Three circulating human bone alkaline phosphatase (BALP) isoforms (B1, B2, and B/I) can be distinguished in healthy individuals and a fourth isoform (B1x) has been discovered in patients with chronic kidney disease and in bone tissue. The present study was designed to correlate differing glycosylation patterns of each BALP isoform with their catalytic activity towards presumptive physiological substrates and to compare those properties with two recombinant isoforms of the tissue-nonspecific ALP (TNALP) isozyme, i.e., TNALP-flag, used extensively for mutation analysis of hypophosphatasia mutations and sALP-FcD₁₀, a chimeric enzyme recently used as therapeutic drug in a mouse model of infantile hypophosphatasia. The BALP isoforms were prepared from human osteosarcoma (SaOS-2) cells and the kinetic properties were evaluated using the synthetic substrate p-nitrophenylphosphate (pNPP) at pH 7.4 and 9.8, and the three suggested endogenous physiological substrates, i.e., inorganic pyrophosphate (PP_i), pyridoxal 5′-phosphate (PLP), and phosphoethanolamine (PEA) at pH 7.4. Qualitative glycosylation differences were also assessed by lectin binding and precipitation. The k_cat/K_M was higher for B2 for all the investigated substrates. The catalytic activity towards PEA was essentially undetectable. The kinetic activity for TNALP-flag and sALP-FcD₁₀ was similar to the activity of the human BALP isoforms. The BALP isoforms differed in their lectin binding properties and dose-dependent lectin precipitation, which also demonstrated differences between native and denatured BALP isoforms. The observed differences in lectin specificity were attributed to N-linked carbohydrates. In conclusion, we demonstrate significantly different catalytic properties among the BALP isoforms due to structural differences in posttranslational glycosylation. Our data also suggests that PEA is not an endogenous substrate for the BALP isoforms or for the recombinant TNALP isoforms. The TNALP-flag and the sALP-FcD₁₀ isoforms faithfully mimic the biological properties of the human BALP isoforms in vivo validating the use of these recombinant enzymes in studies aimed at dissecting the pathophysiology and treating hypophosphatasia.