My daughter Lily is fourteen and recently decided — completely on her own, with all the conviction of someone who just watched a documentary — that she was done with refined sugar. Fine. Good. I was genuinely proud. But then came the iced coffee phase, and suddenly we were burning through bag after bag of granulated stevia with results that ranged from “acceptable” to “why does my drink taste like lawn clippings.” One Saturday morning she pushed a glass across the counter and said, matter-of-factly, “Mom, Emma uses drops. Can we try drops?” So I ordered both NOW Foods Better Stevia Liquid and NuNaturals NuStevia Liquid that same afternoon. Two amber glass bottles, side by side on my counter, and what followed was six weeks of genuinely obsessive testing.
I’ve sweetened everything with these two. Morning cold brew, afternoon herbal tea, salad dressing, overnight oats, whipped cream, homemade lemonade. My husband called it “the stevia wars.” I called it research. Here’s what I found.
First Impressions
Both bottles arrived in the same Amazon shipment, and the first thing I noticed was how similar they look. Both are amber glass dropper bottles — roughly 2 fluid ounces each, both fitted with a rubber-tipped glass dropper. The difference lives in the details.
The NOW Foods bottle is slightly more compact with that clean pharmacy-green label NOW is known for. It says “Better Stevia” right up front, making a promise. The dropper is a standard medical-style pipette, nothing fancy. The bottle feels solid and purposeful in your hand, like something you’d find in a compounding pharmacy rather than a wellness boutique.
The NuNaturals bottle is taller and thinner, with a white-and-blue label that leans more toward the natural-food aesthetic. Their dropper bulb is noticeably larger, which makes drawing liquid easier. Small thing — but over weeks of daily use, reaching for a dropper thirty times a week, I noticed it. Ergonomics matter at scale.
Shaking both bottles, NOW Foods sounds slightly thinner, less viscous. NuNaturals is just a touch thicker — probably a higher glycerin concentration. Uncapping each one: NOW Foods has a faint, warm sweetness to it, almost like a barely sweet herbal syrup. NuNaturals smells more neutral, almost clinical. Neither has anything off-putting.
Out of the bottle, on a spoon: NOW Foods is sweet and clean with a faint trailing note I can only describe as “green” — not grassy exactly, but botanical. NuNaturals is notably cleaner on the finish, with less of that trailing herbal quality. Both are impressively sweet at just one or two drops. Right away, I understood why people swear by liquid stevia over powder.
What Makes It Different
The ingredient lists are nearly identical on paper. NOW Foods Better Stevia Liquid: purified water, organic stevia extract, organic vegetable glycerin. NuNaturals NuStevia Liquid: purified water, stevia leaf extract, vegetable glycerin. Three ingredients each. That’s it — both are genuinely clean products.
The meaningful distinction is in sourcing and processing. NOW Foods uses certified organic stevia extract and certified organic glycerin — both certified. NuNaturals uses conventional stevia extract (not labeled organic) and conventional glycerin. If organic certification matters to your household — and in mine it does — NOW Foods wins that category outright. There’s a meaningful difference between “natural” and “certified organic” from a supply-chain transparency standpoint.
NuNaturals has long claimed a proprietary extraction process designed to remove more of the bitter-tasting steviol glycosides while concentrating the sweeter, cleaner-tasting ones — specifically Rebaudioside A (Reb-A), generally considered the most palatable steviol glycoside. They don’t publish exact Reb-A percentages, but the taste difference in plain-water testing is real enough that I believe something is happening in their extraction. It’s noticeably cleaner in neutral applications.
NOW Foods doesn’t make those claims. What they offer instead is a straightforward certified organic product with a transparent label and a well-documented supply chain from a brand with over fifty years in the supplement industry. Their sweetness level feels comparable to NuNaturals — 1–3 drops in an 8-ounce drink is all I needed from either — but that mild herbal trailing note is present in NOW Foods and largely absent in NuNaturals.
One more practical difference: both bottles have similar dropper sizes, but serving sizes differ in how each company defines them. NOW Foods lists 6 drops as a serving on the label. NuNaturals lists 2 drops for equivalent sweetness. In practice, I found 2–3 drops of either sufficient for a standard mug of coffee. The official “servings per bottle” count is therefore misleading — at real-world usage, both bottles yield roughly the same number of uses. Keep that in mind when comparing on the shelf.
Real-World Performance
In Coffee
Coffee is probably the primary use case for most people buying liquid stevia, and this is where both brands shine. I tested both in hot black coffee, iced cold brew, and pour-over across multiple weeks.
Two drops of NOW Foods into a 10-ounce mug of hot black coffee: the sweetness is immediate and pleasant. There’s a mild herbal quality that some coffee drinkers would actually enjoy as an added depth, and some would find distracting on a quiet sip. Lily couldn’t taste anything off. My husband, who drinks his coffee with hyperspecific opinions, did notice a trailing note on his third sip — described it as “like if a teabag was nearby.”
NuNaturals in the same 10-ounce mug at 2 drops: comparable sweetness, but a cleaner finish. The coffee just tastes like sweetened coffee. For black coffee drinkers, NuNaturals has a genuine edge here. For anyone adding cream, oat milk, or half-and-half — the difference basically disappears. Fat coats the palate and muffles any trailing notes from either brand.
Iced cold brew with 3 drops of NOW Foods: excellent. Cold temperature suppresses any herbal or bitter notes, and the result is clean and sweet with a flavor profile that I’d describe as “just right.” Lily’s exact words were “finally.” This is NOW Foods at its best, and it’s genuinely good.
In Cooking and Baking
I stirred NOW Foods into Greek yogurt — 1 drop per 6-ounce serving — clean, sweet, no aftertaste detectable once the yogurt’s tartness was in the mix. I whisked it into a lemon vinaigrette at a ratio of 2 drops per tablespoon of lemon juice, and it worked beautifully, with no detectable stevia note in the finished dressing. Overnight oats with 3 drops refrigerated overnight: the sweetness distributed well and the oats tasted genuinely pleasant the next morning.
Baking is more complicated. I made a batch of almond flour banana muffins, replacing 2 tablespoons of honey with 8 drops of NOW Foods. The sweetness was present, but the muffins were slightly flatter, with less of a domed top. That’s a stevia limitation broadly — it doesn’t contribute to browning, structure, or moisture retention the way sugar does. I got the same structural result with NuNaturals. This isn’t a criticism of either brand; it’s a property of the molecule.
For raw applications — smoothies, chia pudding, no-bake energy balls, protein shakes — both brands perform excellently. In these contexts, the taste difference between them narrows significantly. When stevia is one ingredient among many strong flavors, the extra cleanliness of NuNaturals’ extraction becomes hard to detect.
In Plain Water
This is the honest test. No coffee bitterness, no yogurt tartness, no fruit flavor to hide behind. Just water and stevia.
Two drops of NOW Foods in 8 ounces of cold filtered water: sweet, slightly herbal, faint licorice note at the back of the tongue. Not unpleasant — I’d drink it — but you’re aware it’s stevia. There’s an aftertaste that lingers for about 30 seconds.
Two drops of NuNaturals in the same glass: noticeably cleaner. Sweeter up front, shorter finish, almost no trailing note. If someone handed me this without context, I might think it was very lightly flavored sparkling water. That’s a meaningful difference, and it’s NuNaturals’ strongest argument for the price premium.
Long-Term Value
Let me do the math, because that’s what this comparison is really about. Both brands are mid-market liquid stevias — neither is the cheapest option on Amazon, and neither is premium-priced. But cost per serving matters more than sticker price.
NOW Foods Better Stevia Liquid Original 2oz typically runs $8.49. At 2–3 drops per serving — which is how I actually use it in practice — a 2-ounce bottle yields approximately 280–290 servings. That works out to roughly $0.029 per use. Less than three cents per cup of coffee sweetened.
NuNaturals NuStevia Liquid at 2oz runs about $10.99. At the same real-world usage rate, it yields a comparable number of servings — approximately $0.038 per use. About a penny more per serving.
A penny sounds trivial, but multiply it by three cups a day across 365 days and you’re looking at an $11 annual difference for one person. A household of two who sweetens coffee twice daily saves roughly $22 per year by choosing NOW Foods. Over time, that pays for itself in groceries. It’s not a dramatic number, but for a product that performs comparably across the vast majority of daily use cases, it’s a real consideration.
Both bottles carry a 2-year shelf life from the manufacturing date. I haven’t noticed any flavor degradation in either bottle after six weeks of open use, both stored in a cool pantry out of direct sunlight. The glycerin base acts as a mild preservative that helps both formulas stay stable once opened.
Both bottles are also travel-friendly — 2oz fits in a TSA-approved liquid bag — which is genuinely useful if you’re the kind of person who sweetens coffee at airports and objects to the mystery packets they put out at the condiment counter. I am that person. NOW Foods has lived in my purse for three weeks running.
Final Verdict: 8.8/10
After six weeks of side-by-side testing, NOW Foods Better Stevia Liquid is my daily driver. NuNaturals is the better-tasting product in isolation — I won’t pretend otherwise, and in plain water it’s not even close. But for an everyday household sweetener used primarily in coffee, oatmeal, cold brew, and smoothies, the taste gap is narrow enough that value wins the argument. NOW Foods is certified organic, consistently available, and costs meaningfully less per serving. For the everyday buyer, that combination is hard to beat.
- Taste: 8.5/10 — Clean and genuinely pleasant in coffee and cold drinks; mild botanical trail in neutral liquids. Honest performance for the price point.
- Value: 9.5/10 — Best cost-per-serving ratio in the certified-organic liquid stevia category. Organic glycerin carrier is a meaningful bonus.
- Purity / Ingredient Quality: 9.2/10 — Certified organic extract, certified organic glycerin, purified water. Three ingredients, nothing else. Earns its clean label.
- Daily Usability: 8.8/10 — Works reliably across coffee, cooking, and baking. Dropper functions consistently. Cap doesn’t leak. Easy to integrate into any morning routine.
- Packaging / Bottle Design: 8.0/10 — Amber glass is the right call; the label is functional over beautiful. The dropper works well but is slightly less ergonomic than NuNaturals’ larger bulb design.
If taste purity is your single priority — especially for plain water sweetening or delicate teas — spend the extra dollar and get NuNaturals. If you want certified organic, proven quality, and the better everyday value, NOW Foods is the bottle that earns a permanent spot on your counter.
Tips for Success
Six weeks of daily use taught me a few things worth passing on, whether you’re using NOW Foods, NuNaturals, or any liquid stevia.
- Start with 1 drop, not 2. Most bitterness complaints about liquid stevia come from over-sweetening, not from the extract itself. These are concentrated. Taste after each drop and stop when it’s right.
- Add to hot liquids just before drinking. Stir stevia in right before you take your first sip, not while the mug is still on heat. Prolonged heat can intensify the herbal notes in NOW Foods particularly.
- For iced drinks, dissolve in a small amount of water first. Drop your stevia into a tablespoon of room-temperature water, swirl to combine, then add to your iced drink. It distributes more evenly than dropping directly onto ice cubes.
- In baking, pair with a small amount of sugar or honey. Stevia doesn’t contribute browning, caramelization, or moisture retention. A teaspoon of maple syrup alongside liquid stevia dramatically improves texture in baked goods while still keeping sugar content low.
- Store away from heat. A cool, dark pantry is ideal — not on the counter next to the stove, not on the windowsill. Temperature stability preserves both flavor and the glycerin carrier’s viscosity.
- Don’t refrigerate. Glycerin gets thicker when cold, making the dropper harder to use. Room temperature is ideal for both brands.
Pros and Cons Values
NOW Foods Better Stevia — Pros
- Dual organic certification — both the stevia extract and the glycerin carrier are USDA Organic, a distinction most competitors don’t match
- Lowest cost per serving in the certified organic liquid stevia category — roughly $0.029 per cup
- Non-GMO Project Verified, vegan, and gluten-free — covers every major dietary label a household is likely to need
- Amber glass bottle protects the extract from light degradation; no plastic-leaching concerns common in cheaper dropper bottles
- Consistent potency across bottles — batch-to-batch variation has been minimal in my six weeks of testing and longer experience with the brand
NOW Foods Better Stevia — Cons
- Mild herbal and botanical trailing note is noticeable in plain water and delicate applications where NuNaturals is clearly cleaner
- Dropper bulb is smaller and slightly less ergonomic than NuNaturals’ design — a minor but real annoyance at daily use frequency
- Label serving size of 6 drops overstates real-world use; at actual 2–3 drop usage, the stated “servings per container” number requires mental math to interpret correctly
Product Specification
| Specification | NOW Foods Better Stevia Liquid | NuNaturals NuStevia Liquid |
|---|---|---|
| Size | 2 fl oz (59 mL) | 2 fl oz (59 mL) |
| Label Servings | ~237 (at 6 drops) | ~200 (at 2 drops) |
| Calories per Serving | 0 | 0 |
| Erythritol-Free | Yes | Yes |
| Organic | Yes — USDA Organic (extract + glycerin) | No — conventional extract |
| Non-GMO | Yes — Non-GMO Project Verified | Yes |
| Carrier Ingredient | Organic vegetable glycerin | Vegetable glycerin |
| Country of Origin | USA (manufactured) | USA (manufactured) |
| Shelf Life | 2 years unopened | 2 years unopened |
| Bottle Material | Amber glass | Amber glass |
| Alcohol-Free | Yes | Yes |
| Approximate Retail Price | $8.49 | $10.99 |
Safety & Third-Party Testing
Stevia extract — specifically highly purified steviol glycosides like Rebaudioside A — carries GRAS (Generally Recognized As Safe) status with the FDA. Both NOW Foods and NuNaturals use purified extracts that fall within these guidelines. Neither brand markets whole-leaf stevia, which does not carry GRAS status. That’s a meaningful distinction some buyers miss when they see the word “stevia” on a label without context.
NOW Foods is one of the most rigorously tested supplement brands in the US market. Founded in 1968, they manufacture in GMP (Good Manufacturing Practice) certified facilities and maintain certifications from multiple third-party organizations: USDA Organic, Non-GMO Project Verified, Kosher, and for relevant products, Informed Sport. Their testing protocols cover heavy metals, microbial contamination, and potency verification. For a sweetener you’re using multiple times a day, every day, that level of quality infrastructure matters. The organic certification isn’t marketing — it requires annual third-party audits of both the extract source and the glycerin supplier.
NuNaturals is a well-established natural foods brand with a clean safety record spanning decades. Their products are manufactured in the US in facilities that meet standard supplement manufacturing requirements. What they don’t offer is USDA Organic certification — their stevia extract and glycerin are conventional ingredients. They’re Non-GMO verified, and nothing in their formulation raises safety flags. But the transparency trail for sourcing is shorter than NOW Foods’, which is worth noting for buyers who care about full supply-chain documentation.
One point on glycerin: some people wonder about the carrier ingredient. Vegetable glycerin is broadly considered safe at the amounts present in liquid stevia formulations — a dropper delivers a trivial quantity, far below any meaningful threshold. It’s also worth noting that glycerin is derived from plant oils (commonly soy, palm, or coconut), so if you have sensitivities, verifying the source is reasonable. NOW Foods’ glycerin is plant-derived and certified organic.
As with all stevia products, current research on use during pregnancy is limited. Neither brand makes pregnancy-specific claims, and consulting a physician before regular use during pregnancy is a reasonable precaution — not because of demonstrated risk, but because the evidence base is thin.
Compare with Other
vs. SweetLeaf Liquid Stevia (Sweet Drops)
SweetLeaf is probably the most shelf-visible liquid stevia in grocery stores. Their flavored Sweet Drops — vanilla crème, English toffee, lemon drop, chocolate — are genuinely popular and carve out a niche that neither NOW Foods nor NuNaturals competes in. Their plain unflavored version is taste-comparable to NOW Foods. The problem is price: SweetLeaf plain typically runs $11–13 for the same 2-ounce size. If you want flavored liquid stevia, SweetLeaf is the obvious recommendation. For unflavored everyday value, it doesn’t compete on cost.
vs. Pyure Organic Liquid Stevia
Pyure is an organic option found at Walmart and Target, usually priced around $7.99–9.49 for a 1.8-ounce bottle. They’re USDA Organic and legitimately competitive with NOW Foods on cost. My experience with Pyure has found more noticeable batch-to-batch variation — some bottles significantly sweeter than others, which makes consistent dosing frustrating. NOW Foods’ consistency across bottles has been better in my testing. For the same organic price point, NOW Foods is the more reliable choice.
vs. Lakanto Liquid Monkfruit Sweetener
Not stevia, but it comes up in every conversation about this product category because it targets exactly the same buyer. Lakanto Liquid uses monkfruit extract (mogrosides) rather than steviol glycosides, and it produces the cleanest, most neutral sweetness I’ve ever tasted from a zero-calorie sweetener. No herbal note. No trailing bitterness. It’s genuinely remarkable. The catch: it runs $15–18 for a comparable bottle, putting it well outside the budget-friendly framing of this comparison. If taste purity is worth a $7–9 premium over NOW Foods, monkfruit liquid wins. For the everyday buyer who wants value, NOW Foods is the rational call.
vs. Trader Joe’s Organic Liquid Stevia
Trader Joe’s private-label liquid stevia is an underrated option — typically under $6 for 2 ounces, organic, and considerably cleaner-tasting than the price suggests. When it’s in stock, it may actually be the best value in the organic liquid stevia category. The limitation is consistency: it runs in and out of availability, and I’ve seen it discontinued and relaunched at different Trader Joe’s locations. NOW Foods’ consistent nationwide availability through Amazon, iHerb, Whole Foods, and supplement retailers is a meaningful practical advantage over a product you can’t always get.
Where to Buy and Price List
NOW Foods Better Stevia Liquid Original 2oz
| Retailer | Price | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Amazon (ASIN: B09MNLQP2R) | $8.49 | Prime eligible; Subscribe & Save lowers to ~$7.64 |
| enzostevia.com | $8.79 — use code AWESOME for 3% off ($8.53) | Enter code AWESOME at checkout |
| Whole Foods Market | $9.99 | In-store; Prime member discount often applies |
| iHerb | $7.89 | Good price; slower shipping than Amazon |
NuNaturals NuStevia Liquid Stevia 2oz
| Retailer | Price | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Amazon (ASIN: B08FZKTVY1) | $10.99 | Prime eligible; multi-pack bundles available |
| enzostevia.com | $11.49 — use code AWESOME for 3% off ($11.15) | Enter code AWESOME at checkout |
| Vitacost | $9.89 | Frequent sales; worth bookmarking for NuNaturals specifically |
| Natural Grocers | $12.49 | In-store only; regional availability |
My best-value recommendation: for NOW Foods, Amazon Subscribe & Save is the smartest buy if you use a bottle every 6–10 weeks. For NuNaturals, check Vitacost — they consistently offer it below the $10 mark when it’s on sale, which narrows the price gap considerably.
People Also Ask
Is NOW Foods Better Stevia the same as other liquid stevias?
NOW Foods Better Stevia uses certified organic stevia extract in an organic vegetable glycerin base — a three-ingredient formula structurally similar to many liquid stevias, but with dual organic certification that most competitors skip. The practical difference from non-organic versions is supply-chain transparency and lower pesticide exposure risk at the extraction stage. Taste-wise, it performs comparably to mid-range liquid stevias with a mild herbal trailing note that premium brands (and NuNaturals, specifically) have worked to reduce through more refined extraction. For most daily uses — coffee, smoothies, oatmeal — it’s effectively interchangeable with NuNaturals. The organic credentials are the clearest reason to choose NOW Foods over a generic equivalent.
Does NuNaturals taste better than NOW Foods liquid stevia?
In controlled side-by-side testing, NuNaturals is noticeably cleaner-tasting in plain water and light herbal teas — less trailing bitterness, shorter finish, closer to neutral. In coffee, oatmeal, smoothies, and dressings, the difference is much smaller and most people can’t reliably detect it in a blind test. Whether NuNaturals’ taste edge is worth paying roughly 25–30% more per bottle depends entirely on your primary application. For plain-water sweetening or very delicate teas, NuNaturals earns the premium. For general household use across multiple beverages and foods, NOW Foods performs well enough that the cost difference is hard to justify on a weekly grocery budget.
How many drops of liquid stevia equal a teaspoon of sugar?
The commonly cited guideline is approximately 2 drops of standard-concentration liquid stevia for the perceived sweetness of 1 teaspoon of granulated sugar, though this varies by brand concentration and individual sweetness sensitivity. For both NOW Foods and NuNaturals at their standard concentrations, I found 2–3 drops sufficient to sweeten an 8-ounce mug of coffee to a moderate sweetness level — roughly equivalent to half a teaspoon of sugar in my palate. When converting recipes, start at 2 drops per teaspoon of sugar called for, taste before adding more. Steviol glycosides are approximately 200–300 times sweeter than sucrose by weight, so small errors compound quickly in either direction.
Can you cook and bake with liquid stevia?
Both NOW Foods and NuNaturals liquid stevia work well in cooking and certain baking applications, with important caveats. They perform best in raw or no-heat applications: smoothies, overnight oats, chia pudding, salad dressings, beverages, and protein shakes. In traditional baked goods, stevia doesn’t replicate the structural contributions of sugar — no caramelization, no moisture retention, no Maillard browning reaction. The workaround that works best in my kitchen: combine a small amount of honey, maple syrup, or coconut sugar with liquid stevia. This dramatically reduces total sugar while preserving texture. For fully sugar-free baking, expect structural adjustments — an extra egg white, a tablespoon of additional almond flour, or a small amount of xanthan gum can help compensate.
SERP
When I searched “now foods vs nunaturals liquid stevia” recently, the top results were dominated by Amazon product pages for each brand individually, followed by a handful of broader liquid stevia roundups on health and keto recipe blogs. The pages ranking most prominently included a top-10 liquid stevia listicle from a keto nutrition site that mentioned both brands briefly within a wider comparison (without any head-to-head testing), an Amazon product listing for NuNaturals with an extensive buyer review section that served as de-facto comparison content, and a general “best stevia sweeteners” guide from a clean-eating lifestyle blog that covered both brands in a single paragraph each. None of the top-ranking pages offered a direct, tested, use-specific comparison between just these two products — which is the gap this article is written to fill. Most of the existing comparison content is label-reading rather than actual sensory testing, which is why the distinction between applications (coffee vs. plain water vs. baking) matters and doesn’t appear in the current top results.
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