The Best Asphalt Driveway Sealers

Sealing a driveway is a cosmetic job with a practical payoff. A good sealcoat blocks water and sun from working into the asphalt, and it hides the gray, pebbly look that a few hard winters leave behind. The work isn't hard, but it is a weekend. You'll sweep, scrub the oil spots, fill the cracks, then pull sealer across the surface with a squeegee and wait. Do it carefully and your driveway looks new again for a couple of seasons. Rush it and you'll see every streak from the sidewalk.

Here's what no sealer does: fix a driveway that's failing underneath. Sealer is a thin skin. It won't lift a sunken spot, bridge a crack wider than a pencil, or hold a pothole together, and spreading it over damage just gives you a smooth black lid on a bad surface. The products also vary less than the marketing suggests. Most consumer pails are asphalt emulsion with sand and latex mixed in, so prep, timing and two thin coats matter more than which pail you grab.

So we focused on what you can actually compare: formulation, how much ground a container covers, what the label claims to fill, and how it goes on. We also leaned toward coal-tar-free formulas, since a number of states and cities restrict coal-tar sealants over PAH runoff. We think that the Black Jack Drive-Maxx 1000 Premium Filler & Sealer is the best asphalt driveway sealer for most people, and that the Liquid Rubber Driveway Restore is the one to buy if you want a water-based, low-odor coating you can brush on.

Seal your driveway if the surface has faded to gray and feels rough underfoot, if fine cracking is spreading like a web, or if it's been two or three years since the last coat. Hold off if the asphalt is new: manufacturer and paving guidance commonly puts the wait at six to 12 months so the oils can cure, and sealing early traps them. Hold off too if the driveway is cracked into loose chunks or sinking. That's a paving problem, and no pail fixes it.

This guide covers pour-and-spread sealers plus the crack and hole products you need for prep. It doesn't cover concrete or paver sealers, hot-pour crack machines, or what a contractor should charge. If your driveway is long, steeply sloped or badly broken up, a pro with a spray rig and proper material will do a better job than you'll manage with a squeegee — and this guide will at least tell you what to ask them to use.

Formulation: we limited the lineup to coal-tar-free asphalt emulsions and water-based coatings, since coal tar is banned or restricted in a number of US states and cities. Crack filling: we checked what each label claims to close and treated anything wider than about a quarter inch as a job for a dedicated filler. Coverage: we compared stated square feet per container against the 500 to 700 square feet of a typical two-car driveway, doubled for two coats. Application: we preferred squeegee, brush and caulk-gun products over anything that needs a spray rig. Owner feedback: we looked for repeated complaints about streaking, tackiness and thin coats, and let those shape the flaws rather than the ranking.

If you want to fill cracks before you seal: The Red Devil 0637 Asphalt Crack Filler Sealant ($17.26) — The Red Devil 0637 is a 10.1-ounce cartridge of black acrylic crack sealant that drops into any standard caulking gun, and it comes four to a pack. Red Devil colors and textures it to blend with asphalt, and says it adheres to damp surfaces — handy when you can't wait for a perfect dry spell. It stays flexible, which is what keeps a filled crack from reopening in the first hard freeze. What it isn't is a sealer. A cartridge fills cracks and joints, nothing more, and four of them go quickly on a driveway with a lot of fine cracking. Buy it as the step before your pails, not instead of them.

This is what our research surfaced across the asphalt sealing and repair aisle, not a census of everything sold. A couple of the products that came up are repair compounds rather than sealcoats, and they're worth knowing about for exactly that reason, because prep decides how your sealer turns out.

The Black Jack Speed-Patch Blacktop Crack & Hole ($26.72) — Black Jack Speed-Patch is a ready-to-use sand-and-asphalt patching compound in a 10-pound tub, fortified with latex and rated by Black Jack for cracks and holes up to three inches wide and three inches deep. That's the right tool for a pothole or a crumbling edge, and it dries black enough to disappear under a fresh sealcoat. It isn't a pick because it isn't a sealer at all, and because owner feedback is uneven: some people describe fast, clean repairs, while others report the patch cracking soon after it went down or the tub arriving as a mess in the box. Still, if you have a hole, fill it with something before you open a pail of sealer.

The Asphalt Crack Filler ($14.99) — The MuzeFansi crack filler is a two-pack of 2.2-pound caulk-gun cartridges with a self-leveling, cement-based formula, pitched for asphalt, concrete, brick and more. Self-leveling is genuinely useful: cut the tip, run a bead, and it settles flat without much tooling. But the quantity is small for driveway work, the multi-surface pitch makes it a generalist rather than an asphalt-first product, and owner feedback is choppier than it is for the Red Devil cartridges. If you have three or four cracks and nothing else to patch, it'll get you there.

Sealer rewards boring preparation. Sweep, pull the weeds out of the cracks, scrub oil and transmission drips with a degreaser, and rinse everything clean. Fill anything wider than about a quarter inch with crack filler, patch the holes, and let those repairs set before you coat over them. Then watch the weather: most labels want pavement and air above roughly 50 degrees, with no rain for at least 24 hours. Put down two thin coats instead of one thick one, because a heavy coat skins over, stays soft underneath and peels. Keep cars off for the full time the label states, not the minimum. Plan to reseal every two to three years, sooner on a sunbaked slope.

For this guide:

• We read manufacturer data sheets and label guidance for every product here, along with coal-tar restriction information from state environmental agencies and USGS research on PAH levels in pavement dust.
• We compared stated coverage rates, container sizes, crack-filling claims and application methods across the lineup, and checked them against the square footage of a typical two-car driveway.
• We read owner feedback for recurring themes, such as streaking, tacky coats and repairs that reopened, and used those patterns to write the flaws and cautions.
• We read owner reviews on every listing, weighted toward the critical ones, because that is where the recurring failures show up.
• We have a systematic way of automatically fetching the latest prices, so the numbers on this page stay current.
• This is a research-focused guide, so the team may not own every product listed — though we often do own the top winners, which gives us extra context for the recommendations.
• We don't accept free products, and the retailer commission never changes which product we recommend.