Tattler vs Harvest Guard: Which Reusable Canning Lids Should You Buy?

The short version: one design, two companies

If you only read one section, read this one. Both products are a hard white plastic lid, a separate rubber gasket, and your own metal screw band. Both are reusable for years, with the gasket as the only consumable. Both demand the same technique: set the band barely tight before processing, then torque it down the moment the jars come out. The companies are literally family:

Harvest Guard are made by the same family. There was a schism and some of them b broke off to form their own company. They are almost identical in look and performance. I wanted to buy the red lids but they don't ship to Canada :(

Almost identical in look and performance is the fair summary, and it is why this decision should take you ten minutes, not a weekend of forum reading. Pick Tattler if you want the current EZ Seal design and the longer track record, and it is worth knowing the full Tattler reusable lids review covers that system's strengths and failure stories in depth. Pick Harvest Guard if the price of entry is what has been stopping you. Then spend your saved attention on technique, because that is where seals are actually won and lost.

What actually differs between the lids

Start with the one hard mechanical difference. Harvest Guard manufactures the original Tattler-style lid, the design sold before 2016. Tattler's current EZ Seal lid adds a deliberately thinner zone in the plastic that can flex and vent if pressure builds too high inside the jar, a safety valve against the old design's rare but dramatic failure mode where an overtightened lid lets go all at once:

I only ask because the post-2016 EZ Seal lids have a "thinner" area specifically to allow it to flex and vent if pressure builds up too much. So don't want to scare people unnecessarily (though I have watched videos of that happening and yeah...not good times).

Owners who run the older design pass along the matching advice, and it applies squarely to Harvest Guard, since that is the design it kept:

FYI, Harvest Guard is the same design as the original Tattler (non EZ) so if using, do be careful not to over tighten. I love Tattlers, however my biggest issue with them is that my Tattlers seem to siphon more than metal lids, even in the same batch. I have no idea why. I use them frequently but if I’m doing something I don’t want to siphon, I use Superb.

The second difference is compatibility, and it is the one that quietly locks in your choice. The two brands' gaskets look alike and do the same job, but they are sized for their own lids:

Be aware the gaskets between the two are not interchangeable.

So there is no mixing a cheap Harvest Guard gasket under a Tattler lid when supplies run low. Whichever brand you buy, its replacement gaskets are the ones you will stock for the life of the system. That is a small thing in year one and a real thing in year six.

The seal-rate evidence, honestly

This is where the internet fails this comparison. The posts that rank for this search are single-batch reports: one canner seals every jar with Harvest Guard, another loses a third of a load with Tattler, and each write-up reads like a study. A canner load is seven to sixteen jars. Nobody is running controlled trials, storage conditions vary, and, most importantly, the person running the batch is somewhere on a learning curve that both systems share. Even the happiest threads draw skeptics who have watched this movie before:

Will you do a follow up in a few months to see if all the lids stay sealed? I've seen a lot of people on YouTube that originally like these types of lids, but have now all gone back to the regular lids. Some of them said they failed after just a few months.

That skepticism is earned, but so is the loyalty. What the anecdotes do support, in volume, is a narrower claim: experienced users of either brand report seal rates near metal-lid territory, and failures cluster among newer users and around specific technique mistakes. The failure that matters most, a jar quietly unsealing months later on the shelf, shows up in both camps but is far from universal:

I've never had an on the shelf failure. Only failures directly out of the canner. Ive been using these lids since 2019.

On the brand-versus-brand question specifically, the most useful voices are the few people who own both. They mostly land where the design history predicts, close to a tie with a slight edge to the newer lid:

I use traditional metal disposable lids and also Tattler and Harvest Guard. I like Tattler more than HG, everybody says they’re pretty much identical but the HG seem to have more manufacturing flaws and haven’t sealed as well for me as Tattler. Both Harvest Guard and Tattler offer a trial pack of 2 each regular and wide lids and gaskets for about $5 with free shipping. Get a pack and can water with them both ways, and see if that helps with decision making. I still don’t like how much they siphon but felt less wasteful experimenting by tossing a jar of water in with my beans while learning. One thing to consider is if you gift canned goods or not. It’s hard enough to get a family member to return a jar, it’s even harder to get the plastic lid and gasket back. I try to can using a mix of lids for this reason and use the reusable lids for my own consumption.

Against that, plenty of Harvest Guard owners report no gap at all once the tightening ritual clicks:

I have Harvest Guard not tattler but I really like mine! Couple of practice runs to get the tightening down, but now its easy and I love the reduced waste for canning. I'm waiting on Harvest Guard to re-release their red lids for all my tomatoes.

The honest read: no one has data showing one brand seals meaningfully better than the other in practiced hands. If a $5 trial pack from each company settles it for your kitchen, as the owner of both suggests above, that is the cheapest experiment in canning.

Gasket lifespan and what refills cost

The plastic lids barely wear; owners talk about sets lasting a decade or more. The rubber gasket is the part that ages, and the community's working number is around five uses per gasket, stretched by the old trick of flipping it to the unworn side. One heavy user's ledger is worth quoting whole:

It is really just the rubber gasket that would occasionally need to be replaced. I don't have a good estimate (you try to flip gasket over and use the opposite side each time). I know my small pint jars have been used at least 5 times each and are still fine. I have had to replace about 3 gaskets. I have over 100. Considering only the gasket needs to be replaced, I feel they are well worth the money.

Three gaskets replaced across more than a hundred lids, each used five-plus times, is the durability story in miniature. When gaskets do wear out, replacements are cheap. One owner prices them at $0.32-$0.40 each depending on size and quantity, which is roughly what a single-use metal flat costs:

⬆️ It's an upfront investment in the product and in learning to use it, but in the end there's cost savings due to having a long-lasting product. As folks in the BuyItForLife crowd say "Buy once, cry once." The replacement gaskets are $0.32-$0.40/each, depending on size and bulk pricing, which is comparable to the price of a single-use lid. They have some drawbacks, but to me the benefits are worth it.

Treat five uses per gasket as a community estimate rather than a spec; nobody publishes a tested cycle count, and acidic loads and storage conditions move it. But even cutting it to three uses leaves the ongoing cost pennies per seal, which sets up the arithmetic that follows.

The cost per 100 seals, with the math shown

Here is the whole money question worked from real listed prices, using 100 seals as the yardstick since that is a realistic year for a serious home canner.

The disposable benchmark first. Ball regular-mouth lids with bands currently list at $27.99 for 24, which is about $1.17 per seal, or roughly $117 per 100 seals. That figure is inflated by the bands you only need once; Ball's lid-only four dozen pack lists at $34.99, about $0.73 per lid, or $73 per 100 seals. And bulk shoppers do far better than either. One owner who has watched disposable prices for years puts the floor around a quarter a lid:

Only use them for your things, that you know you will cycle through. You have to put rings on extra loose, then tighten up after out of the canner, as soon as they're cool enough not to burn you through a washcloth. Definitely a learning curve. But, once I got through that, I got about the same success rate as normal metal lids, and I still have some I've been needing to cycle through from my pandemic grocery overstock deal canning madness phase. Consider thick stainless bands, if you want to go all in on the reusable stuff. Are they worth it? Good question. I have some, and use them. But, when quality normal lids were 1/2 the price, and retail was often OOS, early in the pandemic, it was an easy sell. Today, with such lids being more like 1/3 or 1/4 in bulk (I got my last set of Superb lids for $.27/ea), and typically reusable for vacuum sealing (Tattler and Harvest Guard both suck for long-term vacuum sealing), if you don't use a can opener, I'm not sure about increasing my collection.

Call the disposable range $0.27-0.73 per seal depending on how hard you hunt, with $27-73 per 100 seals as the spread.

Now Tattler. The combo box lists at $67.75 for 36 regular and 36 wide lids with gaskets, about $0.94 per set. At five seals per gasket, those 72 sets deliver around 360 seals before you buy anything else: $67.75 divided by 360 is about $0.19 per seal, or $19 per 100. After the first gaskets wear out, the cost drops to replacement gaskets alone: $0.36 spread over five uses is about $0.07 per seal, or $7 per 100 seals ongoing.

Harvest Guard runs the same math from a lower entry. The 50-pack of regular lids and gaskets lists at $39.00, about $0.78 per set. Five seals per gasket makes 250 seals from the box: $39.00 divided by 250 is about $0.16 per seal, or $16 per 100, with the same pennies-per-seal ongoing cost after that. The gap the price tags advertise mostly closes once you divide by seals, which is why one shopper's story is really about the checkout total, not the long run:

Thanks for posting this. I had JUST ordered a bunch of Tattlers. I was able to cancel my order and ordered the Harvest Guards instead. Saved me $50!!

Breakeven falls out of the same numbers. Against Ball lids with bands at $1.17 per seal, Tattler's box pays for itself inside 58 jars and Harvest Guard's inside 34. Against ruthlessly bought bulk disposables at $0.27, Tattler needs about 250 jars to get ahead and Harvest Guard about 145. If you can 40 jars a year, the reusables are a multi-year bet; at 200 jars a year, either one pays off within the first season or two. That is the entire financial case, and it is the same case for both brands:

Harvest guard lids are a little less pricy and still work just as well 😊 for anyone the wants to get into reusable lids but is scared off by the price of tattlers

Technique decides more than brand

Every seal-failure thread for either brand eventually arrives at the same place: the band ritual. Both systems need the band barely snug going into the canner so air can vent from the jar, and firmly tightened the moment the jars come out so the lid clamps while the vacuum forms. Do it in the wrong order, or at full torque from the start, and the failure rate climbs no matter whose logo is on the lid. Veterans keep the routine as a checklist:

You’ve gotta remember that they have different instructions than the regular lids. My tattler checklist: Preheat in boiling water, barely put them on(fingertip tight and then undo it a smidge), after taking out of the canner tighten the rings all the way down, don’t touch again until 100% cooled down.

The subtlest step is the timing of that post-canner tightening, and it is the one the instructions bury. Someone who used to work with these lids spells out the detail most first-timers miss:

I used to package these! I recently just made a purchase as I’ve been canning this year. The trick is to follow their instructions. Step 7 is to wait for the bubbles to slow after removing the jars from your canner. Before tightening. This allows pressure to vent before tightening the band. So far the few things I’ve canned with these have sealed. If it’s something you can’t see the internal boil on set a 3-5 min timer to remind yourself. I didn’t realize how many bubbles there are in the jar after removing from my canner untill I made apple jelly.

Wait for the bubbling to settle, then tighten. That single habit, plus sound bands rather than rusted ones and jars in good condition, moves your seal rate more than switching brands ever will. The jars matter too; if your stock is a mixed flea-market collection with worn rims, the Ball mason jars review covers what fresh jars and bands actually buy you.

The safety question, stated plainly

One fact belongs in this comparison without drama attached: reusable plastic lids are not part of the tested guidance home canning safety rests on. The USDA and the National Center for Home Food Preservation develop and validate their processes with two-piece single-use metal lids, and neither Tattler nor Harvest Guard has been through that independent testing. The processing instructions you follow with either system are the manufacturer's own.

What that means in practice is a matter of judgment, not alarm. These lids have been in American kitchens since the 1970s, the r/Canning community broadly treats them as acceptable when used exactly per instructions, and nothing about the design prevents a proper vacuum seal. But if strict adherence to tested guidance is your line, single-use metal flats are the only lids inside it, and that is a legitimate reason to stay on disposables. State it, weigh it, and decide; just do not let a comment thread scare you in either direction.

So which should you buy?

Buy Tattler if you want the refined version of the design and are willing to pay a modest premium for it. The EZ Seal flex zone addresses the old design's overtightening failure mode, the company has the longest track record in the category, and the owners who run both brands tilt slightly its way on consistency. At about $19 per 100 seals falling to $7 once you are only buying gaskets, the premium disappears within a couple of seasons anyway.

Buy Harvest Guard if the up-front number is the obstacle. It is the same fundamental system from the same family at about $0.16 per seal out of the box, and its owners are as satisfied as Tattler's once the tightening ritual clicks. Respect the one design caveat, never overtighten going into the canner, and stock its gaskets rather than assuming Tattler's will fit.

Stay on disposable Ball flats if you can under roughly 40 jars a year, gift much of what you make, or want to remain inside USDA-tested guidance. At low volume the reusables take years to pay off, gifted jars rarely come home, and a $27.99 case of lids with bands asks nothing new of your hands. The honest answer for many kitchens is a mix: reusable lids for the pantry staples you cycle through, metal flats for everything that leaves the house.