The compressive creep behavior of single‐crystal BeO was studied under inert atmosphere. The steady‐state creep behavior was highly anisotropic because of easily activated basal slip. Crystals compressed along a [1101] axis deformed at temperatures as low as 650°C, whereas [1100]‐aligned crystals showed comparable strain rates at temperatures 1650°C. The measured activation energies and stress exponents for creep were 371 kJ/mol and 4.65 for the [1101] alignment and 496 kJ/mol and 3.39 for the [1100]alignment, respectively. The precise mechanisms controlling creep behavior were not determined. Only one semiquantitative data point was obtained for the [0001] alignment, which indicates that the creep rate at 100 MPa and 1750°C is less than that forc‐axi