Hot, Tangy, Smoky and Sweet. We Tested 17 BBQ Sauces and These Are the Best
Alongside ketchup and mustard, barbecue sauce wears the crown as summer's saucy royalty -- and unlike its more basic cousins, BBQ sauce knows how to party. Whether you're slathering it on grilled ribs, dunking air fryer wings or just 'accidentally' licking it off your fingers, there's really no wrong way to enjoy it.
I hauled in 15 bottles of barbecue sauce to see which ones deserve a slot in your fridge door this season.
David Watsky/CNET
The only hard part? Choosing one. The sauce aisle is a smoky, spicy jungle filled with bold claims, regional pride and enough award-winning bottles to fill a trophy case. The best barbecue sauces hit that magical trifecta of sweet, tangy and smoky -- or sometimes go rogue with bold heat or molasses-laced sweetness. Finding your go-to bottle may take some taste-testing, but hey, what a delicious problem to have.
To find the best BBQ sauces available, I gathered more than 15 bottles of sauce and some hungry friends to help taste. It took a lot of napkins to find the best barbecue sauce in 2025. Here they are.
Read more: Best Meal Kits of 2025
A quick note: Up north, sweeter varieties dominate the sauce market, but my taste testers and I all enjoy vinegar-based sauces too, so we included several Carolina barbecue sauces (among other styles, like a Japanese barbecue sauce for umami, or brown-sugar-based recipes for that iconic sweet flavor) to make this list as inclusive and unbiased as possible.
Best BBQ sauces for 2025
Full Moon
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Full Moon
Best overall barbecue sauce
Full Moon Bar-B-Que sauce
Full Moon is a regional chain of barbecue restaurants in Alabama and Mississippi that's been in operation since 1986. You likely won't find Full Moon's incredible sauce on store shelves, but it can be purchased online for $7.49 a bottle. Thank goodness for that, because this classic-style sauce has a near-perfect balance of sweetness, smokiness, tang and spice.
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Tamarind Heads
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Tamarind Heads
Best spicy BBQ sauce
Tamarind Heads BBQ sauce
If you like your sauce with warm spice and fiery heat, Tamarind Heads' sauce will scratch both itches -- and then some.
This sweet and spicy sauce is made from a tamarind base with no tomato or vinegar. The recipe doesn't slouch on chili and even the "medium" will have you loosening your collar after a few bites. Despite its higher Scoville score, the tamarind spice and chili heat are balanced nicely with some sweetness from brown sugar and toasted notes from sesame.
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Stubb's
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Stubb's
Best grocery store barbecue sauce
Stubb's BBQ sauce
If you prefer to scoop your barbecue sauce up from the store, Stubb's stuff can be found in most supermarkets and it's an excellent alternative to Full Moon. Like the winner above, Stubb's has a good balance with no single flavor taking over. This one is thick but not gloppy and gets its sweetness from brown sugar (no corn syrup) with a good kick from lots of black pepper.
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Bachan
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Bachan
Best Japanese-style barbecue sauce
Bachan's Japanese barbecue sauce
I've been on the Bachan's bandwagon for some time now and I don't plan on hopping off. Bachan's is atypical compared with classic barbecue sauces in that it's laced with Japanese flavors, giving it a huge umami punch. You'll notice soy sauce immediately, along with sesame, ginger and a delicate sweetness. This is one of the thinner sauces so it might not adhere as well to ribs and chicken or caramelize as others do, so it's probably best used as a finishing sauce.
Bachan's is also pricey for one bottle, but you can save a few bucks when you order multiple at a time. (Trust me, you'll want more than one bottle.)
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$6 at Amazon
Carolina Q
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Carolina Q
Best smoky barbecue sauce
Carolina Q' Sweet Hickory sauce
This rich, dark and smoky sauce is made by a small producer in North Carolina. It's probably the most flavor-packed sauce we tried, with a big sweetness that's cut with rich, smoky hickory and lots of heat. There's a lot going on here but it harmonizes nicely to create one very tasty sauce.
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Bull's Eye
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Bull's Eye
Best budget barbecue sauce
Bull's-Eye Original
At under $3 a bottle, this was the favorite of the "cheap" barbecue sauces, and it's one you'll find easily in most grocery stores or on Amazon. Bull's-Eye has a formidable sweetness but gets great balance from mustard, garlic and natural hickory smoke. If you go through sauce like water, this is a great sauce to stock up on for ribs, chicken and burgers.
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Texas Pete
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Texas Pete
Best barbecue sauce for hot sauce lovers
Texas Pete E. Carolina BBQ sauce
If you're a hot sauce junkie looking for a barbecue sauce, Texas Pete's Eastern Carolina sauce is the one to get. Texas Pete is a hot sauce maker, first and foremost, so this take on vinegar-heavy Carolina-style sauce tastes quite a bit like hot sauce but with a subtle sweetness and tomato tang. It's made with just five ingredients and no corn syrup. At 15 calories per serving, it's probably the "healthiest" barbecue sauce on this list.
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Sweet Baby Ray's
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Sweet Baby Ray's
Best sweet barbecue sauce
Sweet Baby Ray's
I'll be honest, this wasn't one of my personal favorites, but some of the other tasters with a penchant for sweeter foods were really into it. Sweet Baby Ray's (hey, it's right there in the name) is made with corn syrup and pineapple juice and is so sweet that it can be overwhelming. It's also rather thick, almost like a barbecue jam or jelly. If you're a barbecue lover with a sweet tooth, this is the sauce you should stock.
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$3 at Walmart
What makes a good barbecue sauce?
Start by deciding if you want a sweet tomato-based sauce, creamy white sauce or a tangier vinegar-based bottle to pour over your meat.
CNET
Most pitmasters agree that achieving balance is essential for a great barbecue sauce. Typically, these sauces are made with a tomato base, vinegar, and a sweetener like honey or molasses, along with a component for heat. From this foundation, sauces can be enhanced with a variety of spices and flavors, including mustard, garlic, fruit and smoke. If a sauce becomes too dominant in one flavor profile, it usually doesn't work well. On the other hand, overly simple sauces lacking spice or complexity often fall flat.
We tasted many traditional Kansas City-style sauces for this list, a host of vinegar-heavy Carolina-style sauces, some keto-friendly sauces, Bachan's cult-favorite Japanese-style sauce and a few Alabama white sauces to see which ones really tickled our taste buds. We tried each one with plain unseasoned chicken breast since it's a rather blank slate as far as classic grilled foods go. When tasting, we noted things like overall balance, heat, sweetness, overwhelming flavors or anything else that jumped out, both bad and good.
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