Most kitchen professionals will tell you that the best way to sharpen your knife is with a whetstone, and we do indeed recommend one here. That’s because, when done correctly, it will produce an incredibly sharp edge without removing too much metal from the blade. However, using a whetstone takes skill and experience. And for lots of people, an electric or pull-through sharpener can restore your knife’s edge without as much fuss as a stone might. So we recommend several of those that ought to work for most people and most knives.
However you choose to do it, it’s important that you keep your knives sharp; that’s because dull knives are dangerous knives.
- The best electric knife sharpener overall: Chef’s Choice 15 Trizor XV
- The best budget electric knife sharpener: Work Sharp Culinary E2
- A professional sharpener upgrade: Tormek T-1
- The best whetstone: Shapton Ha No Kuromaku 1000/5000 Ceramic Whetstone Set
- The best manual pull-through knife sharpener: Kitchen IQ Edgegrip 2-Stage Knife Sharpener
Our top picks
The reason for that is because they’re prone to slipping rather than slicing, which can be bad news for your fingers. But it is also a detriment to your cooking. Sharp knives make quick work of food prep, and clean cuts mean vegetables cook more evenly and proteins aren’t mangled when they hit the plate.
All knives need to be sharpened over time to maintain their usability, but some knives require more frequent sharpening. Carbon-steel knives tend to hold their edge longer than stainless-steel or high-carbon stainless-steel knives. They also tend to be more expensive. If you have a collection of high-end carbon-steel cutlery, we recommend you learn how to use a whetstone or have your knives sharpened professionally for at least biannual sharpening.
If you have stainless-steel knives, which are much more common in home kitchens, they will need more frequent sharpening, and an automatic sharpener can make the process smooth, easy, and fast. But you do need to remember that automatic grinders can take more material off your knife blade than a whetstone and wear them down over time.
In any case, there is a good chance that if you’re reading this, you need to sharpen your knives more often than you currently do, and the picks below are some great options to help keep your knives in tip-top shape whether you’re a more casual cook or the owner of a high-end single bevel blade.
New in this update: We tested a variety of new sharpeners with different designs, including the rolling Horl 3 (much improved), some very inexpensive whetstones (not great), and a jumbo pull-through sharpener called the Warthog.
The best electric knife sharpener overall: Chef’s Choice 15 Trizor XV EdgeSelect Professional Knife Sharpener
Pros and cons
Pros
- Can sharpen single bevel knives
- Sharpens to 15º angle
- Can sharpen, hone, and polish with a strop disc
Cons
- Does not have adjustable angle guide
- Takes practice for beginners
The Trizor’s ability to safely reshape and revitalize a knife’s blade will put even the most cautious knife owner at ease.
What we love: With slots for three different stages, the Trizor can sharpen, hone, and polish any kitchen knife you bring to it. Unlike a whetstone or a pull-through sharpener, where the knife runs along the edge of a static medium, the Trizor uses a motor to spin each of its discs to better mimic a grinding belt used by sharpening professionals.
With diamond abrasives for both sharpening and honing and a flexible abrasive material for the polishing stage, the Trizor can easily grind an entirely new edge into your knife—it can even convert the 20º blade angles into a sharper, more precise 15º angle that you typically find on a Japanese hybrid-style chef’s knife. It also has separate slots for both the left and right sides of a blade, which means you can use it to sharpen a single-bevel Japanese-style knife—something most knife sharpeners can’t do. The flexible polishing wheel can contour around the scalloped teeth of a serrated knife, another rarity among electric sharpeners. In our testing, we found that the Trizor could easily bring our chef’s knives back to paper-slicing territory with just a quick few swipes through the machine. And since it sharpens so quickly, it’s easy to grab the Trizor during a weeknight to revive your knife before you start on dinner. The spring-loaded guides hold blades in place tightly and the weight of the sharpener keeps it steady on the counter.
What we’d leave: While the Trizor is easy to use, it isn’t necessarily the easiest knife sharpener to learn how to use. It comes with an extensive manual that goes into great detail about how to sharpen different knife types (you need to approach Western, Japanese, and serrated knives all differently). And with multiple speed settings, it does take some know-how to approach sharpening the right way. The Trizor also removes more blade material with each use than a manual sharpener, similar to a professional using a belt grinder. While this is a great way to add a new edge to your blade, it does wear down on the blade’s total height over time.
The best budget electric knife sharpener: Work Sharp Culinary E2 Kitchen Knife Sharpener
Pros and cons
Pros
- Can sharpen single bevel knives
- Timed shutoff to prevent oversharpening
Cons
- More play in the slots than is ideal
It can’t do quite as much as the Trizor, but the Work Sharp E2 is less than half the cost, making it a great buy for your average home cook.
What we love: The Work Sharp E2 sharpener is a more basic electric sharpener than the Trizor, but may be all lots of home cooks actually need. It’s easy to set up and easy to operate—the Work Sharp has just two sharpening slots with spinning abrasive discs set at opposite angles to sharpen both sides of the knife’s edge to 20°. There’s also a ceramic honing slot to deburr your knife once the discs have set the edge. The E2 shuts itself off after a one-minute timer to prevent oversharpening, which is nice for nervous or novice users. It performs well too—knives came out of the Work Sharp with a fine enough edge to easily slice through a tomato. We also liked its price point and the fact that you can replace the grinding discs when needed, making it a good long-term buy. It’s a great option for anyone who’s ready to keep their kitchen knives in tip-top shape but isn’t quite ready to become a full-on knife nerd yet.
What we’d leave: While we were impressed with its results, the E2 didn’t leave knives as sharp as the Trizor. But that’s what we’d expect for a sharpener that costs half as much. And while we wish the slots for each knife were more secure, we liked that they are able to accommodate a wide variety of knives and kitchen shears.
A professional knife sharpener upgrade: Tormek T-1 Kitchen Knife Sharpener
Pros and cons
Pros
- Adjustable angle guide
- Professional quality sharpening discs
- Can sharpen single bevel knives
Cons
- Expensive
- More powerful than a beginner might expect
This is, hands down, the best knife sharpener we tried, but it has a price tag to match that quality. It’s closer to a professional sharpener, so we’d recommend it for experienced cooks looking for an upgrade.
What we love: When it comes to electric knife sharpeners, the Tormek T-1 is the best we’ve tried, full stop, the end. But with a price tag that’s more than double the Chef’s Choice, we’re hesitant to say it’s the best option for most home cooks. This is a scaled-down, user-friendly version of the professional electric knife sharpeners Swedish brand Tormek is known for. The grinding wheel is a smooth diamond-coated abrasive wheel that spins slowly, meaning it easily sharpens the edge while giving you control over how much material you’d like to remove. And it’s easy to change the angle of your blade. You can adjust and lock in the angle guide anywhere between 8° and 22°. The adjustment is freehand, which takes a little patience and precision, but there are tick marks at every angle, so you can see exactly where you set it. A honing wheel polishes and deburrs your knife, just be sure to follow the very clear instructions to hone with the blade facing up or you can put dings in the wheel. A couple other smart features add to the experience: An incredibly quiet motor means you don’t need to keep this in the garage or the basement to avoid a noisy kitchen, and a built-in magnet catches metal shavings as you make your edge. Finally, because this sharpens one side of the knife at time, you can use it to sharpen a single bevel knife.
The Tormek is as easy to use as any pull-through knife sharpener, but offers the kind of blade customization you typically can’t get without a whetstone.
What we’d leave: This is not a criticism of the T-1 as much as a note of caution to anyone using it for the first time: This is a powerful piece of equipment. If you aren’t paying attention to what you’re doing, you can pull much more metal off your knife than you intended. So sharpen with care. Also, the honing wheel also doesn’t have any guides, so most users will need to go through a bit of trial and error when learning how to best polish their blades.
The best whetstone: Shapton Ha No Kuromaku Ceramic Set
Pros and cons
Pros
- Removes metal efficiently
- Dries out quickly and completely after use
- Rubber feet keeps it stable
Cons
- Expensive for a whetstone
- Takes practice to use correctly
For performance, price, and, most of all, ease of use, there’s no better whetstone set than this duo from Shapton.
What we love: Most whetstones are finicky and require soaking ahead of time to make sure your knife edge glides smoothly across their surface. Shapton’s artificial stones, however, only require a few drops of water during use to keep your knives gliding with ease. While that may seem like a slight usability boost, the low amount of water used allows the stones to dry out completely between uses, keeping your whetstone’s integrity intact and preserving its durability. When it comes to how well they sharpen your edges, the two different stone grits work miracles on even the dullest blades. The rougher 1000-grit stone can reshape your blade in just 5 to 10 passes, making it efficient and easier to maintain the same angle. Other medium to coarse grit whetstones don’t remove metal as efficiently, leading to extra strokes required and the possibility that the angle you’re holding your knife at changes. Keeping a consistent angle is key to developing a perfectly sharp edge that’s even on both sides, and Shapton’s 1000-grit stone allows you to do so with the fewest passes of any whetstone we’ve tested. That’s important because the more passes you need to take, the more opportunities to unintentionally change the angle.
Once you’ve ground in your new edge, the 5000-grit stone will set it with just a few polishing passes on both sides of the blade. In our testing, knives sharpened on the Shapton whetstone went from dull to cleanly slicing paper in just one sharpening. Both stones come in vented plastic carrying cases that help them dry out between uses, and each case also has rubber feet and can be turned into a base that holds your knife in place on the counter while sharpening. Whetstone sharpening isn’t for everyone, but if you’re willing to learn the technique, this set will have you refining your knives like a pro.
What we’d leave: There are only two downsides to this whetstone set: the price and the skill required to use it. At around $100, the Shapton whetstone set is a decent investment if you’ve never tried sharpening with a whetstone before. Still, it’s a high-performance set that costs less than half of some of its high-end competitors. The biggest hurdle is taking the time to learn how to use a whetstone properly—because there are no built-in angle guides, there is a skill level required to get what you’re looking for out of this set. If you’re a beginner, however, you can always snag a set of plastic angle guides to help you learn how to properly hold your knife.
The best manual pull-through sharpener: KitchenIQ Edge Grip 2-Stage Knife Sharpener
Pros and cons
Pros
- Very simple to use
- Very inexpensive
Cons
- More for maintenance than revitalization
They don’t come more basic than the KitchenIQ, but they also don’t come cheaper. If you just want something to maintain basic blades on the regular, this gets the job done surprisingly well considering its price.
What we love: Pull-through sharpeners can get a bad rep in the kitchen knife community for lacking precision, but, for less than $10 at the time of writing, we think the KitchenIQ Edge Grip sharpener does enough to warrant a recommendation. With simple construction—a coarse sharpening slot with a carbide “V” and a ceramic honing slot—this little sharpener did bring a sharper edge to some of the duller knives we tested. This is basically a more aggressive version of a honing steel—it won’t completely reset a knife’s edge the way a whetstone or electric sharpener will, but it will refine and sharpen the edge that currently exists on your knife. And because the KitchenIQ is so small and convenient, you could run your knives through the honing slot after every use or two.
What we’d leave: There’s no getting around it: This won’t perform as well as an electric sharpener or a whetstone. It’s more maintenance than revitalizing a knife. Also, the sharpening “V” is in a fixed position, meaning you’re stuck with 20º blade angles. But for something this cheap, it delivers what we expect it to.
How we tested knife sharpeners
We used the dullest knives available on tough vegetables like butternut squash and delicate foods like tomatoes. After noting the results, we sharpened each knife according to the manual’s instructions and performed the same cutting tests again. We also evaluated each sharpener for ease of use and overall design.
What to look for in a knife sharpener
The key elements for any knife sharpener are simple: Does it sharpen knives well and is it easy to use. We looked for sharpeners that were made from high-quality materials (like diamond-coated abrasives and ceramic) and didn’t leave us feeling like our knives were in danger as we ran them through. We also looked for features like adjustable angles to make sure the edge is set correctly, safety features to avoid unnecessary nicks and cuts, and overall design and build quality.
In our whetstones we looked for stones that sharpened knives efficiently with few passes.
Ultimately, the most important factor in picking a good sharpener was how well it actually sharpened knives. In our testing we were surprised at how many knife sharpeners we tested that just did not cut it (pun intended).
Other knife sharpeners we liked
We weren’t huge fans of the previous Horl 2 sharpener (you can read why below), but with the updates made to the Horl 3, we’ve changed our tune. The Horl system is easy even for someone with no sharpening experience. It uses a magnetic block that holds your knife at either a 15º or 20º angle, combined with a rolling tumbler that has a diamond disc on one side and a ceramic disc on the other. Once your knife is locked into place on the magnet, simply roll the tumbler along the edge to sharpen it with the diamond side and hone the edge with the ceramic side. The Horl 3 features a stronger magnet to better hold your knives in place along with a more abrasive diamond disc. This greatly improved how quickly it sharpened an edge—something that took ages with the Horl 2. The tumbler also felt more secure when rolling, giving us fewer safety concerns. We liked that the Horl 3 offered good control over the whole sharpening process and how gently it removed metal—electric sharpeners and pull-through sharpeners can peel away steel quickly, wearing down the knife. What we don’t love is the price—the Horl 3 costs more than most knives we’d recommend, even if we did like the sharpness of the results. This is a good option for someone who doesn’t want the full whetstone experience but also wants to extend the life of their blade. Just know you’re going to have to pay for it.
Knife enthusiasts have generally had positive things to say about King stones, and we had a good experience with this one. As a starter whetstone set, it’s inexpensive and performs well. It comes with a 1000-grit stone and a 6000-grit stone sandwiched back-to-back with a rubber divider separating the two, and it also comes with a plastic holder that lets you brace your whetstone against the counter with its rubber feet. While we thought the 1000-grit stone sharpened the edge well, the 6000-grit stone was almost too fine—it did set the edge, but we found that it was harder to get the knife properly aligned on such a slick surface. Still, once we got the hang of it, the KW65 produced a sharp edge that rivaled all. For a basic whetstone set, each side is well finished and holds up to use over time. We think that it’s worth splurging on a nicer whetstone if you have high-end knives, but anyone curious about trying their hand at whetstone sharpening could do worse than this combo stone from King.
We didn’t have high hopes for a pull-through sharpener that costs less than a happy hour cocktail, but we were surprised with the results. Like most pull-through sharpeners, it features two angled pieces of steel forming a “V” shape that you draw the knife’s edge through. But instead of moving the knife through the sharpener, the AccuSharp is a handheld model with a knuckle guard that you move over a blade resting on the counter, pointing up. Just a few passes made the knife sharp enough to cut paper, though it didn’t give a particularly refined edge. We wouldn’t want to sharpen high-end knives with this thing, but it’s a great little tool to have on hand if you keep cheap knives around for cutting brownies out of a glass dish or other tasks that brutalize edges.
Knife sharpeners we don’t recommend
Horl 2
The Horl sharpening system is unlike any of our top picks—it uses a magnetic block to hold a knife at either a 15° or 20° angle and a rolling cylinder with a diamond abrasive sharpening side and a finer honing side. Even though it’s a manual knife sharpener, its rolling disc functions more like the electric sharpeners. But, because it’s a manual sharpener, the Horl system only sharpens with the amount of pressure you apply to the roller. In our testing we didn’t find it produced as sharp of an edge as we wanted. And for a similar price you could just get the Trizor. Since our testing, Horl has released a number of sharpeners at varying price points, and while it’s still not a top pick for us, people who are averse to electric sharpeners but want something more versatile and effective than the KitchenIQ might appreciate it.
The Tumbler looks almost exactly like the Horl, though our testers found some bigger issues with the overall design. Like the Horl, it uses a magnetic block to hold your knife to an appropriate sharpening angle while the rolling tumbler (get it?) applies an abrasive disc to the edge. But the magnets on the Tumbler’s angle block were considerably weaker than those of the Horl. Because this style of sharpener relies on the pressure you apply to the knife, we felt there was more risk of the knife being pushed off the magnet, creating a dangerous environment.
It’s overbuilt, but at bottom, this is a pull-through sharpener. The fact that it offers adjustable sharpening angles should have been a plus, but it just didn’t perform well. To start, the blade guide is tricky to align the flat of your knife against, and the two sharpening rods are on springs, which give when you apply pressure. That makes it nearly impossible to create enough friction to sharpen your blades. Setting the angle guide was also confusing, and it felt like we were blunting the edge rather than sharpening it.
We were intrigued by the results of the Work Sharp Precision Adjust, which uses a swivel arm set at different angles to run the knife along the sharpening surface. In some ways, this Work Sharp feels like a mechanically assisted whetstone, and it produced some of the sharpest edges we tested. However, with its four-piece construction and a design that demands disassembly each time prior to storage, it felt like a lot of work to use. We also wish the clamp that held the knives was sturdier.
For a pull-through model that lacks a honing stage, the Brod & Taylor is expensive. It’s priced on par with good electric model, and its spring-loaded “auto-adjust” sharpening wasn’t intuitive to use. It’s built well, but the results were lackluster—especially at its $79 price point.
As an inexpensive pull-through sharpener, we didn’t have high hopes for the SunrisePro. It only has one stage of sharpening, leaving the edge rough and full of burrs, and we also didn’t like that it fastened through the table through suction—other pull-through sharpeners had a handle, which we thought felt much more secure.
The Zwilling V-Edge comes with a variety of angle guides and different ceramic inserts, but even those added features couldn’t overcome this sharpener’s awkward setup. It stands 8" high when mounted on the table, and that made it difficult to get the right angle of the knife into the actual sharpening slot. It’s also pricey for a pull-through sharpener, and we didn’t feel the results matched the $90 cost.
Even though the Presto EverSharp motorized sharpener has angled slots, we still found it awkward to try and position the knife correctly with each pass. It takes a bit more know-how than our top electric picks, and with completely fixed guides, it’s really only useful on Western-style knives with a 20º edge angle. Even setting all that aside, it couldn’t match the sharpness of the Trizor or Work Sharp.
The Wüsthof Easy Edge is a belt-style grinder, the style that many professional knife sharpeners use. The big issue? Sharpening a knife on a belt grinder requires multiple stages of sharpening and honing with different levels of abrasive belts, and this model only comes with one. The user guide does explain that you can purchase a variety of belts for better results, but with an already high price point of $170, we would have liked the included belt to be more impressive. We appreciate the idea behind this knife sharpener, but it wasn’t better than the Trizor, and if you’re going to the trouble of buying extra belts, you’d be better off splurging on the Tormek.
Sharp Pebble has marketed itself well, but we didn’t think this whetstone lived up to its online reputation. We liked the two-sided nature of the stone (one for sharpening, one for finishing), as well as the provided base and angle guide. But as we used the Sharp Pebble, it required more passes than other whetstones we tested to properly sharpen the edge. The corners of this stone also felt unfinished, which just isn’t a great sign for its quality. Its overall performance is fine, but any attempt to frame this Sharp Pebble set as a good option for entry-level sharpeners ends at its $38 price—it’s frequently 30% more expensive than the King set, which has been a go-to for knife enthusiasts for over a decade.
After unboxing this whetstone, it seemed clear it was an exact copy of the Sharp Pebble model we tested, at one-third the price. While we can’t verify that there aren’t structural differences in the material used, this whetstone performed the same—it did an adequate job sharpening knives, but notably worse than our favored options.
Professional knife sharpeners often use a belt grinder to quickly remove metal and reset an edge. This belt grinder from Work Sharp is like a portable home version, designed to let users reset their knives’ edges like a pro. It worked but was just a less precise version of the Tormek that we loved. It’s considerably cheaper at $170, but also a lot fussier. There’s a lot of slack in the belt, making it hard to find the right angle, even with a helpful angle guide. A tighter belt, however, runs the risk of snapping during grinding, creating safety risks. And then there’s the belt system itself. The Work Sharp comes with a variety of different grit level belts, and the instructions suggest a combination of three different belts to sharpen and hone your knife. Removing and installing new belts wasn’t a fast or smooth process, so having to do it twice increased both the amount of time and effort involved. The results were fine—the knives easily cut paper cleanly for the most part—but the combination of price and process make it hard to recommend for most people. For a more professional experience you’d be better off splurging on the Tormek or going for a whetstone.
Additional testing by Melissa Knific and Noah Kaufman