Types of concentrates: what is the best form of concentrate for you?

What is the best form of concentrate? It depends on what you care about most. If you want something easy to handle, shatter is stable and snaps cleanly, while budder and badder are soft enough to scoop. If flavor is the goal, live resin is made from fresh-frozen plants and is known for tasting like the living plant. Rosin pressing separates resin using heat and pressure, without an extraction solvent. And if you vape, distillate is the clear, refined oil found in many cartridges.

Every one of those is a concentrate: cannabis with most of the plant material taken away so the resin is left. The names on a menu tell you two things, how the product looks and how it was made. Learn to read both and the concentrate shelf gets a lot less confusing. Definitions below follow the World Health Organization review of cannabis extracts and NIDA’s concentrates fact sheet.

Last reviewed: November 2026.

What is the best form of concentrate for you?

The best form of concentrate is the one that fits how you plan to use it. Shatter and budder suit a dab rig, rosin suits people who want a solventless product, live resin suits flavor chasers, and distillate suits vape cartridges. Concentrates often test far above flower, but strength varies by product, so read the tested THC on the label and choose mostly on texture, flavor and how it was made.

Compare how the actual texture can be handled with the equipment intended for that product. Hard shatter can be broken into tiny pieces, and soft budder can be picked up with the tip of a tool. Runny sauces are harder to portion. Whatever you pick, use the device the product is made for: a jar of badder and a sealed vape cartridge are different purchases, and one does not go in the other.

Types of concentrates at a glance

A common distinction separates solvent extraction from mechanical separation. Solvent extracts are made by washing the resin off the plant with butane, propane, alcohol or carbon dioxide, then removing the solvent. Solventless products are separated by sifting, ice water, or heat and pressure. NIDA’s concentrates fact sheet lists the same methods and notes that butane hash oil goes by many street names, among them shatter, wax and honey.

From the solvent family, shatter is a hard, glassy sheet that ranges from light to dark amber, dried in a vacuum oven. Wax is the same kind of extract whipped at low heat until it turns soft and crumbly. Budder, often spelled badder or batter, is whipped less, so it keeps more moisture and feels oily and malleable, a texture NIDA compares to lip balm. Honeycomb and crumble are pressed while the solvent comes off, which leaves them dry and crumbly. Distillate is refined further into a clear oil.

From the solventless family, kief is the dry powder of trichomes sifted from flower, hash is that resin pressed together, and bubble hash is collected with ice water. Rosin is pressed from flower or hash with heat and pressure. Live resin and live rosin are the versions made from plants frozen right after harvest.

Badder vs sugar vs shatter

These three are texture names, and you can usually tell them apart at a glance. Shatter is a firm, see-through sheet. Badder looks like whipped cake batter and holds its shape on a tool. Sugar is grainy, with small crystals in a wetter base, and it is often sold as terp sugar. None of them contains any actual sugar; the name only describes the look.

Sauce is a runnier, more aromatic concentrate, and menus use diamonds for the larger crystals that form in it. A jar sold as sauce and diamonds holds both. These are trade names, so two producers can use them slightly differently.

Texture does not tell you how strong a jar is, or whether it was made with solvent. A rosin can be whipped into a badder, and so can a resin. To know both halves, read the whole name: live resin badder and live rosin badder can look the same and be made in different ways.

Resin or rosin: reading how it was made

Resin on a label means a solvent extract. Rosin means a pressed, solventless product. Live in front of either means the plants were frozen fresh at harvest instead of dried and cured first. California commercial manufacturers using closed-loop extraction must follow DCC requirements for certified closed-loop systems, and the DCC labeling rules require the product identity and cannabinoid content on every package.

For the full three-way comparison, see our guide to live resin vs rosin vs distillate. If you have seen live resin and wax on the same menu and wondered whether they are the same thing, our live resin vs wax guide answers that.

How strong are concentrates?

Concentrates can have much higher THC concentrations than flower, but compare actual products rather than assuming every concentrate exceeds every flower sample. NIDA’s June 2020 fact sheet cites studies with solvent-extract averages of about 54% to 69% THC and non-solvent averages of about 39% to 60%; these are historical study ranges, not current California market averages.

Percentages convert to milligrams easily: one percent by mass is 10 milligrams per gram, so a one-gram jar labeled 70% THC holds 700 milligrams of THC in the whole jar. That is arithmetic for the whole gram, not a serving recommendation or a measure of how much reaches a person. Effects vary from person to person, and the label on your jar is the final word.

Shopping for concentrates at Vibe

Tell your budtender how you plan to use it, dab rig, e-rig, vape pen or pre-roll, and what you have liked before. That narrows the shelf fast. If you are new to dabbing, our guide to what dabs are and how they are made covers the equipment and the basics, and the vape cartridge guide covers carts and batteries.

Check the current concentrate selection at your nearest Vibe store. Under DCC rules, the daily adult-use limit for concentrate is 8 grams, separate from the flower limit.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• WHO expert review: extracts and tinctures of cannabis
• NIDA: marijuana concentrates fact sheet
• DCC: manufactured cannabis product labeling checklist
• DCC: closed-loop extraction system checklist
• California DCC: text of regulations, section 15409

For adults 21+ (18+ with a physician’s recommendation in California). Keep out of reach of children and pets. Do not drive or operate machinery after use.