They are different, and they sit at different levels: stevia is the plant, steviol glycosides is the chemical and regulatory name, stevia sugar is everyday shorthand, and sweetener is a functional category covering many unrelated substances.
| Term | What it refers to | Where it is used |
|---|
| Stevia | Stevia rebaudiana, an Asteraceae plant whose leaves are the raw material | Agriculture, raw material purchasing |
| Steviol glycosides | The collective name for a group of diterpene glycosides; the regulatory name; international number INS 960 | Contracts, COAs, regulatory filings |
| Stevia sugar | Colloquial shorthand that in most contexts means steviol glycosides | Informal R&D and purchasing conversation |
| Stevioside | A single component (STv) whose sweetness and finish are both below Reb A | Component analysis, formulation work |
| Sweetener | A functional category that includes nutritive sweeteners such as polyols and synthetic products such as aspartame | Consumer-facing language |
Table 1 - Four terms, four different jobs. Mixing them up is the most common terminology error in stevia sourcing.
Figure 1 - Raw material and product, side by side. Loose dried stevia leaf, and the purified white powder extracted from it: the two forms most often confused in the four terms above.
Two traps in Chinese documents
Trap one: one word, two meanings. In Chinese, tian ju gan (甜菊苷) is used loosely for steviol glycosides as a whole, but in regulations and formal documents it means the single component stevioside. Contracts and specifications should use the group name (甜菊糖苷) rather than the loose form, and name stevioside explicitly when the single component is meant.
Trap two: an old character in an old document. The 1999 edition of the Chinese national standard wrote the group as 甜菊糖甙; from the 2014 edition onward it is 甜菊糖苷. The two characters are old and new translations of the same class of compound, so a 甙 on an older COA or contract is not a typo - but current documents should use 苷.
“Sweetener” does not mean “natural”. Sweeteners are grouped by whether they deliver energy and by sweetness intensity, not by origin: steviol glycosides and monk fruit extract are plant-derived, sucralose, aspartame and acesulfame K are synthetic, and polyols sit in between.
Related products: Stevia product lines · Reb-A Series · Optimvia Reb-M / Reb-D