The present disclosure provides variant OmpG polypeptides, compositions comprising the OmpG variant polypeptides, and methods for using the variant OmpG polypeptides as nanopores for determining the sequence of single stranded nucleic acids. The variant OmpG nanopores reduce the ionic current noise versus the parental OmpG polypeptide from which they are derived and thereby enable sequencing of polynucleotides with single nucleotide resolution. The reduced ionic current noise also provides for the use of these OmpG nanopore variants in other single molecule sensing applications, e.g., protein sequencing.