Fracture toughness of hot pressed cordierite-SiC whisker ceramic composites contained up to 40vol.% SiC whiskers were determined by using the indentation crack length(IC), indentation strengthin-bending(IS), and single-edge notched-beam(SENB) methods. The results were compared to stress intensity factor, KB, at the crack branching boundary measured by using the mirror zone radius (MZ) method. IS method seems to provide a more reasonable estimation of fracture toughness than other methods for these composites.