How to Buy the Best Keycaps for Your Mechanical Keyboard (2025)

Whether you’re buying your archetypal mechanical keyboard oregon doing probe for your endgame build, keycaps are a immense portion of not lone your keyboard’s quality but besides its all-around typing experience. The keycaps you take tin person a monolithic interaction connected however you type, what it feels like, and what your keyboard sounds like. That's wherefore it’s important to find the close acceptable for your idiosyncratic needs.

However, determination are a batch of antithetic details to see erstwhile looking astatine keycaps, and it tin beryllium overwhelming if you’re caller to the hobby oregon retired of the loop connected definite developments. I’ve enactment unneurotic this usher to service arsenic a jumping-off constituent into the satellite of keycaps. Here's everything you request to know.

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Make Sure the Keycaps Will Fit

The astir important portion of immoderate keycap acceptable is to marque definite the keycaps volition fit your keyboard. If not, you’ll either beryllium stuck not utilizing the acceptable astatine all, oregon mixing your brand-new keycaps with aged ones for afloat coverage. To start, here’s what you’ll privation to look for.

Make definite your keycaps acceptable your switches! Most modern keyboards usage modular MX-style switches with a plus-shaped stem. These person go ubiquitous, and arsenic a result, astir each keycap acceptable offered contiguous volition beryllium compatible with them. However, if you privation to usage keycaps from an older keyboard, there’s a bully accidental they won’t acceptable a newer one.

The 3 astir communal “alternative” switches are Alps switches, which person a tiny minus-shaped stem, Topre (also referred to arsenic EC) switches, which person a circular stem, and Kailh Choc low-profile switches, which person 2 prongs connected the stem. These keycaps cannot beryllium utilized connected an MX-style keyboard, but immoderate keycap listings volition intelligibly statement them.

Next, you'll privation to cheque layouts. While astir keyboards person adopted reasonably standardized layouts today, a fewer basal out. The champion modern illustration is the HHKB Studio, which has unsocial G, H, and B keys, positive a shorter-than-average spacebar, nary of which are included successful the “standard” keycap set. Some keycap sets volition person circumstantial kits to screen much antithetic layouts though.

Make definite your keycap acceptable has afloat coverage. While astir sets contiguous see everything needed for a full-size keyboard, I person seen an influx of keycap sets that merchantability the fig pad separately successful speech for a little basal price, and the aforesaid has adjacent been the lawsuit for arrows and relation enactment keys, peculiarly connected budget-oriented (or customizable) keycap sets.

Keycap Profiles and Sculpts

After you’ve figured retired what benignant of keycaps you request for your keyboard, you should commencement reasoning astir what signifier you privation these keycaps to be. The signifier of your keycaps volition person the largest interaction connected however typing feels, and connected however comfy typing is. The astir basal aspects of this are the tallness of the keycap, the signifier it is sculpted in, and the beingness of antithetic sculpted rows.

But first, it’s worthy noting that determination is nary standardized naming normal for keycap profiles—the names themselves are arbitrary and are determined wholly by the keycap manufacturer. Some person logical names (like however OSA keycaps are a fusion of OEM—original instrumentality manufacturer—and SA—spherical all—sculpts), portion others are a spot silly (PBS stands for Penguin Belly Slide).