3 Best Bread Knives, After Testing 36 Blades (2026)

A former top pick, I still stand behind this knife’s performance and build quality. What I don’t love, however, is its spotty availability and fluctuating price. At around $60, I thought this knife was a steal. Now that its price has rocketed up to match Mac’s Superior Series bread knife, I can’t recommend it when the Mac offers better build quality and consistency. Still, if you can catch this knife on a deal, go for it—it’s sharp and nimble, but sturdy enough to tackle most tasks.

Like its sturdier cousin, this bread knife from Tojiro is sharp and swift. But when we originally picked this serrated knife, its price was around $40. For that price, this knife was a great pick. But its cheaper build quality, lack of a full tang, and slightly smaller wood handle mean we don’t see much value in recommending this knife now that it’s price has nearly doubled.

Bob Kramer is a legendary knife maker, but the Bob Kramer Essential Bread Knife by Zwilling felt like overkill for a serrated knife. Its $400-plus price point is excessive for a tool with such a narrow set of uses (no matter how often you bake homemade bread), and because this knife is made from carbon steel, it’ll be prone to corrosion and rust. Does it work well? Definitely; it was one of the better tomato knives we used. But is it worth the sky-high price? In our opinion, no.

This knife has a nice weight to it—stable without being heavy—and it’s easy to control through longer cuts. However, it wasn’t as sharp or efficient as the top performers.

Global’s great knives have won the hearts of many a BA staffer. That said, the brand’s metal handles are divisive—some people think they’re comfortable to hold and others find them too thin and slippery. While our testers say this knife is well-balanced and decently sharp, they ultimately disqualified it from our winners list due to its handle shape, short blade length (8.5″), and less-than-perfect performance in the tomato test, where its large teeth snagged just a bit on the tomato’s flesh.

Henckels’s riveted handle is comfortable, the knife tracks cleanly, and it performed especially well on tomatoes, but the 8″ blade struggles on larger loaves.

Ikea’s $25 bread knife handled bread and tomatoes competently without excelling at either. The serrations weren’t the sharpest we tested, but they cut cleanly enough for everyday use.

We were impressed by the sharpness of Kuhn Rikon’s serrations, which allowed for precise cuts. Its limitation is its reach; at under 8″, wide bread loaves demand more back-and-forth. But if you’re not into sourdough boules, this will be an impressive performer.

This is a beautiful knife (just look at that gorgeously curved handle grip), but the Lamson’s teeth weren’t sharp enough. The knife snagged on crusty sourdough boules and required a lot of force to make cuts. Its 8″ blade was also too short to cut through entire loaves, and it snagged slightly on tomato skin. Lamson does offer complementary sharpening for life, but for this price ($90 at the time of writing), we feel the bread knife should be sharper out of the box.

Sharp and well-made, we do like Mac’s Chef’s Series bread knife. But it’s only slightly cheaper than our top pick and doesn’t feature a curved belly. Again, the decision not to recommend it comes to value; you’ll get a much more better slicing experience if you drop an extra $10 on the Mac Superior.

Though it was razor sharp, MAC’s offset knife was too short to effectively slice bread. At only 7.5″, we had to maneuver it to make it through an entire sourdough loaf. We also didn’t like its offset blade, which made it hard to intuitively feel where the blade was compared to the handle. It did excel as a tomato slicer, but it would be hard to recommend it at this price point.

The first time we tested Made In’s bread knife, we found it lacked sharpness. That’s no longer the case—their slightly updated model has sharper serrations and slices through bread and tomatoes with ease. The big issues are with the weight and the price—the heftier handle does balance well against the blade, but overall it’s a heavy knife. It’s also more expensive than our top pick while having a shorter, straighter blade. This knife is fine, but there are plenty of others that offer better value.

A little too flimsy, this knife struggled to neatly slice through sourdough bread. Even though it was sharp, the blade tended to flex when cutting, creating uneven slices of bread. We also didn’t like the cheapness of the handle or the offset blade shape, but it did offer solid performance at a very affordable price.

For how pricey this knife is, we were disappointed in how dull the blade appeared to be. Because it’s difficult to sharpen a serrated knife, initial sharpness is a key factor in picking out the best option for your kitchen. This knife snagged on tomato skin and tore apart the delicate sourdough bread crumb. Though the handle was beautiful and felt nice in the hand, this knife was the most expensive model we tested and had some of the worst performance.

Considering it’s one of the most expensive bread knives we tested, we were hoping for better performance out of the Miyabi Kaizen 9.5″ Bread Knife. Instead, it crushed most loaves of bread instead of cutting them, and it got stuck on tomato cores.

The Opinel Intempora fell short—in some cases, literally—in a few areas. Its 8″ blade is shorter than we’d like, making it hard to cut through sourdough boules without changing the slicing angle. Its teeth weren’t quite as sharp as we’d like either. It didn’t mangle the tomatoes (a win!), but we had difficulty keeping the blade straight—the knife typically snagged on the fruit’s core, creating wobbly, inconsistent tomato slices. We do like the round polyurethane handle and the high-quality high-carbon stainless steel, but we expect better performance from a knife of this price.

The Shun Classic Master Serrated Knife has a unique wavy edge that adds to the overall serration pattern. It excelled at slicing paper-thin tomatoes and was comfortable to hold, but its edge shape didn’t consistently cut through bread well. Its blade was also on the shorter side, making this knife less well-suited for large loaves.

This knife has a lot going for it: The Shun Ultimate Utility looks almost like a toy shark and, accordingly, has plenty of bite—we loved how sharp its rounded teeth were. Its flat sides and curved tip mean that this knife is able to both slice your sandwich toppings and spread mayo on a piece of soft bread. It also sliced tomatoes perfectly and slid right through the crust of the sourdough boules. But its tiny 6″ blade, which is more similar to a santoku than a typical bread knife, made it hard to cut even slices. And when you factor in the price ($140 at the time of writing), we just can’t recommend it.

This model from Victorinox, the makers of one of our favorite budget-friendly chef’s knives, performed pretty well overall. Testers found that while the plastic handle looks flimsy, the knife cut really well and felt sturdy. However, this is an incredibly light knife—so much so that it verges on too light—and at more than double (or triple, at some stores) the cost of our affordable picks, it costs more than we think is worth spending.

The Victorinox Swiss Army 8″ knife sliced bread okay, but it required more effort than most other models; worse, it crushed tomatoes. It was also too lightweight to maneuver comfortably.

Sharp, well-made, and great at cutting, there’s a lot to like about the Wüsthof Classic bread knife. It easily sliced through tomatoes, and it cut swiftly through crusty sourdough bread. But its 8″ length struggled to span the entire loaf, and then there’s the price. As one of the most expensive bread knives we tested, we think there’s better performance for less money—or, you can upgrade to the double-serrated version, which was one of our top picks.

This knife from Wüsthof was sharp out of the box, but its short (8″) blade and lack of heft kept it from earning our recommendation.

The double serrations of this Ikon series knife performed as well on waxy surfaces as the Wüsthof Classic double serrated knife above, but struggled a bit against crusty bread. The bigger issue is that this knife regularly retails for about $200 (30% more than the regular Classic series knife). You’re paying for the Ikon finishes, which are lovely, but if you’re interested in double serration, we think the standard Classic offering (listed above) is a better bet at a slightly more affordable price.

Although billed as a “13-inch” bread knife, Zulay’s blade is only 8 inches. The short blade struggled with thick, wide sourdough loaves. It was also hard to control; the blade wandered during cuts, making it difficult to produce straight, clean slices. Both bread and tomatoes eventually yielded, but the process felt imprecise compared to most knives we tested.

We struggled to make clean cuts with Zwilling’s entry-level Gourmet series. While it sliced tomatoes just fine, its teeth often caught on crusty sourdough loaves, interrupting the sawing motion and requiring more force to power through. During testing, its handle scales felt clunky, making the knife awkward to hold and even more awkward to wield, and it failed to perform as well as our two budget picks—both of which are significantly less expensive.

Zwilling’s double-serrated knife is a good slicer, and its double-serrated edge is similar to the Wüsthof model we recommend. It performed well in testing, yielding thinly sliced tomatoes and perfectly straight slices of bread, but ultimately, this knife’s overall weight and high price tag kept it from being a winner. A bit heavier than much of the competition, Zwilling’s bread knife was trickier to wield comfortably, and its longer handle made it hard to find a good balance point.

Offset knives are awkward to cut with because they remove the leverage you can create with the handle. While this knife from Winco slices tomatoes nicely, it struggles with crustier bread and dulls more quickly than other serrated knives we tested. It does have a bargain price tag though, so there’s that.