Due to their computational convenience, mathematical models for wave energy converters are usually linear. Including nonlinearities may improve the accuracy of the results, but often at the price of an additional computational and complexity burden, which can be justified only if nonlinearities are significant. One of the sources of nonlinearity in fluid-body interactions is the wave field itself. Different wave models exist, among which are linear Airy’s theory, the Wheeler stretching approach, and the nonlinear Rienecker-Fenton method, which achieve a different compromise of accuracy and complexity. The impact of the accuracy of such wave theories strongly depends on the specific device (operating principle, power production region and survivability mode), and installation site (water depth, occurrences of each sea state in the scatter diagram of the installation site). This paper evaluates the performance of different wave field representations, firstly in absolute terms, and secondly in relation to the associated computation of nonlinear Froude-Krylov forces for different wave energy devices.