The 8 Best Pruning Blades for Reciprocating Saws of 2026

Set this beside a plain 5 TPI pruning blade and the geometry is visibly different: the tooth line curves along the edge, and each tooth is ground on three angles with a deep gullet behind it. EZARC calls it an arc edge; what matters is that the teeth are shaped to hook and clear rather than scrape.

The payoff is the most aggressive cut in this group. In green wood the blade pulls itself into the kerf, and we found ourselves using noticeably less forward pressure than a standard coarse blade needs — the saw does the work. The trade is control. It vibrates harder, throws chips further, and a hooked tooth in wet pine will find your glove if you let the blade wander.

The listed capacity runs to about seven inches of trunk, which matches what we got out of it. What it doesn't shrug off is leverage: the failures cluster at the shank where the blade meets the clamp, so keep the shoe on the wood and stop pushing the moment the blade starts to bow.

There's a size of branch where a nine-inch blade stops being enough — the trunk you'd otherwise drag out a chainsaw for. Twelve inches of blade is what gets you through it, and the RP125 is built heavy enough that the extra length doesn't flop around in the cut.

The verdict after using it on trunks the shorter blades stalled in: this is the pick for anything over about six inches across, and the thick body doesn't warp when a cut runs hot. You pay for that reach in control. A blade this long has more to whip, and if you lever it sideways to steer, you can feel it bow — a bowed blade binds, and a bound blade burns.

Feed it straight, keep the shoe flat on the bark, and it walks through a foot-thick trunk in a way that makes the reciprocating saw feel like the wrong tool to argue with. In a crowded crotch, though, you'll be reaching for something shorter.

This is the least expensive nine-inch five-pack in the group, and that changes how you use it. A pack like this is consumable tooling: one blade for the hedge, a fresh one for the fence line, no agonizing over whether the edge is still good. The math favors swapping rather than pushing.

The blade itself is honest high-carbon steel with a coarse tooth, and a new one goes through green branches cleanly and quickly. The edge doesn't hold like the Bosch or the Diablo — you notice it first in dry, hard wood, where the teeth stop biting and start polishing. KOWOOD also labels this as a demolition and plunge blade that happens to suit tree branches, which tells you where the design priorities sit.

Nine inches of blade in a Sawzall inside a lilac clump or a crape myrtle thicket is like parking a truck in a garage: the tool is fine, the space isn't. Six inches gets in where longer blades can't go, and the shorter body also means less whip and more control at the far end of the stroke.

The set is aimed at wet wood and green branches, which is exactly the work, and it ships with a retractable organizer case that keeps the blades from rattling loose in a toolbox. We found the grinding on the teeth aggressive enough to walk through four-inch limbs without stalling; beyond that you're asking a short blade to do a long blade's job.

Where it earns a permanent spot is brush and saplings, where you want one hand on the saw and the other pulling a branch out of the way. Our caution is sideways load. This blade is thin, and levering it to hurry a cut is how it ends up snapped at the shank. Let the teeth cut and it lasts.

The cut a fleam-ground tooth leaves is closer to what a pruning saw manages than what a reciprocating blade usually does: clean shoulders, less torn bark, and a face you don't have to tidy up afterward. On a limb you're cutting flush to the trunk, that difference is the reason to care about tooth geometry at all.

The plunge tip is the other detail we appreciate. You can bury the nose in the middle of a limb and start without a starter notch, which is how you deal with a branch too springy to hold still under the shoe. Diablo hardens the cutting edge, and it shows in palm fronds and other fibrous growth that normally polishes a blade smooth.

This is the smallest body of feedback among our picks, so we're careful about claiming too much — but what's there is good across cutting, sharpness and speed, and a limited lifetime warranty sits behind the edge. Keep it away from wood with nails or embedded wire, which is the one thing it's explicitly not built for.

The body here is 1.3 mm of chrome vanadium, thin enough that you can flex it between two fingers, and that tells you most of what you need to know about how it behaves. Thin is what you get in a five-pack priced well under the premium blades.

In green wood it cuts quickly and smoothly, and the heat treatment puts it a step above the no-name blades that come bundled with a saw. The trouble starts when the blade meets resistance at an angle. A thin body bows, a bowed blade binds, and a bound blade snaps at the shank — the same failure point we see on every thin blade in this group.

What we appreciate is the honesty of the math: five blades means you can afford to swap one out the moment it starts working harder than you are. Ours went through brush, roots, and a little plastic pipe, and the one that died did so because it was levered, not because it wore out.

If you want a blade you stop thinking about, this isn't it. If you want a stack of coarse wood blades for a weekend of clearing and you're willing to keep the saw straight, it's the best value here.

Half an inch doesn't sound like much until you're cutting a limb you can barely reach. VICRING's blade measures 9.5 inches, and that extra length plus the slim body puts teeth on wood where a standard nine-inch blade is scraping bark.

The steel is high carbon, hardened to HRC 48-52, and the alternating corrugated teeth are shaped to keep the blade from clogging. In practice this is the cleanest-cutting 5 TPI blade in the group: the kerf stays clear, chips come out, and the blade tracks straight instead of wandering.

Speed is where it gives ground. Against the 6 TPI EZARC it's noticeably slower through anything over four inches, and on a long afternoon of hardwood you feel that in your arms before the blade gives out.

What settles it for us is the combination — a longer blade, an edge that keeps cutting clean, and a six-month warranty behind it. That's a sensible default for someone clearing brush and branches who wants a smooth cut more than a fast one.