When it comes to food storage, a few key storage solutions can help you extend your shelf life. One small but mighty storage solution is the mylar bag. These incredible and inexpensive pouches protect your food stores from light and air to maximize their shelf life. And the best mylar bags do it reliably and are ridiculously easy to use.

There are several options to consider when it comes to mylar bags: thickness, features, quality, etc. This is where we come in. We’ve researched the best mylar bags, tested them, and now the results are in: the overall best, a budget option, and a bulk option. If you need to keep your food from spoiling over the long term, one of our recommendations will keep you stocked.

Contents (Jump to a Section)

The Best Mylar Bags

Wallaby

Resealable, High-Quality, and Trusted

The brand to beat for food storage materials makes it easy with complete mylar bag kits.

$29* at Amazon

*Price at time of publishing; check for price changes or sales.

Wallaby makes all food storage easy with their solutions, and mylar bags are no exception. You can easily match up the mylar bags to oxygen absorbers and label the bags easily with the included kit components. The quality is great and they have an awesome customer service team if you have any issues (which we found rare in our research).

Here are the details:

• Zipper closure, tear notches
• 30 bags, 30 labels, 30 oxygen absorbers
• 1 gallon
• 10″ x 14″
• Stand-up gusset
• 7.5 mil food-grade mylar (each side)

If you are looking for the best of the best, pick up Wallaby Mylar Bags to make long-term food storage easy.

Budget Mylar Bags

SHXWell

Simple, Inexpensive, and Effective

Forget the frills and accessories with these pouches that are the best bang for your buck.

$23* at Amazon

*Price at time of publishing; check for price changes or sales.

Yes, we agree that “SHXWell” is an odd-sounding brand name, but they sell some great mylar bags. You still get the stand-up gusset, the zipper closure, and the convenient tear-notches. Also, the 7.5 mil thickness is not bad for a budget brand pouch. These bags will get the job done without any frills- making them ideal for bulk food storage.

Here are the specs:

• Zipper closure, tear notches
• 30 bags, 50 labels, 40 oxygen absorbers
• 1 gallon
• 10″ x 15″
• 4.3″ stand-up gusset
• 7.5 mil food-grade mylar (each side)

Pick up SHXWell Mylar Bags to store your food on a budget.

Bulk Mylar Bags

Wallaby 5 Mil

Bulk Pricing, High-Quality, and Trusted

If you go down in thickness and up in quantity, you can seal a lot of food for relatively cheap.

$46* at Amazon

*Price at time of publishing; check for price changes or sales.

If you give up the zipper closure, some thickness, and the stand-up gusset- you can get our top pick down to around 50 cents per bag. As you can see from the budget pick, this is very cheap as long as you are willing to buy in 75-bag quantities. We wouldn’t suggest going below 5 mil as you may see with other bulk options online, because those thicknesses become less reliable for long-term storage.

Here are the details:

• Tear notches
• 75 bags, 80 labels, 80 oxygen absorbers
• 1 gallon
• 10″ x 14″
• 5 mil food-grade mylar (each side)

If you are looking for bulk pricing, pick up Wallaby 5 Mil Mylar Bags to make long-term food storage cost-effective.

Everything We Recommend

Wallaby

With twice the thickness of competitor pouches, these are the absolute best option for food storage.

Where to Buy

$29* at Amazon

*at time of reviewing

SHXWell

Forget the frills and accessories with these pouches that are the best bang for your buck.

Where to Buy

$23* at Amazon

*at time of reviewing

Wallaby 5 Mil

If you go down in thickness and up in quantity, you can seal a lot of food for relatively cheap.

Where to Buy

$46* at Amazon

*at time of reviewing

The Bags We Compared

Our research narrowed the field down to the several pouches that we tested: Vonhen, Wallaby, Home Sensei, SHXWell, Harvest Right, WiseDry, ProPremium, and more.

You can see our full list of review criteria below in the What to Look For section, with an explanation for each.

We focused on food-grade mylar bags exclusively and narrowed down our testing to a common size (1 gallon) for comparison purposes. Most of the brands we encountered offer a wide range of sizes for a variety of applications. We did not consider plastic freezer bags or reusable containers, since those are separate storage solutions for different food storage applications.

We’re always looking for new and better equipment, so if you have mylar bags that you swear by let us know in the comments. We review most of our tested gear annually, so we can always get it in the next roundup round and see if it makes the cut and we can see if it will beat out our top picks.

What to Look For

The best mylar bags have several important features to look for:

1. Value
2. Thickness
3. Features
4. Size & Weight
5. Quality

When you get the right blend of these, you can find mylar bags that will give your sealed food an enormous shelf-life. Below, we break down what each of these features means for the mylar bags that set themselves apart.

Value: Cost vs. Benefit

The amount of money you spend on something like mylar bags shouldn’t blow out your entire budget. Don’t go overspending or overdo it. Budget according to your risk and your needs rather than just spending lavishly.

On the flip side, you don’t want to go too cheap or just plain get the wrong thing. Plastic freezer bags in your pantry are a bad look and will let light and air accelerate your food spoiling. Get the correct tool for the job.

You never want to spend too much money on one resource, especially something like food storage accessories. It’s better to diversify your preparedness gear to make sure you are covered for a wide range of scenarios. There is a sweet spot where you get high value with not too high of a price, which is where our top pick sits.

Thickness

Thicker mylar bags may be tougher to heat seal but they definitely have their benefits too. 5 mil is the minimum thickness you should consider for long-term food storage. Anything less than that is known to be more easily compromised by air and sun exposure in the long run.

Stand-up bags with thicker walls are easier to fill, are tougher to puncture and tear, are more rodent-proof, and can even block radiation according to scientific studies (sorry, we’re not testing this one).

We found pretty convincingly that the thicker the mil of the mylar, the better. There are very few drawbacks to thicker bags, with most of the drawbacks having easy workarounds. For instance, thicker bags are harder to open when sealed, but most people should have a knife or scissors handy.

Features

There are many features that come with mylar bags, but there are a few standout features as well. You can find them with:

• Windowed sides – avoid these as light can get through
• Included labeling stickers – nice to have but not a necessity
• Included oxygen absorbers – nice to have, but you’ll likely need more. (see our best-reviewed oxygen absorbers)
• Tear notches – a great feature, but we all know these don’t work 100% of the time.

The features that you really want to find in your mylar bags are:

• Stand-up design – a bottom gusset to let you fill the bag while it stands on its own
• Resealable zipper – you can still heat-seal the bag above the zipper, but then have a reusable pouch once you open it.

All of our suggestions sport these bottom two features, and they are very handy to have while you are filling the pouches or when you are opening and using the pouches.

Size & Weight

Size and weight are mostly negligible with mylar bags, and that is something you won’t often see us write.

More important is that you select the right size bag for your application. If you are putting only a few cups into a two-gallon bag, you are being wasteful with your resources and adding unnecessary profile and weight. This may not matter in your pantry, but it could matter more if it is going into a mobile survival kit.

Quality

Quality with mylar bags hinges on the materials used, the manufacturing methods, and the after-sale service. Besides the various thicknesses you may find, the first two areas are similar across many of the brands. Well-trusted brands, like Wallaby and Harvest Right, do have exemplary customer service teams, which show through their product support and reviews.

How to Use Mylar Bags

Mylar bags have a wide variety of uses and are more versatile than you may expect. You can use resealable mylar bags to store food, but you can also use them with a heat sealer (or even a clothes iron or hair straightener) to better seal the bags for longer periods.

QUICK TIP: Mylar bags are NOT Faraday bags. Check out our Faraday bag review roundup if you are interested in protecting your electronics.

Don’t overfill the bags so that you have room to compress them to remove air. It is often a good idea to use oxygen absorbers to make sure that the food lasts even longer.

Here are our NC neighbors at Guildbrook Farms with some more details on using mylar bags for food storage:

Who Needs Mylar Bags?

Mylar bags are an excellent food storage solution that can extend food shelf life. Everyone needs food stability, and stored food with a long shelf life is a major component of that.

Mylar bags should be considered for your food storage, which is also an integral part of the broad:

• Food Storage Plan

They are especially useful if you have bulk food storage, a heat sealer, and a food storage plan.

Sources and References

All of our experience and the testing we do to determine the best mylar bags is useless without listing our research sources and references. We leaned on these for the book knowledge that we paired with our hands-on testing and practical military and prepping experience:

Angelini, P., et al. (1975). Effect of irradiation on volatile constituents of stored haddock flesh. Journal of Food Science. Volume 40. Issue 1. Pages 197-199. (Source)

Cooper, G., et al. (1979). Submicron Aerosol Losses in Aluminized Mylar Bags. Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology. Volume 18. Issue 1. Pages 57–68. (Source)

Li, Y., et al. (2014). Transportation of Perishable and Refrigerated Foods in Mylar Foil Bags and Insulated Containers: A Time-Temperature Study. Journal of Food Protection. Volume 77. Issue 8. Pages 1317-1324. (Source)

The Final Word

Mylar bags are a food storage marvel and are a great resource to extend your pantry shelf life. Prevent air from entering, light from spoiling, and plastic from leeching with space-age technology cheap enough to pack your food in.

Here are a few related articles our readers have also found helpful:

• Best Impulse Heat Sealer for Food Storage
• The Best Oxygen Absorbers for Food Storage
• Survival Food List | Pantry Stockpile Plan and Checklist

We presented quite a lot of information, but as always: if you have any questions let us know and we would be happy to help. Our research and testing found the Wallaby Mylar Bags to be the best option given their value, thickness, features, profile, and quality.

Keep exploring, stay prepared, and be safe.

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