The 3 Best Knife Sets of 2024 | Reviews by Wirecutter

By Kathleen Squires

Ask any chef what their most essential kitchen tool is, and they will undoubtedly answer: a good set of knives. The same holds true for any home cook who aims to set up an efficient kitchen.

Though you can buy knives piecemeal, investing in a quality set is a great way to easily secure all of the basics, along with a handy storage option, in one fell swoop.

This set includes the most useful knives for home-kitchen use, plus pull-apart shears, a honing steel, and a storage block. We’re confident that these sharp, durable knives will provide years of use.

This cheap but sharp knife set is a good, durable option for both beginner and seasoned cooks. The space-saving knife holder fits flat in a standard drawer, a nice feature for smaller kitchens.

May be out of stock

This customizable option lets you cherry-pick your knife set. We chose the magnetic block and Oliva Elite knives, which look as good as they perform. Building your own set gets you a 20% discount.

We tried to limit testing to sets that are light on filler and include a block, essential knives, shears, and a honing steel.

We sliced through pounds and pounds of produce, cheese, and hearty bread to find the sharpest, most precise blades.

The handles on the cutlery we tested had to be comfortable to hold, as well as safe to grip securely even when wet.

We sought out knife blocks with a streamlined design. If they were magnetic, we tested how securely the knives adhered to them.

After more than 75 hours of researching knife sets and testing 18—chopping, slicing, and peeling over 25 pounds of fruits and vegetables—we’re confident that nothing beats the Wüsthof Classic Ikon 6-Piece Starter Knife Block Set.

Regardless of which knife set you choose, taking good care of your knives will help them stay sharper and last longer. Read our guide to how to care for your kitchen knives to ensure a long life for your set.

These forged high-carbon stainless steel knives were consistently the sharpest of our test group as we sliced everything from onions to carrots to semi-hard cheese. Among all the knives we tested, the Wüsthof set’s grippy, ergonomically shaped handles were the most comfortable to hold. Plus, extra slots in the block and a “Build Your Own Knife Block Set” option allow for expansion and customization. For the price, performance, and durability, the Wüsthof Classic Ikon 6-Piece Starter Knife Block Set is the best choice to meet your home-kitchen needs.

This cheap but sharp knife set is a good, durable option for both beginner and seasoned cooks. The space-saving knife holder fits flat in a standard drawer, a nice feature for smaller kitchens.

May be out of stock

If you’re looking for a cheap but decent set, we recommend the Victorinox Swiss Classic In-Drawer Knife Holder. In our tests, the stamped, high-carbon stainless steel blades remained sharper and held their edge better than costlier sets such as those from Zwilling and Cangshan.

These knives are lightweight and well balanced, with comfortable, albeit utilitarian-looking, plastic handles that provide a good grip even when wet. And although the included 7.5-inch “carving” knife is smaller than a standard chef’s knife, in our tests it handled most of the same tasks with surprising ease. It’s just not ideal for particularly tough items, such as large, hard winter squash.

Though this set lacks shears and a honing steel, it offers the most basic knives you’re likely to need in the kitchen for a bargain price.

The space-saving block fits snugly in standard kitchen drawers and includes a handle for easy portability. This set is such a good value that we also think it would be a good investment for secondary properties and vacation rentals.

This customizable option lets you cherry-pick your knife set. We chose the magnetic block and Oliva Elite knives, which look as good as they perform. Building your own set gets you a 20% discount.

If you’re looking for a high-end, truly superior knife set, we recommend Messermeister’s Build Your Own Block Set. Specifically, we picked the handsome arc-shaped Magnetic Knife Block, the Oliva Elite knives and honing steel, and pull-apart kitchen shears, and we were thrilled with our choices.

In our tests, the knives’ smooth, ergonomic olive-wood handles were a pleasure to hold, and the forged German blades were extremely sharp. They cut easily through vegetables of varying textures without slippage, and they were useful for intricate tasks, such as supreming oranges. The magnetic block is a beauty, taking up minimal counter space and allowing you to see which knife you’re pulling.

Since the set is customizable, you can avoid unwanted filler and mix cutlery from different collections, including, if you wish, more affordable options than those we tested.

Award-winning food writer and cookbook author Kathleen Squires, who wrote the 2023 update of this guide, spent 35 hours researching more than 30 knife sets and testing seven of them.

Senior staff writer Michael Sullivan and deputy editor Christine Cyr Clisset, both past authors of this guide, collectively spent dozens of hours researching and testing knife sets.

If you are setting up a kitchen for the first time and unsure of what knives you need, buying a good set should cover the basics. Knife sets are also practical wedding or graduation gifts (unless you’re superstitious).

If you own a set of knives that struggle to maintain a sharp edge or have cracked handles, it’s probably time to upgrade. A budget option can also be a worthwhile investment for owners of secondary properties or vacation rentals.

If you’re not into tracking down the perfect individual knives and just want sharp pieces that cut well, a set makes buying easy. However, if you don’t mind mismatched handles and prefer a custom-made collection that suits your exact cooking needs, we recommend buying knives piecemeal.

After consulting professional chefs and culinary instructors, we concluded that a good set should include the following pieces:

The following are not required but useful:

Our testing has evolved since we first published this guide in 2013. For the latest update, we tested knife sets that met the following criteria:

See our guide to chef’s knives for more information on what makes a well-crafted knife.

We tested knife sets by evaluating the overall sharpness of the blades and putting them through these common tasks:

For larger knives, we noted whether they had enough hand clearance to prevent our knuckles from hitting the cutting board.

To test the knife blocks, we checked whether the knives slid easily into and out of their slots without snagging. For the magnetic blocks, we paid attention to how securely the knives stuck and how convenient they were to remove and put back.

The best knife set for home cooks is the Wüsthof Classic Ikon 6-Piece Starter Knife Block Set. In comparison with all of the other sets we tested in this price range, the knives in this set were the sharpest and most durable; while our upgrade pick performed just as well, this set provided the better value.

The ergonomic knife handles provided a steady grip, and they did not become slippery when wet. The acacia block gives this set a classic look that fits the aesthetic of many kitchens.

It comes with all of the essentials. The Classic Ikon starter set includes a 15-slot acacia block, pull-apart kitchen shears, a honing steel, and three knives: a 3.5-inch paring knife, an 8-inch chef’s knife, and an 8-inch serrated bread knife. Unlike sets that lack some of these items, such as our budget pick, this set covers the bases of what most home cooks need in a knife set.

Each piece cuts with precision. The knives in this set sliced through various textures of vegetables, fruits, bread, and cheese smoothly and without snagging.

Though we wished the bread knife were a bit longer, it made extraordinarily clean cuts through tomatoes and easily tackled thick country loaves.

The pull-apart kitchen shears glided smoothly through parchment. Though they were not quite as razor-sharp as the shears in our upgrade-pick set, they performed well on both parchment and twine.

The handles are ergonomically superior. Among the sets we tested, our top pick’s grippy handles were the easiest for us to hold, feeling weighty but not too heavy.

The chef’s knife rocked smoothly while we chopped carrots and onions, and the paring knife gave our testers easy control over intricate tasks such as peeling apples and mincing shallots. The utility knife was ideal for segmenting oranges and cutting cheese, thanks to its sharp tip and easy grip.

Extra space allows ample room to grow your collection. The solid-acacia block has five extra slots for kitchen knives and four slots for steak knives. Though it’s not as slim and attractive as the magnetic blocks of the Made In and Messermeister sets we recommend, the Wüsthof block is about 4.5 inches wide, one of the narrowest blocks we tested of this style.

The knives come with a limited lifetime warranty. If you encounter any problems, contact Wüsthof for a replacement.

The only (tiny) weakness is the bread knife. We’d prefer a blade with one or two extra inches, which would make cutting through a wide country loaf in one smooth stroke easier. That said, the Classic Ikon set’s 8-inch bread knife was sharp and effective.

This cheap but sharp knife set is a good, durable option for both beginner and seasoned cooks. The space-saving knife holder fits flat in a standard drawer, a nice feature for smaller kitchens.

May be out of stock

The inexpensive Victorinox Swiss Classic In-Drawer Knife Holder is a great set for both beginners and pros because anyone can use these knives. They can handle a beating, and they’re sharper than most competitors in this price range. They’re also comfortable to hold and lightweight.

Although this set doesn’t include kitchen shears or a honing steel, it remains a great starter set with proven longevity. We also think these knives would be a good investment for secondary properties and vacation rentals.

It offers great bang for the buck. The set comes with a 7.5-inch “carving” knife that easily doubles as a chef’s knife for most tasks, as well as an 8-inch bread knife, a 7-inch santoku, a 4-inch tomato knife, and a 3-inch paring knife.

The knives are light and manageable, and they performed well. At first glance, these knives may look and feel cheap—but don’t be deceived by their light weight, their chunky handles, and the fact that they are slightly shorter than the other knives we tested.

In our tests, the carving knife was lightweight and well balanced, which made it easy for us to manipulate and manage for long periods of chopping. Although its blade looked and felt diminutive next to the wider, heavier blades of the chef’s knives in other sets we tested, we were pleasantly surprised at how well it performed overall. It’s not ideal for particularly tough tasks—we struggled to cut through a large, hard kabocha squash, which is best handled with a heavy blade—but it did a fine job even on the unwieldy task of halving a medium-size watermelon.

The set’s santoku gracefully tackled vegetables of all textures, from slender scallions to large onions to firm carrots, and we found that we could also use it for tasks usually reserved for a chef’s knife.

The paring knife, which is also the top pick in our guide to paring knives, performed just as well as our top contenders despite being the shortest of the bunch. Its lightness made it feel especially manageable when we were peeling apples and mincing shallots.

The set’s bread knife was a real standout, performing just as effectively as 9- and 10-inch versions and slicing through hearty loaves with ease, though bread knives of longer lengths are preferable for wide loaves.

While the tomato knife might seem extraneous, one staffer commented that it’s good for children, as it doesn’t have a sharp tip and is well suited for small hands.

The knife block fits in a drawer. The streamlined storage can be a great option for kitchens with limited counter space. Though it offers no extra slots for adding to the set, they are long enough that you could swap in longer knives.

The block also has a built-in handle for easy portability, if you decide to pull your set out of the drawer and onto a countertop.

Victorinox covers these knives with a limited lifetime warranty, so contact the company if you need a replacement.

This customizable option lets you cherry-pick your knife set. We chose the magnetic block and Oliva Elite knives, which look as good as they perform. Building your own set gets you a 20% discount.

If you’re looking for a truly superior knife set, we recommend the customizable Messermeister Build Your Own Block Set. We selected the sculptural Magnetic Knife Block and knives from the Oliva Elite line, plus an Oliva Elite honing steel and kitchen shears. Not only does this option allow you to weed out filler, but you also get a 20% discount when you build your own set of at least five items and use the code BYOB at checkout.

Made from high-quality German steel, the forged Messermeister knives were notably sharp in our tests, and like the Wüsthof set, they tackled every type of chopping task we attempted with precision and ease. These knives are an aesthetic standout, too.

The set allows for customization. The Build Your Own Block Set lets you choose a knife block (you have three options, all magnetic) and cutlery from eight Messermeister lines. We selected knives from the Oliva Elite set because they are consistently well reviewed and the most similar design we could find to our previous upgrade pick, a walnut-handled set from Messermeister that the company has discontinued.

In addition to the sleek Magnetic Knife Block, we picked a 3.5-inch paring knife, a 6-inch utility knife, an 8-inch chef’s knife, a 9-inch bread knife, an 8-inch carving knife, a 10-inch honing steel, and kitchen shears. Customization allowed us to choose the most useful items, with the bonus of a 20% discount over buying them individually.

Each piece performed with precision and ease. In our tests, the chef’s knife cut through onions easily, and a nice curve to its blade allowed for an easy rocking motion when we chopped. The paring knife was lightweight and the perfect size for intricate tasks such as peeling or mincing shallots.

The bread knife was one of the sharpest serrated blades we tested, and at 9 inches, it was also the longest. It provided excellent precision and effortlessly cut paper-thin slices of rustic bread.

The shears are the sharpest and the most versatile. In our experience, Messermeister’s razor-sharp shears exhibited the least resistance when gliding through parchment paper. The handles offer the bonus of being ambidextrous, comfortable for lefties and righties to use.

These shears are also multitaskers: According to the manufacturer, they can serve as a nutcracker, a bottle opener, and a screwdriver (though we didn’t test them in those capacities).

The knives are gorgeous. The beautifully crafted ergonomic olive-wood handles provide a firm grip, are a pleasure to hold, and take the set to the next level aesthetically. Though olive wood requires some extra maintenance, as it requires periodic oiling to keep the finish, we think it’s worth the effort. We’re confident that this set’s exceptional knives will last for years to come.

The knife block is the best looking of the batch. Made from sturdy acacia wood, the arc-shaped magnetic block takes up minimal space and is easy to move around. All of the pieces we chose fit on it comfortably (the block can easily accommodate 10 knives). The flat surface makes it simple to clean and less susceptible to bacteria growth than slotted knife sets. Plus, the visibility of the knives allows you to avoid having to guess which one you’re pulling.

These knives have a limited lifetime guarantee; if you encounter problems, contact Messermeister for returns or replacements.

If you want a smaller, stylish set and don’t have much use for a bread knife: When it comes to good looks, the Made In Knife Set ranks alongside the Messermeister set in streamlined design.

The space-saving magnetic block has strong sticking power, and like the Messermeister block, its flat surface is easier to clean and is less susceptible to bacteria growth than slotted models. The knives come in a choice of black, red, blue, or pricier olive-wood handles.

The 8-inch chef’s knife, 4-inch paring knife, and 6-inch nakiri (a Japanese-style vegetable knife) all had comfortable grips, and they were sharp, easy to use, and up to any cutting task. The 9-inch bread knife was the only disappointment, as it required us to apply major elbow grease to cut bread; if it had performed better, we would have named this set as one of our picks.

This is not a comprehensive list of everything we’ve tested for previous iterations of this guide; instead, we’ve listed what’s still available.

The knives in the Zwilling J.A. Henckels Pro 7-Piece Knife Block Set weren’t as sharp as those in the other sets we tested, and the shears didn’t pull apart for easy cleaning. The block was prone to scratching and chipping when we returned the knives to their slots.

The handle of the chef’s knife in the Cangshan TC Series 1021219 Swedish 14C28N Steel Forged 8-Piece Knife Block Set jammed into our tester’s wrist while they were chopping, which was a dealbreaker. The shears were uncomfortable and inclined to stick when opening and closing, and the block was the bulkiest of the standard slotted blocks.

The F.N. Sharp Japanese Damascus 6 Knife Set lived up to its name in terms of sharpness, but the cumbersome magnetic block, which took up the most counter space due to its peculiar three-pointed shape, took this set out of the running. “Interior flex rods” inside the block offer extra storage but cheapen the look.

If you prefer Japanese-style knives, you might consider the razor-sharp Miyabi Artisan SG2 Collection 7-Piece Knife Block Set. But some testers with smaller hands complained that the handles were too wide, and the thin blades are delicate and must be treated with care.

Although the Global 10-Piece Knife Block Set was very sharp in our tests, it has a lot of filler knives that aren’t particularly useful. This set was polarizing for our testers, mostly due to the knives’ metal handles, which became slippery when wet.

The knives in the Shun Kaji 8-Piece Knife Block Set were finely crafted and razor-sharp, but our testers said that the handles were too long and heavy.

Some of our testers found the knives in the Shun Classic 9-Piece Knife Block Set too large and long for cooks with smaller hands. The chef’s knife may present a learning curve because it requires a back-and-forth sliding motion when you’re slicing, versus the rocking motion that people typically use with German knives.

The Mercer Culinary Renaissance 6-Piece Forged Knife Block Set is a decent beginner option, but our testers weren’t fans of the glass knife block, which many said resembled an ant farm. Some of our testers own Mercer knives and told us that they dull quickly and require frequent sharpening.

This article was edited by Gabriella Gershenson and Marguerite Preston.

Joseph Simon, instructor at the International Culinary Center, interview

Brendan McDermott, instructor at Kendall College and co-owner/bladesmith of Ravenswood Hand Forged, interview

Kathleen Squires

I test and review kitchen gear, small appliances, and packaged foods.

by Tim Heffernan and Lizzy Briskin

We sliced through pounds of steak, chops, and chicken to find a set of steak knives that’s sharp, stylish, and doesn’t break the bank.

by Tim Heffernan

We carved five turkeys, two beef roasts, a pork roast, and a ham to find an attractive, effective, and reasonably priced carving set.

by Tim Heffernan

The Chef'sChoice Trizor XV is the best knife sharpener we’ve found: It’s easy to use, durable, and puts an exceptional edge on many types of knives.

by Tim Heffernan

Should I use an electric sharpener on my expensive chef’s knife?

Light on filler: Sharp, high-carbon stainless steel blades:Comfortable handles with secure grips:Half-bolster chef’s knives:Smart storage:Quality and value:It comes with all of the essentials.Each piece cuts with precision.The handles are ergonomically superior. Extra space allows ample room to grow your collection.It offers great bang for the buck. The knives are light and manageable, and they performed well.The knife block fits in a drawer. BYOBThe set allows for customization.Each piece performed with precision and ease.The shears are the sharpest and the most versatile.The knives are gorgeous.The knife block is the best looking of the batch. If you want a smaller, stylish set and don’t have much use for a bread knife:

News

The 3 Best Knife Sets of 2024 | Reviews by Wirecutter