The Best Beard Butter: Our Absolute Favorites

We’re not one to play favorites, but it we absolutely had to, we’d admit: beard butter is our #1, absolute, top-tier favorite beard product, and it’s not even close. In terms of itch-relieving potential, beardruff-relieving potential, and just general feel on your skin—hands down, it’s at the top of our list. So here we’ll go over our picks for the best beard butter, broken down into categories.

We’ll also tackle some of the most common questions guys have about beard butter (namely—”how is it different from all my other beard products?”) and discuss why, exactly, it’s so different than beard oils, or beard balms, or any of the other dozens of options you’ve got.

We value your time, so as we usually do, we’ll start with…

A Quick Summary, for Those of You in a Rush

Here they are:

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Alright, let’s get into it, with a quick explanation and then some in-depth reviews: 

Very Quickly, What is a Beard Butter Meant To Do?

Before we dive in, we should probably quickly mention what a good beard butter is supposed to do. There’s a lot of confusion as to what makes the product worthwhile, and our reviews will make a lot more sense if you know the actual purpose of a beard butter. Here it is:

A beard butter moisturizes and fortifies beard hair, but its main purpose is to provide nutrients to the skin *underneath* your beard. It moisturizes your skin to keep it from being dry, and in doing so, relieves a lot of the itchiness and flakiness that comes with growing—and then maintaining—a beard.

Most beard products moisturize your beard hair and make your beard look fuller—and beard butter does that—but only beard butter is designed to really work on the skin below your beard. In fact, many beard butter recipes resemble skin care products, and have a lot of nutrients that are known to help skin.

So, if you’ve got beard itch or facial dandruff (which people usually refer to as “beardruff”), a beard butter can help a great deal. It’s not a sure thing, but a lot of guys swear by beard butter, and say it’s a turning point for them—using beard butter is where their beards went from “manly-looking-but-driving-me-crazy” to “something-I-couldn’t-live-without.”

Best Beard Butter: Our Picks

We’ll start with one that a lot of guys don’t seem to know about:

Best for Beardruff and Itch (Tie): Bluebeard’s Original Beard Saver

Bluebeard’s Original Beard Saver doesn’t have the name recognition that some of the other beard butters have, and that’s a shame, because we absolutely love it: it’s packed full of ingredients that are great for skin (avocado oil to moisturize the skin and shea butter to fight itch), it treats both skin and hair (it can calm itch, but also coat beard hair in a way that’s not greasy or slick), and it’s easy to disburse through a beard with a wooden comb. Plus it’s got a pleasant scent—a hint of citrus / a little bit of lime, but not so much that it knocks you out. Some beard butters go waaaaaay overboard when it comes to scent, but it seems like Bluebeard has reached a nice balance when it comes to fragrance.

The best aspect of Bluebeard, however, is its ability to deaden some of that itchiness that comes with new and mature beards. It contains a lot of ingredients that you’ll actually find in women’s skincare products, and that’s FANTASTIC—we wish a lot more beard products took that approach. It’s not an all-natural formulation—in fact, there are a ton of chemicals that aren’t really recognizable unless you’re a scientist—but that’s par for the course when it comes to skincare products.

A Caveat Worth Noting

The only negative thing about it—and this is a critique of all beard butters, really—is that you can go through it pretty quickly, especially if you like to be generous with yourself when it comes to doses. The container itself is medium-sized (compared to a much larger container, like Maestro’s Beard Butter, which we’ll talk about in a moment), and it doesn’t really hold that much (our tub contained 4 ounces—the norm for most beard butters). Plus, if you’ve got a longer beard and you like to get all your beard hair moisturized, that can mean you go through it even more quickly. But—what can you do? That’s how it is with most beard butters. Even with that small complaint, it’s one of our favorites.

Best for Beardruff and Itch (Tie): Cremo Beard and Scruff Cream

Remember how we just said that Bluebeard Original Beard Saver doesn’t have much name recognition? Our next favorite is a beard butter with a LOT of name recognition: Cremo Beard and Scruff Cream. As far as beard butters go—and beard butters aren’t really a well-known product in the world of facial hair—Cremo is one of the bigger names.

The real advantage to Cremo’s beard butter is that it can do a number on itchiness. Cremo—which sounds like an old family-owned Italian business, but is actually two dudes in California—has a WIDE range of grooming products, and that’s fantastic, because it means they can put a lot of R&D into their products. Here, they’ve come up with a formulation that can take the bite out of a new beard—the product softens whiskers, so that they don’t dig into your skin when you’re growing a new beard out—but it also moisturizes your skin, so that when your beard is long and drawing your facial oil away from your skin (resulting in dryness and itchiness), the cream can hydrate it and relieve it.

Hence, the “beard and scruff” name—it’s a dual-use product that’s good for beards in the first stages of growth, all the way to fuller, more mature beards. That’s pretty fantastic, because you can use it regardless of how long your beard is.

What We Didn’t Love

Our only gripe about Cremo Beard and Scruff Cream is 1) it doesn’t explicitly say that it’s a butter, even though it contains one of our favorite butters, which is cocoa butter, and 2) it only comes in two scents, which are “Mint Blend” and “Forest Blend.” For a company as big as Cremo, we’d love it if they’d offer a wider selection of scents, which plenty other beard companies do.

The good news, however, is that those scents really deliver. The Mint Blend is fresh and bracing and perky—it is very, very doubtful that you will not experience the experience of mint when you wear it—and the Forest Blend is deep and pine-y, as we’d hope.

So this is our co-pick for “Best for Beardruff and Itch.”

Best Smelling: Live Bearded Beard Butter

We mentioned earlier that beard butters are kind of a “niche” product—most guys with beards know about beard oils and beard balms, but don’t know as much about butters.

That’s fine, but it becomes a problem because beard companies don’t want to invest a lot of money in a product that guys don’t know a lot about. That means they’ll make a beard butter, but wimp out about it—they’ll make one scent and call it a day.

Breaking Down Their (amazing) Scents

Live Bearded Beard Butter has a bolder approach, and they’ve leaned into scents in a big way: whereas most beard butters often a few scents, Live Bearded has (currently) SEVEN scents in their lineup:

• Legend Fragrance: sandalwood (deep) and vanilla (sweet)—the classic “barbershop” smell—warm and sweet;
• Campfire Fragrance / American: cedar (woodsy), vetiver (earthy/smoky), and bergamot (citrus-y)—outdoorsy and bright;
• Canyon Fragrance: juniper (perky), cypress (fresh/clean), fir needle (pine-y)—lively and rugged;
• 1880 Fragrance: bourbon (smoky), bitters (sharp), and citrus (bright)—pleasant and enticing;
• Tombstone Fragrance (great name!): sweet tobacco (think in a pipe, not a cigarette) and cedar (pine-y)—this is actually very original;
• Executive Fragrance: leather (earthy), vanilla (sweet), cedar (forest-y)—think “debonair”; and finally
• Straight Up: unscented.

How great is that? Way to be bold, men of Live Bearded! If you’re into scent—and we’re really, really into scent—you may want to explore Live Bearded.

It’s also worth noting that the formulation is top-notch. It leans heavy on the shea butter, which is a really effective moisturizer for both skin (it can coat and hydrate without feeling “heavy”) and hair (it can make a beard soft while at the same time not making it feel stringy—not easy to do). We’re going on about the scent, but the ingredient list is nothing to sneeze at.

Our one gripe? At 3 ounces, it’s a little on the small side. Most containers are 4 ounces, so you may go through this a little faster than other beard butters, and have to replace it.

If you’re in it to experience different scents, though, that can part of the fun. 🙂

Best All-Natural Formulation: Every Man Jack

Every Man Jack Beard Butter is an interesting one. If you’re a guy who looks at ingredient lists—and we recognize that many men don’t!—you’ll find that beard oils and beard balms tend to have a lot of natural ingredients. It’s usually one of two pure oils, maybe a beeswax, and a couple other things. It’s almost rare that you’ll come across some weird-sounding ingredient you’ve never heard and have a hard time pronouncing.

The best beard butters… are not like that. In fact, beard butters almost all have a long list of weird, synthetic-y sounding ingredients in them. Sad, but true.

Why is that, you may ask? Well, it’s because beard butters are expected to do a lot more for your beard than a beard oil or a beard balm. Those are really just used to moisturize beard hair, whereas beard butter has to moisturize beard hair—but ALSO deliver on skincare. To do that, companies usually need to include a lot of synthetic ingredients that are known to fortify and protect skin. It’s kind of a bummer, but it’s the truth—most of the truly effective skincare products out there contain a lot of weird ingredients.

How Every Man Jack is Different

That’s where Every Man Jack stands out—it focuses on utilizing naturally-derived ingredients. It’s got no parabens, phthalates, harmful chemicals, or dyes, and it utilizes a gluten-free formula, as a lot of people seem to have gluten allergies. Plus, it’s vegan and certified cruelty-free, which is excellent. Most beard butters don’t make such an effort to include so many great ingredients—they approach it from a skincare standpoint (and perhaps imagine that no one will look anyway!).

So we applaud Every Man Jack for including so much good stuff—especially across all three of its scents, which are Sandalwood (classic), Natural Hemp (earthy), and Sea Salt (beach-y!). This is not to say that it’s an all-natural formulation—it’s got things like cetrimonium chloride as a preservative and Ceteareth-20 to stabilize it, and a handful of others. As far as beard butters go, though, it’s got one of the most natural formulations we’ve found (in fact, even while it’s not an all-natural formulation, nothing else comes close, as far as we can see).

This is, surprisingly, also one of the more accessible beard butters out there, and it may not break the bank in a way that some of the other options on our list might. Some beard butters can get a little pricey, but Every Man Jack doesn’t really fall into that category, and that’s a nice surprise, considering that it’s a really well-devised product.

Best Artwork: Grave Before Shave Beard Butter

You might be wondering why we’d include a winner for “Best Artwork.” After all—what does that have to do with anything?

Well… nothing, really! If we’re being honest, we’re just absolute suckers when it comes to artwork. We like design, tattoos, icons, you name it. We like the way it looks in the medicine cabinet, and we like the feel of using well-designed and attractive products. And when you consider that there are so. very. many. dull-looking beard brands out there, that have opted for a lazy, minimalist design on their products, it’s nice to see a company going all-in on emblems and logos.

And that’s why we love, love, love Grave Before Shave Beard Butter. Look at it in that image above—that’s some fantastic artwork right there! Gorgeous.

This is not to say that it’s not also a great product—it is (and we wouldn’t include it if it wasn’t). It’s actually got some tattoos really fantastic ingredients, including shea butter and mango butter, and aloe vera, which is used in cultures throughout the world as a skincare ingredient. All good stuff, but it also smells fantastic—just like Live Bearded, Grave Before Shave really dove into scents head first, and in addition to their Grave Before Shave Cigar Blend Beard Butter (which is a pleasant fresh tobacco + vanilla fragrance), they’ve got the Aphrodisiac Scent (leather + cedarwood), Gentleman’s Blend Scent (sandalwood + bourbon), and the classic Bay Rum Scent (ray + spices). All fantastic.

Most Unique Formulation: Maestro’s Beard Butter

We’re not sure when Maestro’s Beard Butter came out, but it has an old-school, classic feel to it, and it’s one of our go-to beard butters. Right off the bat, it’s very unique, and for a lot of good reasons:

> It’s got a one-of-a-kind, enticing scent. It’s a mix of grapefruit, black pepper, and bergamot. As you’d imagine, that smells like… wait, there’s literally no imagining what that smells like. The grapefruit is citrus-y, but not really by much. The black pepper has that sort of lively, earth-y smell, but isn’t overpowering. The bergamot… well, most people don’t even know what bergamot is, and scent-wise, it’s somewhere between a lemon and a lime. The final result is surprisingly pleasant. It’s almost like a cologne—it has a deep, sort of “dignified” feel, and it’s a great option for more formal events. It doesn’t have that sort of “frivolous” scent that some beard products can have.

> It’s large! It’s often made in a 6-ounce container, and if you’ve got a big bushy beard and go through beard butter like there’s no tomorrow—or you have a small or medium-length beard and just like to use a lot of butter—it can last you a lot longer than the smaller 3- or 4-ounce versions that seem to be everything. Maestro’s: go big or go home! Nice.

> It works really well. There are plenty of beard butters that have—well, a butter-y feel—but Maestro’s is water-based, and doesn’t have that sort of “heaviness” that lesser-made butters can imbue.

All in all, this is one of our favorites, and if we have a big night, the one that we usually reach for.

OK! Adding all that up, we’ve arrived at the main event: 

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There you have it! If none of those work for you, you can always try our recipes and make your own batch of beard butter!

Now, because we know that the topic of butters is an utterly confusing one rife with baffling names and bewildering ingredients, we’ll answer all of the butter-related concerns you may have, starting with:

How to Choose a Beard Butter

So what makes a good beard butter? This is a lot more “art” than “science,” just because beard butters tend to all use similar ingredient lists, and often “the best beard butter” is a matter of personal taste.

There are a couple of things we look for, though:

Consider the Size of the Container

We’ll put this one first, even though it seems a little arbitrary.

Perhaps more than any other beard product, beard butters can go fast. Especially if you find one that you like. Because you need to use a fair amount of it to actually work it into your beard, and because you’ll tend to use it every day if you have a really itchy or irritating beard, it’s not uncommon to fly through these containers much faster than other beard products.

So, just keep an eye out for the size of the container you’re getting. For most beard products, you don’t have to consider that sort of thing—beard balms usually come in the same-size tin, no matter what brand you buy—but there is some variation among beard butters, and if you run out of it quickly, it may help you to buy larger containers of it.

Choose the Right Scent

At the end of the day, this is the big question when it comes to beard products: what’s it going to smell like? Most beard products are very similar. There are the bad ones—and we never recommend any we consider sub-par—but among the good ones, the only real distinguishing feature among them is the feel (which we’ll talk about in a moment) and the scent.

If you’re not too adventurous on scents, try to stick with single-note scents—a lemon, or a lime, or something like that. If you are willing to roll the dice on fragrance, try new things until you find one you want to stick with. Very few of them are downright objectionable (and again, we don’t mention or review ones that we / other people find objectionable), and you might surprise yourself. We thought the “Executive” Beard Butter from Live Bearded was going to be silly, but it turns out to be one of our favorite scents, and we wear it around the office, in a sort of ironic joke-y way. In other words, allow yourself to be surprised when it comes to scents—a lot of these companies do a really good job creating interesting, unique fragrances.

Pay Attention to Feel / Texture

This is one of the other—and few—properties that make a beard butter unique: how it feels in your hands and on your skin. Some have a warm feel (like Every Man Jack) and some have a cool feel (like Cremo Mint and Bluebeard Original). Try to imagine what might do it for you.

Note the Nutrients in the Ingredient List

We know that most guys don’t really care too much about the ingredient lists of the products they use, but for a lot of guys, it’s incredibly important. It won’t take long to do some ingredient-comparisons, and if there are any ingredients that are in your “no go” zone, look for another product. There aren’t that many beard butters out there, but there are enough for you to be selective.

Artwork and Branding

Again, this doesn’t really have anything to do with the product; we’re suckers for marketing. Be better than us, and you can probably ignore this. But if you care about using products that speak to your persona, then the artwork and branding of the product you choose may be important.

Is it a deal-breaker? No, but this product is going to sit on your shelf or in your medicine cabinet – you might want to have something that you like to look at.

A Quick Review of Terms: How is Beard Butter Different Than…

We flirted with this idea above, but we’ll provide a quick recap if you’re not clear what makes beard butter unique from other beard products.

(And, by the way—if you’re a little mystified by all this, you’re not alone. The beard product industry is notorious for naming its products whatever it wants, and it can be confusing to figure all these products out).

So here’s how it goes:

Beard Oil vs Beard Butter

This is just… well, beard oil is just oil! It’s slick and wet and slippery. Very often it’s a combination of a few oils mixed together, like a carrier oil that provides nutrients (grapeseed oil, argan oil, and jojoba oil are examples) as well as a few essentials oils (like lavender / rose / peppermint / etc.) to make it smell nice—but that’s it.

If you compare Beard Oil vs Beard Butter you’ll find that consistency is the biggest difference. It’s just oil. It’s great for your moisturizing your beard hair, but it doesn’t really provide any styling capability, and it doesn’t really do much for the skin underneath your beard.

Beard Butter vs Beard Balm

When comparing Beard Butter to Beard balm is a combination of the carrier oils and essential oils we mentioned above, plus some butters (like the butters you’d find in a beard balm—cocoa butter, or mango butter, or shea butter), some waxes (which you usually won’t find in a butter, like beeswax), and maybe a few additives. A Balm for your beard is usually thick and pasty, and it feels like a heavy, spreadable cream.

It’s great for moisturizing your beard hair, and it can provide a little bit of styling ability, which is great, but it doesn’t usually do anything for the skin underneath your beard. It’s better than nothing, but as far as itchiness and beardruff, it doesn’t always help.

Of all the beard products, though, beard balm might be the most popular—a lot of guys really love it.

Beard Wax vs Beard Butter

This is a lot simpler—beard wax is *mostly* wax, and it’s used solely for styling purposes. If you’ve got a big bushy beard that needs to discipline, or a mustache that you like to curl up at the end, a wax is usually what you’re looking for. It provides zero moisturization for skin or hair, and it’s super-duper hard to use—in fact, a lot of waxes you need to heat with a hair-dryer to apply, because… well, it’s a wax.

If you’ve ever seen a beard competition with guys who have facial hair that seems to defy gravity, you’re seeing guys who use a lot of wax.

How Beard Butter is Unique

Hooray! Our personal favorite. Beard butter is a combination of oils and butters and other ingredients used specifically for skincare. It doesn’t provide much hold, but it can do an incredible job moisturizing beard hair, but *especially* the skin below a beard. It’s great for itchiness, beardruff, and irritation.

So, to sum up:

• Oil: slick; used to moisturize beards; doesn’t provide hold;
• Balm: thick; used to moisturize beards; does provide hold;
• Wax: hard; doesn’t moisturize beards (or skin); provides an exceptional amount of hold; and finally
• Beard Butter: creamy; moisturizes beard hair but also skin and fights itchiness and beardruff; doesn’t provide any hold (but can make a beard look bushy and healthy).

All of these products can make a beard look a little healthier, which is nice.

Be on the Look for Items That Seem Like Beard Butter But Are Not

This will be an odd section, but it’s something we want to inform that broader beard-having public about: beard butters that aren’t really beard butters.

As we’ve mentioned, the world of beard products plays it “fast and loose” when it comes to nomenclature. The FDA doesn’t really regulate beard products, so makers of beard products can name their goods in any way they please. That’s fine, most of the time, but sometimes it creates situations that are genuinely confusing.

Take Wild Willies Co Beard Butter, for example, and look at the tin:

Notice anything odd? Take another look.

Do you see it? The name of the product is “Wild Willies Beard Butter” and it is… a beard balm.

Why would Wild Willie, a good and reasonable man in all other respects, be so misleading when naming his products? We have no idea. Maybe he thought the word “Butter” would make his beard balm sound more exotic? We don’t know.

The irony is, Wild Willies Beard Butter” is a great balm. It’s got a lot of great ingredients, and it’s got some great staying power. Why they didn’t just call it a beard balm—we don’t know.

Anyway. This is all to say: when you’re looking for a beard butter, make sure what you’re buying is actually a beard butter. There are a lot of products that call themselves a beard butter that aren’t a beard butter. Weird, but true.

Products That Don’t Advertise as Butters… But are Great Butters

This is the flip side of what we’ve just discussed—that there are some products that call themselves butters but are not butters. Believe it or not, there are plenty of products that are beard butters, that don’t have “Beard Butter” in their name.

Confused yet? Frustrated? Welcome to the world of beard products. It’s the Wild West out there, man.

We don’t know spreadable why they don’t call themselves beard butters, but… whatever. Who knows.

The best example of that is Wahl Beard Softener. There are a lot of interesting ingredients in Wahl Beard Softener, including manuka oil (which fights facial dandruff), meadowfoam (which softens your skin), and clove oil (which is believed to fight acne). That’s definitely in line with a beard butter’s mission to moisturize and fortify the skin underneath a beard. We don’t know they’ve failed to embrace the “beard butter” name—and in fact, they currently advertise this as “better than butter,” which is odd—but it’s got everything we’d look for in a butter. If none of the options above appeal to you, this can be worth a look.

There are plenty of others out there, and usually they go a different name—sometimes it’s “beard softener,” other times it’s “beard cream”—but if it’s a product that is created to soothe and hydrate skin, combat facial dandruff / beardruff, and has some type of butter in it—usually cocoa or shea—then it’s really a beard butter. If you’re looking for a butter but you find something that doesn’t call itself butter but fits the bill… enjoy! And welcome to the weird, poorly-named world of beard products.

Frequently Asked Questions About Beard Butter

We get a lot of questions from guys about Beard Butter, and understand that you might have some too.

Below we’ll try to answer some of these common questions to help you understand if this is the right product for your beard, and exactly when and how you should use it.

The good news is that even if you’re new to caring for your beard and have never applied or used any beard care products, Beard Butter is a great entry point, and there isn’t much of a learning curve. We find that even absolute beginners can quickly take their beards to the next level using this product.

Ready for a healthier beard? Here’s what you need to know about beard butter:

What is beard butter and how is it different from beard oil?

You’ve probably heard of beard oil, but beard butter is a little harder to find. It’s a grooming product that we use to nourish and tame our beards. 

Beard butter conditions your beard and contains carrier oils, butters, and essential oils. A big difference between beard oil and butter is that you mostly apply oil to the skin underneath your beard, while you concentrate more on the hair when you use the butter. 

How do I use beard butter?

Learning how to use beard butter is easy and most guys get the hang of it in just one try. For an average length beard, you’ll probably just need about a dime-sized bit at a time. 

Rub the butter between your palms to get it warm. Once you’ve done that, you can apply it to your beard.

We recommend taking your time massaging it in. Begin at the root and work your way out to the end of your beard. 

It’s important to get the butter evenly distributed throughout your beard, so keep this in mind. Once you’re done with your massage, style and shape your beard with a beard comb or brush. 

What are the key features and benefits of using beard butter?

There are several features and benefits of beard butter.

We’ll go over them below. 

Moisturization and Conditioning 

Beard butter will moisturize and condition your beard, as well as hydrate the skin beneath. When it comes to your skin, it will help to cut down on itchiness and dryness. 

When you use this product, you’ll create a softer beard that is easier to manage and style. It also won’t be as frizzy. 

Styling and Shaping 

It’s easier to maintain the shape and style you want for your beard when you use beard butter, as it offers light to medium hold. 

Health and Growth

Beard butters contain ingredients that promote good health and stronger growth for your beard. 

Pleasant Scent

Many beard butters contain aromatic essential oils that keep your beard smelling fresh. 

My beard feels greasy after using beard butter. What can I do?

Using too much beard butter can make your beard feel greasy. Using less of the product will help to solve the problem. 

Plus, it’s important to rub the product between your palms before you apply it. That helps make sure you distribute it evenly. 

It’s best to start with a small amount and then add more if you need to. 

Is beard butter worth the investment?

Yes, we think beard butter is worth the money and a product that’s worth buying. Beard butter offers plenty of benefits that make it a worthwhile purchase. 

Beard butter has conditioning properties that will make your beard healthier and more attractive. Also, if you ever have dry and itchy skin under your beard, butter will help alleviate and prevent that, too. 

It’s also a versatile product that you can use for pretty much every beard length and style. 

How should I care for my beard if I use beard butter? 

Whether or not you use beard butter, you should wash your face and beard daily to keep it clean and healthy. 

Also, make sure that you’re combing or brushing your beard daily, so you prevent tangles. It’s also important to brush or comb so that you evenly distribute your beard butter.

Wondering when to apply beard butter for best results? We have an article on that topic that you’ll want to read right here.

Smooth Like BUTTA

Ah, beard butter—the most misunderstood of all the misunderstood beard products. For some guys, it’s a perplexing concoction that sounds weirdly like food. For many of us, though—and in particular, the guys here at Rough and Tumble Gentleman in particular—it can be a godsend. If you’ve had a torturously itchy, scratchy, dandruff-y beard, and came *this* close to shaving it—only to find a beard butter that works that alleviates those problems and leaves you with a peaceful, happy pillow of beard hair on your face—you understand what we’re talking about.

Hopefully there’s something here that helps you. If you’ve got questions, jump on over to our “Contact” page and drop us a line. Otherwise, be good, have fun, and happy beard!