Best UVA bulbs for reptiles (2026)

What people are actually buying when they search "UVA bulb"

Two different shoppers type that phrase. One has read that reptiles see into the ultraviolet and wants to know which bulb supplies it. The other has a basking lamp on the shelf at the pet store with "UVA" printed on the box and wants to know whether it is the same thing as the UVB lamp the care sheet demanded. The answer to the second question is no, and it is the more expensive mistake, so this page answers it first: a lamp sold on a UVA claim supplies no usable UVB unless it separately states a UVB output class. If the box does not give a UVB percentage or a UVB distance, treat the UVB as zero.

The useful news for the first shopper is that there is nothing to buy. Linear UVB tubes emit UVA as part of their output - Zoo Med publishes 30% UVA for its T8 10.0 - and incandescent and halogen basking lamps emit it too. A keeper who has lit an enclosure correctly for UVB and heat has already provided UVA twice over. That is why this roundup scores lamps on whether the maker published the claim rather than on how much UVA they emit: the purchase decision is really about which lamp you were going to buy anyway.

The one number anybody publishes

UVB is a dosed husbandry parameter. Every species page on this site carries a UVI target at the basking surface and a mount distance to reach it, because the care references publish those figures: UVI 4.0-4.5 at the basking surface for a bearded dragon, UVI 2.0-3.0 at the basking area for a ball python, UVI 0.5-1.5 at the basking spot for a leopard gecko, UVI 1.0-2.0 at the basking branch for a crested gecko per the care guidance.

UVA has no equivalent. There is no UVA index, no published UVA target for any of the four species we cover, and no meter in the hobby that reads a UVA dose at the basking site the way a Solarmeter 6.5 reads UVI. So a page that ranked UVA bulbs by output would be ranking them against a threshold nobody has published. What can be verified is narrower and more useful: which manufacturers put a UVA figure in writing.

One row in that table carries two numbers, which is why the T8 10.0 is the only pick here that meets every criterion from Zoo Med's own product information. It is not the lamp we would put over most bearded dragons - that is a format question we settle on T5 vs T8 UVB - but it is the lamp that publishes the most.

Where your reptile's UVA is already coming from

Work through an enclosure that is already set up correctly. Over a bearded dragon there is a 12-14% linear T5 HO UVB lamp, because UVI 4.0-4.5 at the basking surface cannot be reached any other way at a sane distance, and a halogen basking lamp holding 108-113 F (42-45 C) surface temperature on a dimming thermostat. Both of those emit UVA. There is no third socket to fill, and adding one would mean adding heat you then have to remove.

Over a crested gecko the picture is the same with smaller numbers: a low-output T5 for UVI 1.0-2.0 at the basking branch and, in most rooms, no basking lamp at all. The UVA comes from the UVB tube. Over a ball python, UVI 2.0-3.0 at the basking area comes from a 5.0-class T5, which is also where the UVA comes from - and there is a specific UVA argument for snakes, which see into the ultraviolet, covered on do ball pythons need UVB.

How we scored the four picks

The criteria above are the whole page. The first two ask whether the manufacturer published anything verifiable; the third asks whether the lamp is honest about UVB; the fourth asks whether you can place it; the fifth asks whether the heat it adds can be controlled. That last one is where the mercury vapor pick fails, and it fails for a stated reason rather than a reviewer's impression: Zoo Med writes that these lamps need specific line voltages and cannot be used with dimmers or rheostats in its own PowerSun UV information. A lamp you cannot put on a dimming thermostat is a lamp whose basking temperature you control by moving it, which is a worse tool than the two-lamp setup it replaces.

Two picks score unknown rather than fails on the UVA criteria. Unknown means we looked at the manufacturer's own product information and found no figure. Retailer listings for the Arcadia Desert 12% describe full-spectrum output including UVA, and that is almost certainly true, but retailer copy is not a published specification and this site does not launder one into the other. Our methodology page explains why that distinction gets enforced even when it makes a pick look worse than it is.

By species: who should buy anything at all

Four rows, four noes. If you came here to buy a UVA bulb and leave without one, the page worked. The money is better spent on the parts of the setup that do carry a published threshold - the right UVB output class for the species, a reflector fixture that puts it at the published distance, and a thermostat under the heat source. Our best reptile UVB bulbs roundup covers the first two and best reptile thermostats covers the third.

If you are buying anyway, buy in this order

1. The UVB lamp your species needs. Output class first, then length to suit the enclosure, then the fixture. This is the lamp that carries both a dose and the UVA.
2. A basking lamp, only if your basking surface is below target. The Repti Basking Spot is the cheap, UVA-claimed version of this purchase. Put it on a dimming thermostat the same day.
3. A mercury vapor lamp, only if your enclosure allows one lamp position. Tall enclosures with a single top vent are the real use case. Everyone else is better served by two controllable lamps.
4. Nothing else. There is no fourth purchase that adds UVA you do not already have.

What these cost, in brackets

We do not print prices on this site, because a number typed into an article is wrong within a month - every buy button here resolves to the live Amazon listing instead. The brackets are stable enough to plan with, though. A T8 linear tube is the cheapest lamp on this page. An incandescent basking spot is cheaper still per bulb and sold in enough wattage steps that you will buy two while dialing in a basking temperature. A 12% Arcadia T5 tube costs noticeably more than either and lasts a published 12 months. A self-ballasted mercury vapor lamp is the most expensive single item here by a wide margin, which is worth knowing before you buy one to solve a UVA question it does not need to solve.

The short version

UVA is real, reptiles see it, and it is worth having in an enclosure. It is also the easiest requirement on this site to satisfy by accident, because it rides along with the two lamps you cannot skip. Spend the attention on the UVB figure and the basking surface temperature, both of which have published targets and both of which go wrong quietly. If you want the background on how the bands differ, UVA vs UVB for reptiles is the explainer that sits behind this page.