The 6 Best Lip Balms for 2025

Everyday

Testers didn’t love the slight lemon scent of the lanolin-based Lano The Original Lanostick but appreciated almost everything else about it, including its lipstick-bullet form, its excellent texture and finish, and its superb hydration.

We found ChapStick Classic Original less waxy than we remembered, but we objected to its industrial smell. Burt’s Bees Beeswax Lip Balm was much too dry; it felt protective but not moisturizing.

Badger Creamy Cocoa Butter Lip Balm glided on comfortably, but the strong cocoa butter smell was a nonstarter. Likewise for the artificial scent of EOS Natural & Organic Lip Balm sticks.

The coconut-oil-based Wild Rose Natural Lip Balm didn’t leave lips particularly softened, but testers loved its compostable paper tube and matte finish. Drunk Elephant Lippe Balm is a nice chunky stick that went on buttery and left testers’ lips supple and plump; unfortunately, it didn’t stick around. The same goes for Nivea Dewy Lip Care with Hyaluronic Acid, which felt nice enough when it went on but seemed to disappear within a few minutes.

Very few of our testers liked the thick, glossy finish of the viscous, squeeze-tube lip balms we tried. Biossance Squalane + Rose Vegan Lip Balm, Ilia Lip Wrap Reviving Balm, Laneige Lip Glowy Balm, Ole Henriksen Pout Preserve Peptide Lip Treatment, and Summer Fridays Lip Butter Balm were universally deemed too gooey and sticky despite their widespread popularity and excellent buyer reviews.

Strangely enough, the thick, 100% petroleum jelly formula of Vaseline Lip Therapy Advanced Healing felt insubstantial to our testers. Most testers liked its lack of scent but objected to its chemical taste. Other petroleum jelly balms, such as Glossier Balm Dotcom, a former pick, were deemed too thin and melty. Smith’s Rosebud Salve comes in a solid form in a pleasing metal pot; its rose scent was appealing, but the formula slid off too easily.

Kiehl’s Lip Balm #1 doesn’t contain petroleum jelly but feels like it does, and it got similar feedback, as testers said it was too greasy and lightweight.

Healing

Blistex Medicated Lip Balm and Carmex Classic Lip Balm both contain menthol and camphor, which have no studied medical benefit. Our testers mostly hated the cooling, tingling element. “I wiped it off because of the taste and burning sensation,” wrote one tester of Carmex.

The old stand-bys Aquaphor Healing Ointment and Vaseline Original Healing Jelly—both petrolatum-forward formulas—were inoffensive but too “slick and greasy” to win hearts and lips.

We tried three overnight formulas: Chapstick Total Hydration With Sea Minerals Overnight Lip Renewal Treatment (which had the brownish-green hue of pond water), O’Keeffe’s Lip Repair Night Treatment, and Jason Wu Beauty Good Night Mr. Wu (the nicest of the bunch, with a muted floral scent). In the end we nixed the entire category since these formulas weren’t markedly different from their daytime counterparts.

SPF

Chemical

Our testers liked the smooth, lightweight texture and the matte, barely-there finish of O’Keeffe’s Lip Repair SPF 35. They also appreciated the tube’s flat, pocket-friendly shape. It was a close second to Coola Original Liplux Lip Balm Sunscreen, but it offered slightly inferior hydration and longevity.

Aquaphor Lip Protectant + Sunscreen and two Supergoop chemical formulas, Lipscreen Shine SPF 40 and Play Lip Balm SPF 30 with Acai, all shared an unpleasant bitter taste. Maybelline Baby Lips Moisturizing Lip Balm SPF 20 also tasted acrid, although less so.

Sun Bum Original SPF 30 Sunscreen Lip Balm wore off way too quickly. Nivea Smoothness Lip Care SPF 15 was “slimy and melty” right out of the gate. Jack Black Intense Therapy Lip Balm SPF 25 was altogether too tacky for comfort: “My hair kept getting stuck to my lips,” said one tester.

Physical

Everyone agreed that the zinc oxide in ChapStick Active 2-in-1 Lip Balm lent good sun protection but was too white. “If SPF protection were my only priority (like, I’m a lifeguard), I might feel good about this coverage,” one panelist wrote. Otherwise it “feels like overkill.”

Most of the other balms with physical blockers, such as Burt’s Bees All-Weather SPF 15 Moisturizing Lip Balm were similarly heavy and white.

The exception was Sunnie’s The Protector SPF 36, which the company says contains transparent zinc oxide. That was largely true. But the petrolatum-based formula was ultimately too greasy, with a soapy, icky taste. EltaMD UV Lip Balm combines a similar see-through form of zinc with the chemical sunscreen octinoxate. It barely left a white cast and had a nice feel, but a funny tingling turned us off.

Tinted

Chapstick Total Hydration Moisture + Tint delivered great moisture, but some testers found its fruity scent overly artificial and its color nearly nonexistent, especially on darker lips. Burt’s Bees Tinted Lip Balm got high marks for its silky texture and buildable color, but both the color and the hydration lacked staying power. As one tester put it, “This is like Dory from Finding Nemo—a lip balm that lives in the now.” Neutrogena Revitalizing Lip Balm felt good and contains sunscreen, but it came in a limited palette of colors and had a synthetic taste.

The high-shine, squeeze-tube tinted balms we tested emphasized gloss over color. The pigment in the tinted versions of Rhode Peptide Lip Treatment was all but undetectable. The same was true of Summer Fridays Lip Butter Balm, Fenty Pro Kiss’r Luscious Lip Balm, and Flower Petal Pout Lip Mask, the last of which suffered from wasteful, weird packaging.

Fresh Sugar Lip Balm, a former pick, had nice color saturation, almost overly so: The darker shades went on like an opaque lipstick. We liked the sheer but saturated colors and the refined shine of Nars Afterglow Lip Balm but found that it left lips drier than before.

Justin Krajeski wrote an earlier version of this guide. This article was edited by Hannah Morrill and Jennifer Hunter.