Best Dates to Buy Online in 2026: A Grower’s Honest Guide

I grow dates for a living, so read this knowing I am one of the sellers on the list. I have tried to make it the guide I would want if I were buying — which means saying plainly where someone else is the better choice.

Every price below came off the seller’s own website and was checked in late August 2026. Prices change; check before you buy.

We grow these. Zahidi Dates | California-Grown & Farm-Direct | Desert Sun Dates from our family farm in Sky Valley, California — from $19/lb, shipping included. See them →

What are dates, and which should you buy?

The date fruit is the fruit of the date palm, Phoenix dactylifera, grown commercially in the United States almost entirely in the Coachella Valley of Southern California. Medjool dates are the large, soft, caramel-sweet variety most people mean when they say dates. Zahidi are golden and firmer. Barhi are honey-sweet and rare.

Almost every date sold in a shop is dried dates in the sense that they have cured on the palm — what sellers call fresh dates usually means fruit from the current season rather than fruit that has been in cold storage for a year. Ask when it was picked, and that distinction becomes clear quickly.

The short answer

If you want…	Buy from
Certified organic	Bautista Family Organic Dates, or Coachella’s Best
The lowest delivered price	Compare per-pound after shipping — see below
A gift with impressive packaging	Bateel, or Rancho Meladuco
Dates today, not in three days	A local grocer or Instacart
Fruit direct from the grower, in stock now	Us, or another Coachella Valley farm
Rare varieties in one box	Coachella’s Best, or Bateel

The thing nobody tells you: compare delivered price

This is the single most useful habit when buying dates online, and almost nobody does it.

Dates are heavy. Most sellers advertise a box price and add freight at checkout, which can add $10 to $30 depending on weight and distance. A box that looks cheaper often is not.

Worked example, checked 27 August 2026:

• Rancho Meladuco — 1 lb Signature at $23.00, plus $9.99 flat shipping = $32.99 delivered
• Medjool Days — 5 lb at $49.99, plus USPS Priority calculated at checkout
• Coachella’s Best — 10 lb Large at $79.00, plus shipping at checkout
• Desert Sun Dates — 12 lb at $118, shipping included = $9.83/lb delivered

Work out cost per pound to your door. It is the only comparison that means anything.

Best Medjool dates: the growers

Bautista Family Organic Dates — best certified organic

Mecca, California. Certified organic, seven varieties including Medjool, Khadrawy, Halawy, Honey, Deglet Noor, Zahidi and Barhi. Their wet-pack Medjools have a genuine following.

Catch: the online shop is seasonal and sells out. If certification is your criterion, they are excellent and I would send you to them.

Coachella’s Best Dates — best range of grades

A certified organic farm of around a hundred acres. Their grading is the deepest I have seen — mini, premium, large, jumbo, rutab and cooking grade — across Medjool plus Barhi, Halawi, Zahidi, Honey and Deglet.

If you want to choose your exact grade, or want organic with real choice, this is the one. Shipping is added at checkout.

Rancho Meladuco — best brand and gifting

Certified organic, Coachella Valley, with a retail shop in Costa Mesa. Bon Appétit called their dates the world’s best. They sell subscriptions from $17/month, gift boxes, an heirloom variety box, and cosmetically imperfect “grinders” cheaply — which is exactly what a farm should do rather than discard them.

Catch: $9.99 flat shipping, continental US only. Alaska and Hawaii excluded.

Sam Cobb Farms — best if you want to visit

Desert Hot Springs. Medjool, Barhi, and a variety he calls Black Gold you will not find elsewhere. Guided farm tours that people remember for years.

Catch: on-farm sales and tours run roughly mid-October to mid-April, weekends only. Online ordering is year-round.

Desert Sun Dates — that’s us

Our family farm in Sky Valley. Medjool, Zahidi and Barhi, hand-pollinated in spring, hand-harvested, packed in a shed a couple of hundred yards from the palms.

What we do differently: shipping is included in the price to the lower 48, so the number you see is the number you pay. And we are in stock now rather than taking preorders — what is in stock today is a real page we keep current.

We are not certified organic and we do not describe ourselves as organic. We grow without pesticides, which is the narrower and accurate claim. If certification matters to you, buy from Bautista or Coachella’s Best.

1 lb $19 · 2 lb $29 · 4 lb $49 · 6 lb $67 · 10 lb $102 · 12 lb $118 — all delivered.

Medjool dates →  ·  Zahidi dates →

The brands you will see everywhere

Bateel — best gift, at a price

Founded 1936, farms in Al Ghat, Saudi Arabia, packed in Dubai. Hand-painted boxes, filled dates, and varieties like Ajwa, Sokari and Segai that nobody grows commercially in California.

Their entry Medjool is a 250 g box from $34 — roughly $62 a pound. You are buying presentation, and they are genuinely superb at it. For a gift, they are hard to beat. For a month’s supply of fruit, they are not the value choice.

Joolies and Natural Delights — buy these in a shop

Both are large, well-known brands, and neither really sells whole dates direct to consumers online any more. Joolies is now in over 12,000 stores. Natural Delights is a Bard Valley growers’ brand with no online store at all.

If you like them, the supermarket is the right place to buy them and you will pay less than any shipped alternative.

Amazon, Nuts.com and the nut retailers

Convenient, often cheap, and fine. What you generally cannot find out is which farm grew the fruit or when it was picked. That is not dishonest — it is simply a different product from farm-direct, and the price does not always reflect the difference.

What actually makes a date good

• Count per pound. Jumbo Medjool runs roughly 22 to 28 dates per pound. Smaller grades run 30 or more. If a seller will not tell you the count, they are selling you a word.
• When it was picked. Dates store well, so last season’s crop can legitimately be sold as fresh. Ask.
• Whether it is coated. Some imported and lower-grade dates are coated in glucose syrup to look plump and glossy. If it tastes sugary before you bite it, that is why.
• Sulfites. Legal, declarable, and common on dried fruit. A lot of people react to them.
• Whole or pitted. Pitted is convenient. Whole fruit has been handled less. Both are legitimate.

Common questions

What is date fruit?
The fruit of the date palm. It grows in bunches, ripens from yellow through to brown on the tree, and is eaten either soft and cured or, in a few varieties, crisp and yellow. See what are yellow dates for the ripening stages.

What is the difference between fresh dates and dried dates?
Less than you would think. Nearly all dates cure on the palm, so what is sold as dried dates is usually the same fruit. The meaningful question is when it was picked — current season, or out of cold storage from last year.

What are the best Medjool dates to buy online?
For certified organic, Bautista or Coachella’s Best. For gifting, Bateel or Rancho Meladuco. For grower-direct at the lowest delivered price, compare per-pound after shipping — ours work out at $9.83/lb on the 12 lb box with shipping included.

Are expensive dates worth it?
Sometimes. A $62-a-pound gift box is mostly packaging. A $12-a-pound farm-direct box is mostly fruit. Neither is wrong — they are different purchases.

Where do most American dates come from?
The Coachella Valley in Southern California grows the overwhelming majority. We wrote a grower’s guide to the valley’s date farms — sixteen of them, honestly described.

What is the difference between varieties?
Medjool is large, soft and caramel-sweet. Zahidi is golden, firmer and nuttier — better for baking. See Zahidi vs Medjool.

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Written by Jason Shopshear, who grows Medjool, Zahidi and Barhi dates at Desert Sun Dates in Sky Valley, California. Prices were read from each seller’s public website in late August 2026 and may since have changed. If anything here is inaccurate, email me and I will correct it.