Natural sweeteners ranked: which one is actually worth it?
The best natural sweetener depends on what matters most to you: taste, blood sugar impact, baking performance, or ingredient simplicity. Monk fruit tends to rank highly for low-sugar everyday use, while honey, maple syrup, stevia and coconut sugar each solve a different problem. There is no single winner.
Our ranking, with caveats
- No natural sweetener is best at everything.
- Monk fruit is one of the stronger options for low-sugar sweetness in drinks and simple swaps.
- The right choice depends on your use case, not the marketing on the front of the pack.
- What you're actually buying matters more than the "natural" label.
There are more sugar alternatives on shelves now than at any point in history. That's great for choice, but it makes picking one genuinely confusing. Below is an honest breakdown of the most common natural and artificial sweeteners, ranked loosely by how well they hold up across taste, health and everyday practicality. Treat the ranking as our opinion, not a scoreboard.
1. Monk fruit decoction
Made from the whole dried fruit simmered in water. It has a negligible calorie and glycaemic impact at typical serving sizes, a soft and rounded sweetness, and no cooling effect. It's less refined than purified monk fruit extracts, and it's the option we'd choose for daily hot drinks and simple swaps.
The main trade-offs are price and, until recently, limited availability in the UK compared with more established options. It's also concentrated (around 3x as sweet as sugar), so it doesn't add bulk to a recipe the way sugar does. For a plain whole-fruit decoction, most people find a softer finish than stevia or erythritol, though taste is subjective.
Best for: everyday drinks, breakfast bowls and simple cooking. We'd reach for it first for coffee, tea and yoghurt. In baking it works, but you usually adjust the recipe, since sugar also adds bulk, browning and moisture, not just sweetness.
2. Stevia
Extracted from the leaves of the stevia plant. Negligible calories and a negligible glycaemic impact. Widely available and affordable. The common drawback is taste: many people find a bitter, liquorice-like aftertaste that's hard to get past, especially in larger amounts. Despite the "natural" image, the end product is highly processed.
Best for: a cheap, widely available low-calorie option, if the aftertaste doesn't bother you. We'd skip it for hot drinks where that finish is most noticeable, but it's fine for people who genuinely don't taste it.
3. Erythritol
A sugar alcohol produced through industrial fermentation. About 70% as sweet as sugar with close to zero calories. It's an approved additive (E968) and widely sold across the UK and EU. It tastes fairly clean but can leave a cooling sensation on the tongue, and it causes digestive discomfort for some people. A 2023 study in Nature Medicine also raised questions about erythritol and cardiovascular event risk, though the research is still developing and not settled.
Best for: baking where you need bulk, and for people who tolerate sugar alcohols well. We would not use it as an everyday hot-drink sweetener, because the cooling effect is hard to ignore once you notice it. More on why we left it out in Monk fruit without erythritol.
4. Xylitol
Another sugar alcohol, commonly found in sugar-free chewing gum and dental products. Good for dental health, since it inhibits the bacteria that cause tooth decay. It can cause significant digestive issues, including bloating and diarrhoea, especially in larger amounts. It's also extremely toxic to dogs, which is worth knowing if you have one.
Best for: dental products and chewing gum. We wouldn't pick it for cooking or daily use.
5. Coconut sugar
Made from the sap of coconut palm flowers. It tastes like a mild brown sugar and contains some trace minerals and inulin fibre. But it has almost the same calorie content as regular sugar (around 15 calories per teaspoon) and a glycaemic index of about 54, only slightly lower than table sugar.
Best for: a less refined sugar with a different flavour. Not a blood sugar strategy, whatever the packaging suggests.
6. Date sugar
Ground dried dates. It keeps the fibre, vitamins and minerals of whole dates and has a warm, caramel-like flavour. But it's still sugar, with roughly the same calories and glycaemic impact, and it doesn't dissolve well in liquids, which limits where you can use it.
Best for: baking where you want a whole-food sweetener and don't mind the calories. Not a sugar reduction move.
7. Agave syrup
A liquid sweetener from the agave plant, often marketed as natural and low-GI. Its glycaemic index is lower than sugar, but it's very high in fructose, up to around 90%, which is processed by the liver and, with regular consumption, has been linked to fatty liver and metabolic issues. Nutritionally it's arguably no better than table sugar, despite the natural branding.
Best for: occasional use in a specific recipe. We wouldn't lean on it as a daily replacement.
8. Yacon syrup
Made from the root of the yacon plant. It contains fructooligosaccharides (FOS), a prebiotic fibre. It's lower in calories than sugar and may support gut health, but the FOS content can cause noticeable bloating and gas. Availability is limited and the price is high.
Best for: people specifically after prebiotic benefits who tolerate FOS well.
9. Sucralose (Splenda)
An artificial sweetener made by chemically modifying sugar molecules. It's around 600 times sweeter than sugar, has zero calories, and is heat-stable, so it works in cooking and baking. Some studies have raised concerns about its effect on gut bacteria and insulin signalling, though regulatory bodies still consider it safe. It's a manufactured product, not a natural one, which matters to some people.
Best for: a cheap, heat-stable, zero-calorie option, if the artificial origin doesn't bother you.
10. Saccharin and aspartame
The oldest artificial sweeteners, still found in diet drinks and low-calorie products. Both have been the subject of health debate for decades. Aspartame in particular attracts regular controversy: the WHO classified it as "possibly carcinogenic to humans" in 2023, though the same assessment kept the acceptable daily intake unchanged and applies at consumption levels far above normal use. You can read the WHO summary directly. Both have a noticeably artificial taste.
Best avoided if you're trying to move towards more natural options.
A note on allulose
Allulose gets a lot of attention in baking circles for tasting and behaving remarkably like sugar. Worth knowing: it is not currently authorised for sale as a food ingredient in the UK or EU, with an FSA application in progress, so you won't find it legitimately on UK shelves yet. We've written a fuller comparison in what is allulose and how does it compare to monk fruit?
So which one?
The honest answer is that no sweetener is perfect for every situation. For everyday drinks and simple swaps, monk fruit decoction is the one we reach for. For baking that needs bulk, erythritol still has a place if the cooling effect doesn't put you off. And the "natural" ones with a real sugar load, coconut sugar, date sugar, agave, aren't blood sugar solutions, however they're marketed.
At Zilch, we came at this from a specific angle: we wanted clean everyday sweetness without sugar alcohols, without artificial sweeteners, and without pretending a sweetener behaves exactly like sugar. That's why we make a whole-fruit monk fruit infusion powder with soluble tapioca fibre rather than an erythritol blend. Knowing what's actually in the pack is more than half the battle, because most products on shelves are more complicated than their front labels suggest.
Why choose Zilch?
If a cleaner everyday sweetener is what you're after, that's the gap Zilch Monk Fruit Infusion Powder is built for: a traditional whole-fruit decoction with no erythritol, no sugar alcohols and no artificial additives, paired with soluble tapioca fibre for easy day-to-day use. It won't caramelise or add bulk like sugar, so it's at its best in drinks, breakfast and simple cooking rather than as a cup-for-cup baking swap. That's the trade-off, stated plainly.