Chives Substitutes, Ranked by the Job Chives Are Doing

Out of chives? Finely chopped green onion tops are the easy swap, one for one, and two extension services and A Couple Cooks all agree on that. Slice them thin and add them at the end, just as you would chives. What matters most is whether your chives are raw or cooked. In scrambled eggs, a stir-fry or a dumpling filling, garlic chives hold up better, and dried chives may be weaker than the usual conversion suggests.

Quick answer

How the ratios on this page are labeled

Every ratio carries one of four labels.

• Computed: based on a measurable physical relationship, such as converting fresh herbs to dried.
• Attributed: a named source publishes this ratio. We quote it as theirs.
• Disputed: named sources give different answers to the same swap. You get each one, side by side.
• Method: our starting point, based on how the two compare. Taste and adjust.

The attributed figures below are rules of thumb from cooks and extension services. None of them says how it was worked out.

If chives are a raw garnish

This is the big one: snipped over baked potatoes, eggs, soups and salads at the last moment. You want a mild onion flavor and fine green pieces.

1. Green onion (scallion) tops

Ratio (Attributed): Three sources agree on a straight swap. NDSU Extension and NMSU Extension both give 2 teaspoons of finely chopped green onion tops for 2 teaspoons of chives.¹² Sonja Overhiser of A Couple Cooks says scallion greens swap one for one, so 1 tablespoon finely chopped scallion greens equals 1 tablespoon chopped chives.³

Use the green tops, not the white bulbs, and slice them as thin as you can. Halve the leaves lengthwise before slicing across and you’ll get finer pieces that look more like chives. Like chives, they’re best added at the end. LSU AgCenter groups chives with the delicate herbs that go in during the last minute or two of cooking.⁴

2. A little parsley, for color only

If the chives are mostly there to make the plate look green, Overhiser suggests parsley for color, plus a pinch of onion powder if you want some onion flavor back.³

Ratio (Method): Use the same volume of finely chopped parsley as chives, and add onion powder in small pinches.

If chives are stirred into a dip or spread

In sour cream, cream cheese, yogurt dips and potato salad, chives bring onion flavor and green flecks without bite. Green onion tops work the same way here, at the same 1:1 ratio.

Minced shallot

Ratio (Attributed): Overhiser says minced shallot works as roughly a 1:1 substitute, though it’s sharper.³ That sharpness shows in a raw dip, so start at about half and add more once the dip has rested.

Dried chives

Overhiser notes that dried chives are best rehydrated in creamy dips or cooked recipes, and that they don’t have a lot of flavor on their own.³ A dip that sits for a while is the one place they do reasonably well. The conversion is in the dried chives section below.

If chives are cooked into a dish

Heat fades chives’ flavor. America’s Test Kitchen lists chives among the delicate herbs whose flavor compounds tend to be more volatile,⁵ and LSU AgCenter says long cooking costs delicate herbs their flavor and aroma.⁴ When a recipe cooks the chives, as in scrambled eggs, a stir-fry or a dumpling filling, a sturdier allium does better.

1. Garlic chives

Garlic chives are a different species with flat leaves and a mild garlic taste and smell. The Woks of Life describes a strong garlicky fragrance and says they’re used more as a vegetable than an herb, in stir-fries and dumpling fillings.⁶

Ratio (Attributed): Overhiser says to use garlic chives 1:1.³ Expect a garlic note that chives don’t have.

2. Garlic scapes

Garlic scapes are the flower stalks of hardneck garlic, not a kind of chive. University of Maine Extension says young chopped scapes give a mild garlic flavor,⁷ and Nebraska Extension calls them milder than garlic cloves and suggests them in place of green onions or scallions.⁸ They’re crunchy and much thicker than chives, so chop them fine.

Ratio (Method): Start with about half the chive amount and taste, since the garlic builds.

3. Leeks

Ratio (Method): Leeks are coarser than chives and sharper when raw. If you use them, take the pale green part, slice it very thin, cook it briefly, and start with about a third of the chive amount.

4. Onion

Ratio (Method): Very finely minced onion gives you the flavor but not the look. Start with about a third of the chive amount and taste. Shallot, above, is the milder pick.

If chives are one of the fines herbes

Fines herbes is a mix commonly made of parsley, chives, tarragon and chervil, though the herbs vary. Chives bring the onion note. Finely chopped green onion tops, 1:1 as above, fill in best. See fines herbes substitutes.

Dried chives: the conversion, and why it may not hold

The extension services all give the same general rule for swapping fresh herbs and dried, and A Couple Cooks applies it to chives:

Ratio (Computed, with a caveat): On the number itself, the sources agree: one part dried to three parts fresh. In ATK’s testing, that proportion came closest to matching flavor strength. The catch is whether it applies to chives at all. ATK’s testers preferred fresh herbs in all but one application, and the dried herbs that did reasonably well were hardy ones (oregano, rosemary, sage and thyme) in long-cooked dishes with plenty of liquid.⁵ ATK’s Danielle Lapierre lists chives among the herbs that are better fresh, saying they’re much weaker in flavor when dried.¹⁰ UW-Madison Extension says the leaves lose a lot of their flavor when dried.¹¹ Even A Couple Cooks, which gives the 1:3 figure, says dried chives don’t have a lot of flavor.³

So treat the 3:1 rule as a starting point, not an equivalence. Dried chives may need more than a third, and in a raw garnish no amount will replace fresh. For keeping a surplus, see the chives profile.

What isn’t known

• We found no measurement of how much flavor chives lose when dried, so the 3:1 rule hasn’t been tested on chives specifically.
• Freeze-dried chives are sold, but we found no source comparing them with air-dried chives or giving a conversion.

Related

• Chives, chives vs. green onions and how to dry chives
• Garlic chives, garlic chives vs. chives and garlic chives substitutes
• Garlic scapes and garlic scapes substitutes
• Onion powder and parsley
• Fines herbes, dried vs. fresh herbs and how to rehydrate herbs

Footnotes

1. Julie Garden-Robinson, Ingredient Substitutions (FN198), NDSU Extension, 2018. ksre.ksu.edu · Reference work ↩ ↩²

2. In a Pinch Ingredient Substitution (E-131), NMSU Cooperative Extension, 2016. pubs.nmsu.edu · Reference work ↩ ↩²

3. Sonja Overhiser, “Best Substitute for Chives”, A Couple Cooks, 2026. acouplecooks.com · Publication ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷

4. “Flavorful Herbs”, LSU AgCenter. lsuagcenter.com · Reference work ↩ ↩² ↩³

5. “Science: Substituting Dried Herbs for Fresh”, America’s Test Kitchen. americastestkitchen.com · Publication ↩ ↩² ↩³

6. “Fresh Herbs & Aromatics Used in Chinese Cooking”, The Woks of Life, 2025. thewoksoflife.com · Publication ↩

7. David Fuller and Steven B. Johnson, Growing Hardneck Garlic in Your Maine Garden (Bulletin #2063), University of Maine Cooperative Extension, 2013. projects.sare.org · Reference work ↩

8. “Garlic Scapes”, Nebraska Extension. food.unl.edu · Reference work ↩

9. Stacy Reed, “Preserving Herbs by Drying”, Penn State Extension, 2024. extension.psu.edu · Reference work ↩

10. Danielle Lapierre, “When You Should Actually Use Dried Herbs (and Which Ones to Avoid)”, America’s Test Kitchen, 2022. americastestkitchen.com · Publication ↩

11. Susan Mahr, “Chives, Allium schoenoprasum”, University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension, 2026. hort.extension.wisc.edu · Reference work ↩

Also drawn on

• Chive (Britannica Editors, revised by Melissa Petruzzello, updated 8 Sep 2026), Encyclopaedia Britannica. britannica.com
• Allium tuberosum (PROSEA), Q.P. van der Meer, Diah Sulistiarini, Juliasri Djamal and Iman Raharjo, Plant Resources of South-East Asia, via Pl@ntUse. uses.plantnet-project.org
• Fines herbes, Encyclopaedia Britannica. britannica.com