The Best Pruning Shears for Houseplants

A bad cut is not just cosmetic. Crushed plant tissue heals slowly, opens the way for fungal infection, and leaves visible scarring. A clean, sharp cut closes quickly and is barely visible after a season. On a propagation cutting, the difference between a clean cut and a crushed one is often the difference between roots and rot.

Cheap pruning shears don’t stay sharp, and once dull they crush more than they cut. The picks below are the seven tools worth knowing about — from the Felco that does most of the work for most plant keepers, to the scalpel that does the very fine work better than anything else. They’re research-led: we’ve compared the manufacturers’ specifications and checked UK prices rather than running a side-by-side trial.

Best Overall — Felco No. 6

The Felco No. 6 is the medium-hand version of Felco’s bypass secateur. Felco has made secateurs in Switzerland since 1945; the No. 2 is the full-size original, and the No. 6 is sized for medium hands and indoor-scale work, which makes it the right Felco for most plant keepers.

A hardened steel blade slides past a stationary lower blade — a bypass design, like scissors — so it slices rather than crushes, with a rated cutting capacity of 20mm. Across the stem sizes indoor pruning involves, from a thin Pothos vine to a woody Rubber Plant cutting, that clean slice is what a cutting needs to root and what lets a pruning wound close quickly.

The under-appreciated case for Felco: it’s designed to be fully repairable, with replacement blades, springs, and shock absorbers sold separately, a micro-metric adjustment to take up play as it wears, and a lifetime warranty on the forged aluminium handles. A pair bought today can be kept in service for decades. Full review: Felco No. 6.

Best for Larger Hands — Felco No. 2

The Felco No. 2 is the full-size original the No. 6 is a scaled-down version of — same Swiss build, same repairable design, but sized for large hands with a 25mm cutting capacity against the No. 6’s 20mm. If your hands are on the larger side, or you’re regularly cutting past pencil-thickness (a maturing rubber plant’s woody stems, a fiddle leaf fig’s thicker growth), that extra capacity puts those stems mid-range rather than at the limit.

On the thin, soft growth that makes up most routine indoor pruning, there’s no cutting difference; the No. 2 just weighs a little more (251g against 219g) and has a bigger handle span. Buy whichever actually fits your hand — see the full review for the comparison.

Best Budget — Burgon & Ball Flower & Fruit Snip

For occasional pruning — deadheading a Peace Lily, taking a Pothos cutting, trimming a brown tip — a Felco is more tool than you need. Burgon & Ball’s Flower & Fruit Snip is the thrift pick: a scissor-action snip with pointed stainless steel blades, 19cm long and 120g, endorsed by the RHS, for £12.99. Burgon & Ball describes it as suitable for precise work and tough stems.

The trade-off against a Felco is everything a Felco is built around — capacity, repairability, and a blade designed to be resharpened and kept for decades. For a casual plant keeper who prunes a few times a year, this is the buy. For anyone who propagates regularly or maintains a maturing collection, save up for the Felco.

Best for Weaker Grip — Darlac Compound Action Pruner

Budget and grip strength are two different problems, and the Darlac Compound Action Pruner solves the second one specifically. A lever mechanism at the pivot multiplies the force reaching the blade, so a given stem takes less hand effort to cut than with a standard shear the same size — a mechanical advantage, the same principle compound loppers use.

That matters most on thicker, woodier stems, where a standard shear needs a firm squeeze. If arthritis, RSI, or simply a weaker grip is what makes pruning tiring, this is the pick; if budget is the only constraint, the Burgon & Ball snip is cheaper. The blade is PTFE-coated SK5 carbon steel, the capacity is 20mm, and it costs around £20–£23.

Best for Wrist Strain — Felco No. 12

The Felco No. 12 is a standard Felco bypass cutting head with one change: the lower handle revolves as you cut, instead of staying fixed in your palm. Felco says this spreads force across the hand and reduces cutting effort by up to 30%, but its real distinction from the Darlac is the problem it solves. The Darlac’s lever reduces the force a single tough stem needs; the No. 12’s revolving handle reduces the wrist twisting and blister friction that build up across a long session.

If a single tough stem is your problem, the Darlac or the larger-capacity No. 2 solve that more directly and for less money. If it’s cumulative wrist strain over a long session — arthritis, RSI, or just a big collection — this is the one built for it.

Best for Fine Work — Niwaki Mainichi Snips

For very fine work — trimming a browning leaf tip, deadheading individual flowers, removing damaged tissue from a Calathea — a secateur is too bulky. You want a narrow snip.

Niwaki’s Mainichi (“everyday”) Snips are Japanese snips made in Sanjo, with SK85 carbon steel blades 4.5cm long and a spring, rated for cuts up to about 5mm. Niwaki pitches them for harvesting, cutting back, and light pruning, including on indoor plants. At £48 they cost more than the Burgon & Ball snip; what you’re paying for is the carbon steel blade and the precision of the tips.

Best for Propagation — Sterilised craft scalpel

For propagation cuttings specifically, the right tool isn’t a shear at all. It’s a scalpel with replaceable blades — a handle and a pack of blades from an art or craft supplier costs well under £15, and spare blades cost pennies each.

The advantage is twofold. First, a fresh scalpel blade is extremely sharp, so the cut is as clean as you can make it, which matters for the rooting success of difficult cuttings (Fiddle Leaf Fig, Strelitzia, anything woody). Second, a small blade is easy to keep sterile: wipe it with isopropyl alcohol between every cut and you avoid carrying fungal infections from plant to plant.

What you give up: a blade that stays sharp for long, and the convenience of one tool. Swap blades often. For routine pruning, use a shear; for cuttings you actually want to root, use a scalpel.

What to skip

Anvil-only shears. These have a sharp blade that cuts down onto a flat anvil — they crush rather than slice, which is the opposite of what propagation and clean pruning need. Bypass designs (blade sliding past blade) are what you want for houseplants.

Disposable plastic snips with paper-thin blades. Sold cheaply in supermarkets. The blades flex under any real stem and crush what they cut. Skip.

How we chose

These picks are research-led. We compared the manufacturers’ published specifications — cutting capacity, blade material, hand size, repairability, weight — against what indoor pruning needs, and checked UK prices in October 2026. We haven’t used these tools side by side, and we don’t claim to have. See how we review.

For the techniques themselves — when to cut, where to cut, how to handle the cuttings — see the propagation guides and the pruning basics guide.

Sources

• Felco: FELCO 6, FELCO 2, FELCO 12; UK prices at World of Secateurs and Crocus.
• Burgon & Ball: Flower & Fruit Snip – RHS Endorsed.
• Darlac: DP332 Compound Action Pruner; UK price at Charlie’s.
• Niwaki Mainichi Snips: Burford, Garden Heir — blade steel and length, capacity, weight, made in Sanjo, price.
• Scalpel handles and blades: Crafty Arts, Handover.

Correction, October 2026: an earlier version of this page named a Burgon & Ball “Precision Snips” and Niwaki “Mainichi Bonsai Scissors”, described testing we had not carried out, and attributed a Which? Best Buy and lifetime warranty to the Darlac that we can’t confirm. The picks now name the real products, using manufacturers’ published specifications. See how we review.