XQS Nicotine Pouches & XQS Snus

XQS Nicotine Pouches and XQS Snus, Explained

XQS nicotine pouches are slim, tobacco-free pouches from a Swedish brand that started in Jämtland in 2005, put its first product on sale in 2006, was bought by Scandinavian Tobacco Group in 2023 and reached UK shops in May 2024. We list fourteen flavours: ten fruit and fresh cans at 8mg or 10mg of nicotine per pouch, and four mints from The Spearmint at 6mg to The Menthol at 17mg, the strongest XQS made, with the milligrams printed on the front of every can under a six-bar strength row. XQS snus is simply what a lot of people call them. One pouch sits under your top lip for fifteen minutes to an hour, and nothing is lit, inhaled or spat.

XQS is the brand people find second. Almost nobody starts on it, because it is not on every garage forecourt the way VELO and Nordic Spirit are, but the searches that bring people to this page tell the story: xqs tropical, xqs black cherry, xqs strengths, strong xqs, and a good deal of "what is xqs" from people who have just been handed a can. The short answer is a Swedish pouch brand with a fruit-first flavour list, an honest strength label and a smaller pouch than most, now owned by the Copenhagen company behind a lot of Europe's cigars and pipe tobacco. The long answer is this page, and the three tools on it: the strength finder decodes the bars on any XQS lid and turns a smoking, vaping or pouch habit into a starting rung, the flavour finder lists every XQS we stock with a link to its own page, and the price calculator quotes the same numbers the checkout charges.

Strictly, none of it is snus. Snus is a Swedish tobacco product, banned from sale in the UK since 1992, whereas XQS contains no tobacco leaf at all, which is what lets it sit legally on a British shelf. The brand itself calls its cans "tobacco-free snus" on its own site, people search for XQS snus about half as often as for XQS nicotine pouches, and our listings call them XQS nic pouches, so all of those names appear here. The long version is in snus vs nicotine pouches.

18+ only, and nicotine is addictive. If you do not already use nicotine, do not start with XQS or anything else.

XQS Strengths: 8mg and 11.2mg per Pouch, and the Bars on the Can

XQS prints its strength per pouch, on the front of the can, under a six-bar row. The brand's UK ladder runs 4, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 and 17mg, grouped into four words: Regular (two bars), Strong (three or four bars), Extra Strong (five bars) and Ultra-Strong (six bars). We list five of the seven rungs: The Spearmint at 6mg, the fruit and fresh cans at 8mg and 10mg, Arctic Freeze and The Menthol at 11mg, and The Menthol 17mg, the strongest XQS made. The 8mg fruit cans and the 11.2mg Arctic Freeze both work out at about 16mg/g, because Arctic Freeze uses a heavier 0.7g pouch.

Two things about that table trip people up. First, the bars are not one per rung: 8, 9 and 10mg all print four bars, and 11 and 12mg both print five, so read the number, which sits directly under them. Second, the words. XQS calls 8mg "Strong", and our listings, which use one scale across every brand we sell, call the same can "Medium". Neither is wrong; ours is measured against Killa and Pablo, theirs against their own 4mg. If you have searched for strong xqs or xqs extra strong, the strong cans in the brand's sense are the 8mg and 10mg cans on this page, the extra strong ones are Arctic Freeze and The Menthol 11mg, and the one ultra-strong can is The Menthol 17mg. Our dots, for once, agree with the can: three for 6mg, four for 8 and 10mg, five for 11mg, six for 17mg.

The 8mg and 11.2mg cans are closer than the numbers suggest. Every fruit and fresh can uses a 0.5g pouch, which is small even for a slim, and 8mg in 0.5g is 16mg/g. Arctic Freeze uses a 0.7g pouch, and 11.2mg in 0.7g is also 16mg/g. So the pouch material is the same strength in both; Arctic Freeze simply gives you 40 percent more of it, which arrives as a bigger, slower dose rather than a sharper one. If you came from a can marked per gram, that is the number to match: a Killa marked 16 is a like-for-like on paper, though a Killa pouch weighs more, and a Pablo Exclusive at 50mg/g is a different sport. The finder below does the conversion.

The older can muddies the water. Until the 2026 redesign, XQS cans had a black lower half, a coloured lid and a five-dot strength row, with four of five dots filled at 8mg, which is where every UK shop table that says "4 dots = Strong 8mg, 5 dots = X-Strong 11.2mg" comes from, ours included until this rewrite. The current cans, in shops since March 2026, print six bars, four filled at 8mg and five at 11.2mg. There was also a 9.6mg Cool Ice in the 2024 UK launch range that has since gone. The brand's own product pages are the reference for all of it: they state the milligrams per pouch and the pouch weight for every can, which is more than most brands manage.

Every XQS Flavour We List

We list fourteen XQS flavours in the brand's own three families: seven fruity (Tropical, Black Cherry, Fizzy Peach, Berrynana Twist, Raspberry Blackcurrant, Strawberry Kiwi, Watermelon Blizz), three fresh (Blueberry Mint, Citrus Cooling, Cola Lime) and four minty (Arctic Freeze, The Spearmint, The Peppermint, The Menthol). All ten fruit and fresh cans come at 8mg and six of them at 10mg as well; the mints run from 6mg to 17mg. The finder below shows what is in stock and links to each flavour's own page, where the tasting notes and questions live.

Where to Start

• First XQS: Tropical. Pineapple, mango and passion fruit, the brand's signature since its Swedish days, the flavour it launched the UK with, and the most searched. If you want to know what XQS is about, it is this can.
• The dark one: Black Cherry, the brand's own words are "full flavour of ripe cherries", and it is the least sweet fruit in the range. The other people-search-for-it fruit.
• Sweet shop: Fizzy Peach and Berrynana Twist, strawberry and banana, are the candied end. Strawberry Kiwi and Raspberry Blackcurrant are sharper; Watermelon Blizz is the summer can, and no longer on the brand's own UK site, so it stays listed only while our supplier has it.
• Fruit with a cold edge: Blueberry Mint is the crossover and the second most searched flavour, Citrus Cooling is sharp lemon and lime with a cool finish, and Cola Lime is the drink-inspired one, cola with a squeeze of lime.
• The mints, soft to sharp: The Spearmint at 6mg is the sweet, gentle one and the first XQS we would hand a new pouch user; The Peppermint at 10mg is the all-rounder; Arctic Freeze at 11.2mg is icy peppermint with a sweet finish on the bigger 0.7g pouch; The Menthol, at 11mg or 17mg, is the sharp one and the strongest XQS made.
• Strength on a first order: 6mg, The Spearmint, if you are new to pouches; 8mg if you smoke or vape regularly; 10mg or 11mg if an 8mg feels thin after a week; 17mg only if you already use a strong pouch. The finder above does the sums.

Not here: the brand's 12mg Crisp Ice, Double Mint and Frost Bite, the 9mg Spearmint (a different can from The Spearmint), the 4mg Tropical, and the older Swedish flavours you will still see named on forums, such as Elderflower, Cactus Sour, Cool Ice Mini, Soft Toffee, Hallon Soda, Twin Apple, Chili Mango and Epic Freeze X, which XQS no longer sells in the UK, plus the Pink Lemon Fizz 14mg and Cucumber Fizz cans one big UK retailer imports. If a UK shop lists one of those, it is old stock or an EU import; the brand has published no formal discontinuation list, so we say "no longer sold here" rather than "discontinued". Browsing by taste rather than brand? Our fruit pouches, citrus pouches, fizzy pouches and mint pouches shelves put XQS next to its rivals, our medium strength and extra strong shelves sort by dose, and the full nicotine pouches range puts it next to everything.

XQS Formats: One Slim Pouch, Two Sizes

XQS sells one format in the UK, a slim all-white pouch, in two published sizes: 0.5g in every 8mg fruit and fresh can (10g of pouches per can) and 0.7g in Arctic Freeze (14g per can), twenty to a can either way. The brand has not published a pouch weight for the 2026 mint line or for the 10mg fruit cans. There is no mini, no large and no dry pouch; the "mini" in old listings was the Swedish 4.2mg Cool Ice Mini, which the UK never got.

The size matters more than it sounds. A 0.5g pouch is about three quarters the weight of a VELO or a Nordic Spirit slim, and STG's UK boss described the whole pitch at launch as "a smaller size and longer lasting flavour, all for a lower price". In the mouth that means a lower, flatter pouch that disappears under the lip and drips very little, at the cost of a lighter hit than the 8mg figure suggests if you are used to a bigger 8mg from another brand. Arctic Freeze's 0.7g pouch is the more familiar size and the more familiar weight of dose. Both are moist enough to work at once and dry enough not to run; the brand's own advice is fifteen to sixty minutes, and the flavour in the fruit cans lasts longer than the nicotine does.

Who Makes XQS? Born in Jämtland, Owned in Copenhagen

XQS was created by XQS International AB, a small company from Jämtland in northern Sweden, whose founder Lars Danielsson and a co-founder had the idea in 2005 and sold their first product in 2006. Since 31 May 2023 the brand has belonged to Scandinavian Tobacco Group A/S of Copenhagen, which bought the assets of the Swedish company for up to about 150 million Danish kroner, and STG's UK arm launched it here in May 2024 at a £5.50 recommended price. The brand's own line is "Made by Sweden", which is not the same claim as made in Sweden, and the brand does not say on its UK site where today's pouches are manufactured.

The origin story is a good one and the brand tells it well: two committed snus users by a lake outside Östersund, wanting the snus habit without the tobacco. The first XQS products were tobacco-free and nicotine-free, herbal snus in effect, and the company also made the "Smokey Mountain" herbal snus that led the tobacco-free segment in the United States for years. Nicotine pouches came in the 2010s, and by the time STG came along XQS was selling about three million cans a year, almost all of them in Sweden, where it had grown into a top-five pouch brand. What STG bought was a flavour-led Swedish brand with room to grow abroad, and the UK was the first big step: a four-flavour launch in May 2024 (Tropical, Blueberry Mint, Cool Ice and Arctic Freeze), a full fruit range by 2025, the March 2026 redesign with the bolder logo, the glossy lids, the six-bar strength row on the front and a sweet, fresh, zesty, tangy or icy flavour marker on the side, and then, in mid-2026, a three-can mint line, The Spearmint, The Peppermint and The Menthol, that finally gave the brand a 6mg and a 17mg. The price did not move.

Where the pouches are made is the one thing we cannot tell you from a primary source. A 2018 Swedish trade report said production had started in Strömsund and then moved to the Philippines; nothing STG or XQS has published since says where the current cans come from, and the "Deliciously Swedish" on the rim is a heritage claim rather than a place of manufacture. If that matters to you, ask the brand; we would rather say we do not know than repeat a forum guess. What we can tell you is on the can: a UK nicotine warning, a full ingredients list (a plant-fibre bulking agent, water, nicotine, flavourings, salt, propylene glycol, an acidity regulator and a sweetener), a batch number, and a UK-registered seller, STG's UK company in Borehamwood, behind it.

XQS 0% Nicotine: the Caffeine Cans

The XQS Tropical 0% nicotine, Black Cherry 0% nicotine, Citrus Cooling 0% nicotine and Blueberry Mint 0% nicotine cans that people search for are caffeine pouches: no nicotine, about 50mg of caffeine per pouch, twenty to a can, in the same four flavours as the nicotine cans. They exist, one or two UK specialists sell them, the brand's own UK shop does not, and neither do we. This is a nicotine pouch shop, and we would rather say so than list a can we cannot vouch for.

They are worth knowing about for two reasons. First, so you do not buy one by mistake: the caffeine cans are marked 0% nicotine on the lid, and if you are handed one expecting a Tropical 8mg you will feel the difference within a minute. Second, because they are the thread back to what XQS was before it made nicotine pouches, a tobacco-free and nicotine-free brand, and STG's own announcement of the purchase describes XQS as selling "nicotine and nicotine-free pouches". Fifty milligrams of caffeine is about half a cup of filter coffee, absorbed through the gum rather than the stomach, and the American version of the same idea, sold under the XQS name in the US, carries twice that. If a caffeine pouch is what you are after, Haypp's guide to the category rates the XQS ones well; if a nicotine pouch is what you are after, you are on the right page, and the 0% cans are not it.

Our Honest XQS Review

XQS is a good, fruit-first mainstream pouch with the clearest strength labelling of the Scandinavian brands and a smaller, lower-drip pouch than most. If you want a Tropical, a Black Cherry or a Cola Lime that tastes of the thing on the lid, an honest 8mg printed on the can, and a pouch you forget is there, it is worth a pack. If you want a single can to try, a 12mg, or anything above 17mg, it is not the range we would send you to. Nobody has reviewed an XQS with us yet, so what follows is our own view, not customer stars.

• Flavour: The strong suit. XQS built its Swedish reputation on fruit, and Tropical, Black Cherry and Blueberry Mint are among the more convincing fruit pouches sold in the UK, sweet without being sickly and lasting well past the nicotine. Fizzy Peach and Berrynana Twist are the sweet-shop end and divide people. Arctic Freeze is a straightforward cold peppermint, done well; The Menthol is colder and drier, The Peppermint is the mintiest, and The Spearmint is the soft one.
• Strength honesty: Very good. The milligrams per pouch are on the front of the can and the pouch weight is on the brand's product page, so the number on the lid is the dose you get. The only wrinkle is the bar row, which shares four bars between 8, 9 and 10mg, and the table above fixes that.
• Delivery: Gentle. A 0.5g pouch at 8mg gives a softer, slower start than an 8mg VELO, and the flavour peaks before the nicotine does. Arctic Freeze on the 0.7g pouch is the fuller experience of the two. Neither is a hard hit, and people who want one should be on the strong shelf.
• Feel: Slim, low and moist, with almost no drip; the smaller pouch is the point. It sits lower under the lip than a Nordic Spirit and is easier to hide than a ZYN. Some people find 0.5g too small to feel and want the bigger can.
• Against it: Five strengths here of the brand's seven, with the 4mg and 12mg cans missing. Ten fruits to four mints, so still a fruit brand first. Packs of 10 only here, so no single-can sampling. A brand most people have never heard of, which matters less than it sounds. And no reviews here yet, which we would rather say than fake.

Other reviewers land in the same place. Haypp's tester scored the range 4.25 out of 5 in March 2026, praising the flavour variety and mouthfeel and marking it down for the shortage of extra strong options; Northerner's reviewer gave it 4.5 out of 5 in January 2026 for "steady performance, accurate flavour character, and low-drip comfort"; the independent Two Wombats review called it "an elevated and purely Swedish nicotine pouch experience". The brand's own web shop scores 3.6 on Trustpilot from 127 reviews, and nearly all of the complaints are about delivery from the shop rather than the pouch. When an XQS order is reviewed with us it will appear on the flavour's page and on our reviews page, and we will not be inventing any before then.

How to Open an XQS Can, and How to Use the Pouch

Twist the lid off, take one pouch, and tuck it between your upper lip and gum, slightly off-centre. The brand's own advice is to leave it for fifteen to sixty minutes, never to chew or swallow it, and to keep the can tightly closed at room temperature. There is no perforation, seal or click to worry about on a current XQS can: it is a plain twist-off lid, and if yours is stiff, hold the base and turn the lid, not the other way round.

"How to open xqs nicotine pouches" is one of the more searched XQS questions, and the honest answer is that the can opens like any other Swedish pouch can: grip the bottom, twist the top anticlockwise, lift. The instructions you may have seen about breaking a perforation and twisting to a second click come from a generic article about stuck lids, not from XQS. A tingle in the first minute is the nicotine at work, not a fault; on Arctic Freeze it is a proper cold sting for the first five, and taking it out early is the correct response. Never two at once, whatever a forum says. Used pouches go in the bin, never down the toilet; the can is 100 percent recyclable when empty, which the rim reminds you. Our how to use nicotine pouches guide covers the fiddly bits, and how many pouches a day is the question everybody asks next.

What XQS Costs Here: Packs of 10, and the Free Can

XQS comes in packs of 10 cans of one flavour at £39.90, which is £3.99 a can and about 20p a pouch. Two packs in the basket bring every can to £3.50, three packs to £3.33, and four or more to £2.99, and every 10-can pack of any brand counts towards those tiers.

For context, the brand's own UK shop, checked in September 2026, sells single cans at £4.49 against a £5.50 recommended price, £3.99 a can in a 5-pack, £3.49 a can in a 10-pack, a 4-can mint bundle for £12, and £2.33 a can at the 30-can rate. So a 10-pack costs a little more here than direct, and less than the brand from two packs up, with the flavour you searched for actually in stock. Every XQS pack clears our £20.00 free delivery threshold on its own, orders placed before 3pm Monday to Friday leave the same day, standard delivery takes two to three working days, and next day delivery is £4.99. The full terms are in our shipping policy.

The XQS free sample is real, and it is not ours. The brand's UK site runs a "Claim a Free Can" offer: pick a flavour, sign up with an email address, pass the age check, and a can is posted to you, subject to availability. It is a sensible way to try a Tropical or a Blueberry Mint before you commit to ten of them, and we would rather tell you that than pretend it does not exist. The brand also sells a subscription of five cans or more, and hands out scratch cards with orders. None of that is available here; what is available here is the pack price above and the tiers on top of it.

Who XQS Suits, and When to Buy Something Else

XQS nicotine pouches suit adult nicotine users who want a fruit-led flavour list, an honest 8mg on a small, low-drip pouch, and a brand with Swedish roots that is not on every forecourt. Skip it here if you want a single can, a strength above 17mg, or a big pouch that you can feel.

• No single cans. We sell XQS only in packs of 10 cans of one flavour, so trying Cola Lime means owning ten of them. The brand's free can offer, above, is the way to taste first; our VELO and Nordic Spirit ranges come as single cans.
• Four mints, ten fruits. If mint is most of what you buy, VELO, Nordic Spirit and Clew have the wider mint range.
• Nothing above 17mg. The Menthol 17mg is the brand's ceiling. If you live on the strong shelf, Killa, Pablo and Iceberg start where XQS stops.
• A small pouch. 0.5g is a light pouch, and an 8mg XQS feels softer than an 8mg from a brand with a bigger pouch. Some people love that; some feel short-changed.
• Supply. A newer UK brand with one importer. A struck-through can in the finder means we cannot get it today, and the button on its page will say Back Soon rather than take your money.
• No reviews here yet. Nobody has reviewed an XQS can with us so far, and we are not going to invent any.
• Never used nicotine? Then keep it that way. Trying to stop smoking altogether? NHS Better Health is free and rather good.

XQS vs ZYN, VELO, Nordic Spirit and Clew

Per pouch, an XQS 8mg sits between a ZYN 6 and a ZYN 11, level with a three-dot VELO or a Nordic Spirit Regular, and a shade under a Clew 10mg; Arctic Freeze and The Menthol at 11mg match a four-dot VELO, a ZYN 11 or a Nordic Spirit Strong; The Spearmint at 6mg is a ZYN 6 or a two-dot VELO; and The Menthol 17mg is level with the strongest VELO and Nordic Spirit cans sold in the UK. On strength labelling XQS and Clew are the two honest ones, both printing the milligrams per pouch; on flavour, XQS is the fruit brand of the four; on range, single cans and reviews, the big names win here.

ZYN is the comparison people make most, and the difference is texture and taste: ZYN is a dry, slim, mint-and-citrus brand that stops at 13.5mg here, XQS is a moister, smaller fruit-first brand that runs from 6mg to 17mg. A ZYN 6 user moving to XQS should think The Spearmint or an 8mg; a ZYN 11 user, Arctic Freeze or The Menthol 11mg. VELO has three times the flavours in single cans and prints words and dots rather than milligrams; an 8mg XQS is a three-dot VELO in dose and a softer one in feel. Nordic Spirit is the closest Scandinavian cousin, another moist slim pouch from a JTI-owned Swedish brand; its Regular is level with an XQS 8mg, its Strong with Arctic Freeze, and its 17mg cans with The Menthol 17mg, and it is the one to try if you like the XQS feel but want a wider mint list. Clew is the other brand on this site that prints per pouch and runs a six-mark lid; its 5mg is below anything XQS sells here and its 10mg sits just above the XQS 8mg. Where XQS sits among the rest is in our best snus brands in the UK guide.

XQS and UK Law in 2026

XQS nicotine pouches are legal to buy and use in the UK if you are 18 or over, and there is no legal cap on strength. Under the Tobacco and Vapes Act 2026, selling nicotine pouches to anyone under 18 becomes a criminal offence from 29 October 2026, and an advertising ban follows on 1 June 2027. The Vaping Products Duty that starts on 1 October 2026 covers e-liquid, not pouches.

XQS's UK cans carry the UK warning, an ingredients list and a batch number, and come through a UK-registered seller, Scandinavian Tobacco Group's own UK company, rather than a grey channel, which is more than can be said for some of the strong brands. The Trading Standards seizures you may have read about involved pouches with foreign-language or missing warnings, not a strength limit. Buy from a shop that says where its stock comes from, and be suspicious of any UK XQS listing quoting the Swedish-only flavours or the 4.2mg mini, because those are EU imports. Our is snus legal in the UK guide has the wider picture, and can you take pouches on a plane answers the question the brand's own blog leads with.

Updated 15 September 2026: the strengths, pouch weights, pouch counts, the six-bar row, the flavour families and the prices were checked against the brand's own UK product pages and FAQ; the ownership, founding and UK launch facts against Scandinavian Tobacco Group's acquisition announcements and the UK trade press; the can markings against the official renders.