our buyers guide takes you through everything you need
to know when looking for high-quality manuka honey.
- plus-
our recommendations on the top brands, apiaries and producers in the market today.
Our Reviews:
Finding The Best Manuka Honey brands - 2026 Ratings
Chances are you're here because you've been hearing about all the incredible health benefits of this superfood: Manuka Honey.
Manuka Honey is a unique type of honey made from the nectar of manuka flowers, which are native to New Zealand, and has been a staple in our kitchen for many generations!
Over the years this honey has been the subject of thousands of studies due to its unique antibacterial activity. Infections and wounds that simply did not respond to regular antibiotics seemed to clear up within days of being dressed with manuka honey, to the point that it is now a common treatment in New Zealand hospitals for treating wounds and infections.
Manuka honey has also been found to have many additional health benefits, making it one of the today's true superfoods. Any time someone in our household has a cough or cold coming on, it's straight onto the manuka! You can read more about the many benefits here.
This guide is to help those interested in purchasing manuka honey for the first time. Unfortunately, there are many low quality and even fake manuka honey products circulating, however, thankfully the manuka honey industry in New Zealand and Australia has strict grading systems (MGO, UMF, KFactor and AMHA) to give confidence to buyers. This means requires comprehensive testing for purity and authenticity. We'll go over all of those in this guide, or you can click here to jump there now.
We've also tasted and tested all of the brands listed in our rankings below, and are confident our guidance and reviews will be useful in helping you find the right manuka honey for you!
best manuka honey brand 2026
Our #1 Pick: NEW ZEALAND HONEY CO. Raw Manuka Honey UMF 24+
The New Zealand Honey Co is one of the highest quality manuka honey producers in the world today.
This is a reasonably new company owned by a family of beekeepers, and they now partner with various honey farmers across New Zealand to bring you pure, raw, organic unadulterated manuka honey.
It is 100% New Zealand owned and operated and produces top grade Manuka for New Zealanders and for export to the United States and internationally.
NZ Honey Co. has a wide range of honey, included certain batches that grade among the purest manuka honeys available to retail today. Every jar is also:
- Raw
- Organic
- Certified glyphosate free
- Halal
- UMF certified
These are all important factors, but what makes NZ Honey Co stand out are their high UMF ratings.
Our top recommendation is their UMF 24+ product, which is almost a miracle they are able to offer it at the price point they do.
There are only two or three producers we know of that have been able to achieve UMF 24+ gradings from the UMF Association, and those consistently go for hundreds of dollars per jar.
The fact that NZ Honey Co manages to offer their UMF 24+ product in the $50 range is almost unbelievable to us.
However, we have looked closely into their certifications and indeed tried most of their range, and have even called the UMF Association and confirmed their gradings, and are happy to confirm it is 100% genuine and legitimate.
Let us offer some perspective. As beekeepers ourselves, we understand the difficulty in producing honey of this quality, but the regular consumer may not. The manuka tree only blooms for about a month per year, sometimes less, and only in specific parts of New Zealand. To produce honey of UMF 24 purity, conditions literally need to be perfect. To produce a top graded monofloral manuka honey, the hives must be extremely isolated so the bees only collect nectar from manuka trees, meaning they often need to be hidden deep in remote manuka forests, sometimes only accessible by helicopter. Then the extraction process must be flawless, to ensure freedom from contaminants or impurities. Not to mention - a little bit of luck is required too. As we said, the manuka blooming season is fickle and some years, there's no bloom at all.
When you get a jar of UMF 24+ honey, understand you are holding a true miracle of nature in your hands, one of the world's most potent superfoods, and an absolutely delicious one at that!
How does it taste?
This honey is fudgey, caramel brown and actually has slightly less sweetness to many others we've tried. The manuka bitter aftertaste is semi-strong, but not unpleasant. A bit of an acquired taste for some, but we think you'll love it.
This is our go-to recommendation for people wanting Manuka Honey for medicinal purposes. Getting a UMF rating this high ensures you will have extremely high antibacterial activity, even higher than those used in some hospitals.
For wound treatment or preventing/treating infection, every bit of MGO helps and the 1,000+ MGO rating will certainly pack a serious punch. This makes it the best manuka honey for things like infections, the immune system and anything to do with anti-microbial purposes.
And of course, it's still great for adding to your daily food and drink as well!
Either way, due to its exceptional quality and more than reasonable price, this easily gets our top pick for the best manuka honey on the market today.