ZYN Nicotine Pouches & ZYN Snus

ZYN Nicotine Pouches and ZYN Snus, Explained

ZYN nicotine pouches are small white pouches, no tobacco leaf in them, that sit under your top lip for about half an hour and release nicotine and flavour while they do. They are made by Swedish Match, part of Philip Morris International since 2022, have been on sale in the UK since 2019, and are the biggest nicotine pouch brand in the world by the brand's own shipment figures. We list twenty-two ZYN flavours across seven strengths: dry Minis from the 1.5mg X-Low to 6mg, moist Regulars from 9mg to 13.5mg, the milligrams and a row of dots printed on every lid. ZYN snus is simply what a lot of people call them. Nothing is lit, inhaled or spat.

ZYN is the pouch people have heard of before they have heard of pouches. It is the can on the garage counter, the word Americans use for the whole category, and the brand that gets asked about in the searches that land here: what is zyn, zyn pouches, zyn uk, zyn price, zyn 1 dot, and a steady stream of zyn snus from people who have half-understood a headline. The short answer is a Swedish-designed, American-owned pouch with the plainest flavours in the category, an honest per-pouch strength label, the only 1.5mg can sold in Britain, and a dot system that almost every shop, and at one point the brand's own guide, has explained wrongly. The long answer is this page and the three tools on it (the whole shop, every brand, is on nicotine pouches): the strength finder decodes the dots on any ZYN lid and turns a smoking, vaping or pouch habit into a starting rung, the flavour finder lists every ZYN 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 ZYN contains no tobacco leaf, which is what lets it sit legally on a British shelf. The nicotine inside is extracted from tobacco, and the brand's own footnote says exactly that, so the accurate phrase is tobacco-leaf-free rather than tobacco-free. People search for ZYN snus about a third as often as for ZYN nicotine pouches, and both names appear on this page for that reason. The full answer, including why a can of real snus in your suitcase is a different legal question, is in is ZYN snus, with the wider category comparison in snus vs nicotine pouches.

ZYN Strengths and the Dot System: 1.5mg to 16.5mg per Pouch

ZYN prints its strength in milligrams of nicotine per pouch, and draws the same rung as a row of dots on the lid: one dot is 3mg, two dots 6mg, three 9mg, four 11mg, five 13.5mg and six 16.5mg. The 1.5mg X-Low Mini prints the words X-Low and no dots. Up to 6mg the can is a dry Mini; from 9mg it is a moist Regular. We list seven of those rungs, 1.5mg to 13.5mg, and not the 16.5mg Max.

The dots are where the internet goes wrong about ZYN. One well-ranked UK guide publishes a table that starts the scale at 1.5mg with one dot and tops out at four dots for 11mg, which is not a can that exists. The brand's own strength guide still describes a Mini as showing "2 of 4 dots" while its product pages sell a "5 dot can" and a "6 dot can". Our own listings do not help the confusion either: the label on a 6mg here says Low where ZYN says Medium, and our 9mg and 11mg both say Medium where ZYN says Strong and X-Strong. The dots on our labels match the lid, the words do not, and the table below gives you both so nothing gets lost between a can in your hand and a button on this site. The dot-by-dot version, with the Mini and Regular question answered at length, is our ZYN strengths guide; the same rungs across every brand are on the low, medium and extra strong shelves.

How much nicotine is in a ZYN pouch?

Exactly what the can says, per pouch: 1.5, 3, 6, 9, 11, 13.5 or 16.5mg. That sounds obvious until you have held a Killa or a Pablo, which print milligrams per gram, so a "16mg" Killa is about 13mg a pouch and a "50" Pablo is about 30mg. ZYN never does that. A 6mg ZYN delivers roughly what a two-dot VELO or a 6mg XQS does, and the 13.5mg sits a rung below VELO's 14mg five-dot can. The comparison bar in the finder below puts any ZYN rung against every brand we sell, per pouch, with the mg/g brands converted.

What is the strongest ZYN?

Menthol Ice at 16.5mg, six dots, labelled Max, is the strongest ZYN the brand sells in the UK. The strongest we list is 13.5mg, five dots: Menthol Ice and Blackcurrant Frost. Several UK shops, and PMI's own IQOS store page for the 13.5mg can, still call 13.5mg the top of the range; it is not, and has not been since the brand added the six-dot can. We do not list the 16.5mg because our wholesaler does not carry it, and because the customer who wants that much nicotine in a moist pouch is usually better served by a VELO or Nordic Spirit 17mg on our high-strength shelf. If the 16.5mg arrives on the UK trade list, it will appear here with the same five-can pack pricing.

ZYN 12.5mg: the previous-generation cans

Icy Mint and Icy Blackcurrant at 12.5mg are the older cans of what the brand now sells as Menthol Ice and Blackcurrant Frost at 13.5mg. The brand says so itself for the blackcurrant ("Blackcurrant Frost, previously known as Icy Blackcurrant"), and its shop no longer lists a 12.5mg of anything. The wholesaler still supplies them, so they stay listed as their own products, a milligram under the current cans with the same five dots, and they show Back Soon when a batch runs out rather than quietly becoming the new can. A search for zyn icy blackcurrant still outnumbers zyn blackcurrant frost in the UK, which tells you how slowly a rename travels.

ZYN Mini vs ZYN Regular (Formerly Slim): Dry vs Moist

ZYN comes in two pouch sizes. The Mini is a small dry pouch, 13mm by 28mm, made with pouch paper and no water in the recipe, sold at 1.5mg, 3mg and 6mg. The Regular, which the brand called Slim until 2025 and most shops still do, is a larger moist pouch, 14mm by 34mm, made with bamboo fibre and 35 to 40 percent moisture, sold from 9mg up. Watermelon Mint also comes as a 6mg Regular on the brand's site, the one exception to the rule; we list it at 11mg.

The difference is bigger than the millimetres suggest. A dry Mini wakes up slowly and evenly, barely drips, and can genuinely be forgotten in a meeting; a moist Regular arrives faster, tastes more, and makes its presence felt under the lip in a way that heavier users tend to prefer and lighter ones sometimes describe as a lot. The moisture is also why a Regular seems stronger than the same milligrams in a Mini would: the nicotine is available sooner. ZYN's own guide gives the 9mg and 11mg Regulars 35 percent moisture and the 13.5mg 40 percent, which fits what people report about the strong mints running wet. If your gums are sensitive, or you have come from a Nordic Spirit Mini, start with a ZYN Mini and move to a Regular only when 6mg feels thin.

How many pouches are in a can of ZYN?

Twenty, on every can the brand's UK shop lists except the 1.5mg X-Low Mini, which holds ten. The complication is that the brand contradicts itself: its format guide says Mini 20 and Regular 21, and the product pages for the 9mg and 11mg Cool Mint say "21 Regular pouches", while the 16.5mg Menthol Ice and the Watermelon Mint pages say 20. Cans in circulation carry both numbers. So if your Regular says 21 and the one before said 20, nothing has gone missing; the brand has been moving its Regular cans from 21 to 20 and the printing has not caught up everywhere. Every calculation on this page uses 20, which is the conservative figure, and 10 for the X-Low.

Every ZYN Flavour We List: 22 Cans, and Which Are the UK Range

The brand's UK range on its own shop is thirteen flavours across thirty-one cans: Cool Mint, Spearmint, Black Cherry, Watermelon Mint, Apple Mint, Citrus, Coffee, Red Fruits, Guava Spice, Blueberry Mint, Blackcurrant Frost, Menthol Ice and Blueberry Frost. We list twelve of those thirteen (Blueberry Frost is the gap), the two previous-generation 12.5mg cans, and seven EU-range flavours that are not part of the UK line-up and are marked Coming Soon until we have a UK source for them.

The UK range, as the brand describes it

Mint first, because that is where ZYN sells (and where our mint pouches shelf starts). Cool Mint is the bestseller and the only flavour with the whole ladder under it, "cool fresh peppermint and menthol" in the brand's words, from the 1.5mg X-Low Mini to 9mg and 11mg Regulars. Spearmint is softer and sweeter, closer to a stick of gum than to toothpaste, 1.5mg to 11mg. Apple Mint puts green apple over peppermint with a hint of spearmint and stays a Mini at 3mg and 6mg. Menthol Ice is eucalyptus and menthol at 13.5mg, genuinely cold, the strongest thing we sell from the brand.

Fruit next, ZYN's slice of our fruit pouches shelf. Black Cherry is the most-searched ZYN fruit in Britain by some distance, "cherries with hints of forest berries and vanilla", and runs from 1.5mg to 11mg. Watermelon Mint is the brand's "latest fusion flavour", relaunched in 2026 and listed here at 11mg. Blueberry Mint is new for 2026 too, sweet and sour blueberry with menthol, 11mg. Red Fruits is strawberry and menthol with rhubarb and raspberry behind it, the one flavour sold only at 9mg. Blackcurrant Frost is dark berries over menthol at 13.5mg, the fruit answer to Menthol Ice; a fair few shops list it as Blackcurrant Forest, which is a mishearing, not a flavour. Guava Spice, guava and chili, was Chili Guava before the 2025 repack.

Then the rest, split between our citrus and coffee shelves. Citrus is orange and lemongrass rather than plain lemon, 3mg and 6mg Mini and 11mg Regular, and the flavour the brand names as one of the three most popular in the UK (Cool Mint 3mg, Cool Mint 6mg, Citrus 6mg). Citrus Mini Strong is the same 6mg Citrus Mini on its own listing. Coffee, called Espressino until the repack, is unsweetened roast coffee with cocoa and caramel at 11mg and a softer mocha and nougat recipe at 6mg. Blueberry Frost, 13.5mg, is the one current UK flavour we do not yet list.

Seven EU-range cans, and why they say Coming Soon

Gentle Mint, Lemon Spritz, Red Berry Fizz, Cactus Spice, Black Licorice, Violet Licorice and Peach (once Bellini) are real ZYN flavours, made for other European markets, and none of them is on the brand's UK shop or our wholesaler's list. Some UK sites sell them as grey imports with a Swedish "No.2" or "No.4" on the can instead of dots. We would rather show you the page, say plainly that we cannot source them at the moment, and let you ask to be told when that changes, than sell you a can with a Swedish warning label. Red Berry Fizz is the odd one: it was a UK limited edition, other UK retailers still have it, and the brand has dropped it from its own shop without saying so.

New, renamed and gone in 2026

Who Makes ZYN? Swedish Match, Philip Morris and a Factory in Kungälv

ZYN is made by Swedish Match, the Stockholm company that has made oral nicotine products since the nineteenth century, and Swedish Match has belonged to Philip Morris International since November 2022. The UK site's footer reads Swedish Match North Europe AB and its age gate calls the cans Philip Morris International smoke-free products. Where the UK cans are made the brand does not say; Swedish Match's nicotine pouch factory is in Kungälv on Sweden's west coast, and the company's US regulator filing names Kungälv and Owensboro, Kentucky, as the two ZYN plants.

The dates matter because retailers get them wrong. ZYN was launched in the United States first, in Colorado in 2014, reached Sweden in 2016 and Britain in 2019, all according to the brand's own history blog, so the "developed in Scandinavia in 2016" line you see on rival pages is two years and one continent out. The name means nothing; it is a coined word, not an acronym. Inside the pouch: nicotine extracted from tobacco, plant fibre (pouch paper in the Mini, bamboo fibre in the Regular), flavourings, sweetener, pH adjusters and, in the Regular only, water. No tobacco leaf, which is the fact the whole legal position rests on.

Our Honest ZYN Review

ZYN is the tidiest pouch in the category: the cleanest flavours, the plainest strength label, the only 1.5mg can in Britain, and a Mini so small and dry you can forget it is there. It is also the least exciting. The fruit flavours are restrained to the point of shyness, the moist Regulars drip more than a Nordic Spirit, and at the £6.50 the brand charges for a single can it is poor value next to anything we sell. Buy it for the mints, the Minis and the low rungs; buy something else for sweetness or for real strength.

What ZYN does better than anyone is the bottom of the ladder. Nobody else sells a 1.5mg, and the 3mg and 6mg Minis are the cans we would hand to a light smoker or a 10mg-salt vaper without a second thought. Cool Mint is a properly good peppermint, Spearmint is the one to give someone who thinks they hate mint, and Citrus is more interesting than its name, with an orange and lemongrass edge rather than washing-up-liquid lemon. Black Cherry earns its search volume: dark, a little vanilla, not sweet.

What it does worse: the Regular pouch at 13.5mg is a wet, cold, fairly aggressive thing that some heavy users love and a lot of Mini fans regret ordering; Red Fruits and Guava Spice are pleasant and forgettable; and the brand's price at retail, £6.50 a can, is the highest of any mainstream pouch. On this site the pack pricing takes that to £4.00 a can and down to £2.99 a can, which is competitive with the page-one specialists, but the X-Low is the exception and we say so in the price section below. Nobody has reviewed a ZYN with us yet, so there are no stars on this page and no invented ones; the reviews we do have, on other brands, are on our reviews page.

How to Use ZYN Pouches (and Open the Can)

Twist the lid off, take one pouch, tuck it under your top lip to one side, leave it for around twenty-five to thirty minutes, then drop it in the compartment in the lid until you reach a bin. That is the whole method; the brand's own guidance is thirty minutes, single use.

1. Open. The lid unscrews. The small top compartment is for used pouches, not fresh ones, and it clicks shut.
2. Place. Top lip, off centre, between lip and gum. A Mini sits almost flat; a Regular you will feel.
3. Wait. A tingle in the first minute or two is normal, and stronger on the Regulars, which are moist. It fades. Do not chew it and do not move it around.
4. Time it. Twenty-five to thirty minutes covers most of the nicotine. Some people leave it an hour for the flavour; there is not much left to extract by then.
5. Swallow or not. Swallowing normally while a pouch is in is fine and is how most people use them. Swallowing the pouch itself is not dangerous, but it is not food, so do not.

Dizziness, hiccups or a queasy stomach mean the rung is too high or the pouch was in too long. Take it out and drop a strength next time. The category-wide version, with the questions people are embarrassed to ask, is in how to use nicotine pouches; how many a day is reasonable is in how many nicotine pouches per day.

What ZYN Costs Here: 5-Can Packs From £4.00 a Can

A can of ZYN is £6.50 at the brand's own shop, at IQOS and in most UK supermarkets and garages. Here ZYN comes as 5-can packs of one flavour and strength at £19.99, which is £4.00 a can, and the per-can rate drops to £3.50 with two packs in the basket, £3.33 with three and £2.99 with eight, any ZYN flavours mixed. Standard delivery is free over £20.00, which a single ZYN pack sits just under and any two packs clear; the full terms are on the shipping policy and the cross-brand offers on nicotine pouch deals.

Two honest caveats. First, the pack tiers count packs, not cans: the third pack earns the £3.33 rate, and the next drop is at eight packs, so there is no reason to buy four, five, six or seven packs for the price alone. Second, the 1.5mg X-Low is the rung where the brand beats us: its 10-pouch can is £2.99 direct from ZYN, and our 5-can X-Low pack is the same £19.99 as every other pack, which works out at more per pouch. If all you want is X-Low, buy it from the brand or a supermarket; if it is one line in a bigger ZYN order, the convenience may be worth the difference, and now you know what the difference is. The brand also runs a claim-a-free-sample offer on its own UK site as of September 2026; we do not give cans away, and from 29 October 2026 free distribution of nicotine pouches is banned in the UK anyway.

Who ZYN Suits, and When to Buy Something Else

Buy ZYN if you want a low or medium strength, a mint or a cherry, and a pouch you can forget about. Buy something else if you want more than 13.5mg, a sweet or fruity flavour with some conviction behind it, the cheapest strong pouch on the market, or the 1.5mg X-Low on its own.

• You want it stronger than 13.5mg. The brand's 16.5mg is not listed here. VELO and Nordic Spirit both reach 17mg per pouch with a printed dot ladder of their own, and for real strength the mg/g brands, Killa and Pablo, go a long way past anything Swedish Match makes.
• You want flavour. ZYN's fruit cans are polite. Fumi and XQS are built for fruit first, at similar per-pouch strengths.
• You want a slow, soft pouch. A Nordic Spirit Mini or Slim runs gentler on the gums than a ZYN Regular at the same milligrams, and is the usual answer when a ZYN 9mg or 11mg feels harsh.
• You want the X-Low cheaply. See above. The brand's £2.99 can is the better buy for that rung alone.
• You have never used nicotine. Do not start with ZYN, or with anything else here. Nicotine is addictive and the 1.5mg exists for people winding down, not warming up.

ZYN vs VELO, Nordic Spirit and XQS

ZYN is the driest, plainest and lowest-starting of the four; VELO hits fastest and goes to 17mg; Nordic Spirit is the softest and the easiest all-day pouch; XQS is the fruit specialist with a fresher, smaller pouch. All four print per-pouch milligrams, and all four use some kind of dot or bar row on the can, none of which line up with each other.

The longer arguments are on the brand pages linked in the table, and in best snus brands in the UK, which ranks all of them with the sales numbers behind the opinion.

ZYN and UK Law in 2026

ZYN is legal to buy, own and use anywhere in the UK because it contains no tobacco leaf, so the 1992 ban on oral tobacco does not touch it. You must be 18 to buy it here, as you always have been; under the Tobacco and Vapes Act 2026 that becomes a statutory limit on 29 October 2026, when selling nicotine pouches to anyone under 18 becomes a criminal offence, along with giving them away free. An advertising ban follows on 1 June 2027. The Vaping Products Duty that starts on 1 October 2026 covers e-liquid, not pouches.

Two things worth watching. The government opened a consultation in July 2026 on plain packaging and on limiting pouch flavour names to a single plain descriptor, which would rename half the cans on this page if it becomes law; it closes on 2 October 2026 and nothing changes before 2027. And ZYN's UK cans come through Swedish Match's own UK company with UK warnings and batch numbers, which is more than can be said for the grey-import Swedish cans some sites sell with a number on the lid. If a ZYN listing quotes a "No.3" or a 6.5mg, it is an EU can. 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 flavour page illustrates with a man holding a Cool Mint at 35,000 feet.

Updated 16 September 2026: the strength ladder, dot counts, formats, pouch counts, the thirty-one-can UK range and the prices were checked against the brand's own UK shop, product pages and format guides; the ownership and launch dates against the brand's history blog and Philip Morris International's acquisition announcements; the factory locations against Swedish Match's site listing and the US regulator's published review; our prices against the live pricing module.