A4 vs. A5 Wagyu: which is better?

Is A4 or A5 Wagyu better?

For a dinner where the Wagyu is the main course, A4 is better. A5 wins the first bite. A4 wins the plate.

The difference comes down to marbling. A5 needs a Beef Marbling Standard (BMS) of 8 to 12, and A4 is usually BMS 5 to 7 ^[1]. USDA Prime, the top American grade, sits at about BMS 5 ^[2]. So an A4 is already marbled past anything most American steakhouses serve, with enough lean between the fat to taste like beef. An A5 at BMS 10 or 12 is closer to a beef-flavored butter. Two slices are a thrill. Ten slices are a lot.

A5 Wagyu: what the grades mean walks through the grading system itself. This post is our case for the grade below the top one.

Can you eat A4 Wagyu as a main course?

Yes, and that's the main reason we pick it. Plan on 5–6 oz of A4 per guest with two or three sides, and up to 8 oz when the steak is most of the dinner. Eight ounces of Japanese Wagyu is a big portion, and with A4 it's a reasonable one. The last slice still tastes as good as the first.

A5 hits its limit sooner. Most people are done at 4–5 oz as a main and 1–1½ oz as a tasting course, about an ounce less than A4 at every course (how much Wagyu per person). Push an A5 portion to steakhouse size and the richness takes over. Guests leave slices on the plate, and the steak you paid most for is the course people remember as too much.

At Takemitsu-chan's listed prices, an 8 oz main cut from the zabuton comes to about $48 of beef per guest. We'd slice it in the kitchen, fan it on the plate, and salt at the pass. The method is in Cooking.

Is A5 Wagyu ethical?

It depends on the farm, and the grade won't tell you. The Japan Meat Grading Association scores the carcass: yield, marbling, color, firmness and fat ^[1]. It doesn't record how the cow lived.

What the grade does is set the price, and marbling pays. In the standard Japanese system, Japanese Black cattle are fed a high-energy diet from about 11 months of age until slaughter at 28 to 30 months, mostly in small pens with a lot of concentrate and little roughage. The authors of a 2018 industry review say animal welfare "needs to be considered" ^[3]. Many farms also hold vitamin A low through the middle of fattening, because restricting it raises marbling ^[3][4]. Held too low for too long, it can cause night blindness and severe liver disease and swelling ^[3][5], so those herds need regular blood tests to stay on the safe side of it.

None of that makes every A5 a badly raised cow. Genetics drive marbling too, and plenty of careful farms produce A5. An A4 grade also proves nothing on its own about how a cow was treated. What you can do is buy from a farm that tells you how it raises its animals, and ask what it's aiming for.

Ellie Takeda, who raised Takemitsu-chan, aims short of the maximum. "I try not to raise the cows to the very best, and fattest," she told us. "So they don't get to the maximum weight, where it can get hard for them to stand up or move around." Takemitsu-chan left the farm at about 24 months, against a 2017 average of 29.2 months ^[3], and graded A4 with BMS 6. Ellie has raised A5 before. She stopped chasing it at the cow's expense, and calls what she raises now "an approachable, easy-to-eat quality."

When would we pick A5?

When the Wagyu is one or two bites inside a longer menu. A5 is at its best in a 1 oz tasting course, a piece of seared nigiri, or a slice on a hot stone, where the point is one bite that melts. If a client has asked for A5 by name, A5 is the right call, along with where it came from.

A5 isn't rare enough to need chasing for its own sake, either. Of the 538,612 Wagyu carcasses graded in Japan in 2025, 62.5% were A5 and 21.6% were A4 ^[6]. In Japan, A4 is the less common grade.

Where can you buy A4 Wagyu?

Every cut in our shop comes from one cow, Takemitsu-chan: Japanese Fullblood Kuroge Washu, A4, BMS 6, raised by Ellie and her mother Tomoko at Takeda Farm in Asahikawa, Hokkaido. Her grading record and 10-digit ID are on her page, so you can check the grade yourself.