said, both got on sale fairly frequently and are solid buys.

Along with Mac and Global, Shun completes the triumvirate of widely popular Japanese kitchen knives, and while the brand makes dozens of chef's knives, it's the Classic that's most worth your money.

Manufactured in Seiki City, one of Japan's knifemaking capitals, it's equal parts brawn and beauty. The blade reaches 61 on the Rockwell hardness scale, which is well above average and is a reasonably consistent measure of the general quality of a knife. It's thin and extremely light in the hand, but the blade shape is familiar. The Damascus blade finish is nice to look at, but it's the 32 layers (16 a side) of stainless steel that's more noteworthy. The height and length of the knife are also a little bigger than most in this range, which makes scooping up chopped veggies a touch easier.

It’s hard to put into words how great this knife is. It is impeccably balanced, gorgeous to look at and scores a high 58 on the Rockwell scale. It slices, chops and glides through anything gracefully and is somehow also fairly corrosion-resistant. It’s made of slightly altered AUS-8 steel, which has good edge retention and is also easy to sharpen. Its biggest fault is a penchant for staining, but staining only occurs when not properly cleaned and dried after use. This is a knife you give as a gift to someone who you know will maintain it — maybe yourself.

David Olkovetsky’s Artisan Revere chef’s knife borrows design traits from some of America's best knifemakers and, despite an eye-watering $445 price tag, makes them more accessible than their ultra-luxe progenitors. It's got a tall, thin profile and swooping ergonomic heel that's a lot like knives from lauded American knifemaker Bob Kramer. Its curvy handle pays homage to Murray Carter’s “International Pro” style grip. Before considering materials or other specs, the shape and fit is a joy to cook with. The out-curving heel creates a perfect spot for the inside of your middle finger to press against while your pointer finger and thumb are pinching the blade. But the materials are great, too.

A former metals analyst, Olkovetsky knife is made with a high-carbon, high-hardness, high-alloy stainless steel called Elmax in lieu of a true carbon steel or layered stainless-carbon hybrid. Through a full year of testing, it's only been sharpened once.

Eytan Zias has been running The Knife House in Portland, Oregon, since 2007, selling and servicing knives. In 2021, Zias got into the business of manufacturing knives with his new brand Steelport. As of now, Zias is only manufacturing an 8-inch chef's knife, made, of course, in Portland, and it's a doozy.

The high-carbon, full-tang knife is crazy sharp to the point that we made extra care when washing so we didn't end up cutting off our finger, a big fear after we found just how easily this cuts through basically anything. The bolster encourages a pinch grip, so constant chopping wasn't much of a strain on the hand. The very-generous 2-inch height provides ample space, even for those with extra-large hands, and the handle is made of Oregon bigleaf maple, paying homage to the great state it's made in.

The Hast Chef Knife looks a lot like the Global knife on this list — it's made from a solid piece of steel that makes it easy to clean and wield. The knife won the 2021 Red Dot Design Award for design, and its design directly correlates with how well this knife performs. It's made to encourage a pinch grip, and the steel is Matrix powder steel, which is scary sharp out of the box, but also surprisingly lightweight. Going to pick up the knife, you'd expect it to be quite heavy, but holding it in your hands — and using it to cut — is a breeze and easy on the wrist.

While a good chef's knife will cover a lot of ground in your kitchen, it's not the perfect tool for every culinary task. So to better equip yourself to handle any countertop cutting duties that come your way, we recommend picking up a more robust kitchen knife set.

German knife maker Wüsthof is one of the world's most respected brands when it comes to kitchen cutlery, and their Classic 9-Piece Block Set has everything you need when it comes to food prep. Each full-tang knife in the set — which includes a paring knife, bread knife, kitchen shears and more — is made in Germany from high-carbon stainless steel and is backed by a limited lifetime warranty. One of our testers is a Wüsthof devotee after having purchased their 20cm Classic Santoku Knife, and now he's constantly on the hunt for other blades from the brand — a testament to their outstanding quality.