Sucralose vs Stevia

Sucralose and stevia are the two high-intensity sweeteners most people meet in a coffee shop or a diet drink, and on paper both are thoroughly cleared. Sucralose has a full US food-additive approval and an EU safety review re-confirmed in December 2025. Stevia has an intake limit two independent bodies agree on and authorization across 32 EU food categories. Their differences are in the details: how much each is allowed per day, and by whom; what happens when you bake with them; and what the packet you actually buy is made of.

At a Glance

Every row below comes from our two sourced records, the same ones the cards at the foot of this page show. Each figure links to the document it came from and the date we last checked it; open “Note” for the qualifications that go with it. Where a record has nothing sourced for a row, the cell says so rather than filling the gap.

Sweetness and What’s in the Packet

FDA describes sucralose as about 600 times sweeter than table sugar, and steviol glycosides as 200 to 400 times, depending on which glycoside is used. Both are used in milligrams and add no volume, structure, browning or mouthfeel, so anything that measures cup-for-cup is mostly carrier.

That carrier is the part that counts. Sucralose packets and cup-for-cup blends are bulked with dextrose or maltodextrin, both ordinary, rapidly digested carbohydrate: a sucralose packet is not a zero-carb product, even though the sucralose in it is. Stevia products use erythritol, dextrose or maltodextrin depending on the brand. If you are counting carbohydrate, count the carrier.

“Stevia” is also less of a single thing than the label suggests. In the EU, steviol glycosides carry four numbers, E 960a to E 960d, for leaf extraction, fermentation, enzymatic production and glucosylation, so how a stevia sweetener was made changes its E number while the front of the pack still says stevia.

Intake Limits: Name the Authority

Sucralose has three acceptable daily intakes, and they do not agree. FDA’s is 5 mg per kg of body weight a day; EFSA and JECFA both set 15. EFSA re-confirmed its figure in a re-evaluation adopted in December 2025 and found no genotoxicity concern for sucralose or its impurities and breakdown products. “The ADI for sucralose” means nothing without saying whose.

Stevia has one figure: 4 mg per kg of body weight a day, set by JECFA in 2008 and independently by EFSA in 2010. It is expressed as steviol equivalents, not as grams of sweetener, a conversion step that is easy to skip. In 2024 EFSA refused a request to raise it, and noted that a proposed extension into baked goods would increase toddlers’ high-end intake above it.

Baking

This is where the regulators disagree about sucralose. FDA calls it heat stable, sweet even at baking temperatures and suitable for baked goods. EFSA, assessing a proposed extension into fine bakery wares in its December 2025 opinion, “could not conclude on the safety” of that extension because of uncertainty about which chlorinated compounds form across different baking processes, while noting that controlled studies showed no significant increase in 3-MCPD or in dioxins and furans (PCDD/PCDF). The two are answering different questions: FDA is describing whether it stays sweet, EFSA whether something forms. A baker needs both answers.

Our stevia record has no heat-stability finding either way. Neither sweetener supplies browning or bulk, so in baking both depend on whatever they are blended with.

Effects on the Body

Steviol glycosides are not absorbed in the upper gut; colon bacteria cleave them to steviol, which is why the ADI is counted in steviol. A 2024 meta-analysis of 26 trials found stevia lowered fasting glucose, most clearly in short trials and in people with diabetes, higher BMI or hypertension, with no effect on insulin or HbA1c and with low certainty overall. Stevia is well evidenced as a way to replace sugar, not as a treatment in its own right.

Sucralose’s open question is about appetite rather than glucose. In a 2025 crossover study of 75 adults, sucralose raised blood flow in the hypothalamus, a brain region involved in appetite, and raised hunger compared with sugar matched for sweetness. Compared with plain water, it still raised hypothalamic blood flow but made no difference to hunger, a distinction often lost in coverage. That is acute, mechanistic work, not evidence that sucralose causes weight gain.

Regulatory Status

Sucralose is the only one of the two that went through the full US food-additive petition process: approved for 15 food categories in 1998 and as a general-purpose sweetener in 1999, after FDA reviewed more than 110 studies, and codified at 21 CFR 172.831. In the EU it is authorized as E 955.

Stevia’s US status rests on GRAS notifications for high-purity (at least 95%) steviol glycosides. Stevia leaf and crude leaf extracts are not GRAS, and their import for use as sweeteners is not permitted (Import Alert 45-06). In the EU, steviol glycosides are authorized as E 960a–d across 32 food categories.

Which Should You Choose

For drinks, either works; check the carrier if you are counting carbohydrate, since packets of either can contain dextrose or maltodextrin. For baking, sucralose has FDA’s statement that it stays sweet, and an open EFSA question about what forms in the oven; neither sweetener will brown or add bulk on its own. If you want the sweetener with a single intake limit the regulators agree on, that is stevia.

The Bottom Line

Sucralose and stevia are both thoroughly reviewed, and the evidence for either supports replacing sugar, not a benefit beyond that. Sucralose has the strongest form of US clearance, a three-fold disagreement between regulators on its daily limit, and two open questions: what forms when it is baked, and whether it is metabolically inert in practice. Stevia has a single agreed limit, counted in steviol equivalents, and a US legal line at 95% purity that whole-leaf products do not meet. With either, much of what you buy is the carrier, so read the ingredient list.