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Brand review · 3 min readilly coffee review
What illy sells, what it costs against the rest of the market, and who should buy it.
illy sells 11 coffees in the UK and the cheapest comes out at 43p a cup, which is less than most of the ground coffee we track. Cheap coffee is easy to find and hard to trust, so the useful question is not whether it is cheap. It is what the range actually contains, and whether the bag doing the heavy lifting is the one you would want.
Short answer
A middle-of-the-road medium roast, black or white, and it is cheap.
Cheaper than 93% of the ground coffee we track
- Tastes
- Balanced, caramel and chocolate
- Strength
- Medium
- Best for
- Everyday coffee, black or white
- Valuecup price vs the format median
- 5/5
- Easy to likefrom the roast profile
- 5/5
- Good for beginnersblend, roast and pack size
- 5/5
Cheapest cup£0.43across 11 products
Against the market−39%vs the ground median
Two cups a day£6.05a week, £3.84 less than typical
Mostly roastedMediumcaramel, balanced
Buy it ifyou finish a 1.5kg bag inside six weeks
Skip it ifyou are chasing a named farm or origin
illy products we track
Cheapest per cup first, with live prices.
Prices are the last we fetched and can move. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. It never changes the order, which is always cheapest per cup first.
What kind of roaster this is
illy sells whole bean, ground, pods and instant in the UK, and we track 11 of their coffees, in 95g, 250g, 1.5kg and 10 pods.
100% of the illy range we can classify is blended. Blending has a bad name it does not deserve; it is how a roaster keeps a coffee tasting like itself when the harvest behind it changes, and it is the reason your regular bag is still your regular bag in January. The roasting sits on just 2 of our five levels, so this is a range with a house style rather than a spread to pick from. Bags come in both small and kilo sizes, and the gap between them per kilo is usually the largest saving available anywhere on this page. Decaf is 36% of the range, which is unusually well served; most brands treat it as an afterthought. Capsules here are compatible capsules, so check that against your machine before anything else on this page matters.
Formats and origins
What illy sources and sells. Each one is a live filter across every brand we track.
What illy coffee costs
The range runs from 17p to 65p a cup across 11 products. That is a 3.8× spread inside a single brand, which is why "is illy expensive" is the wrong question; the right one is which bag you pick. The cheapest is Decaf Instant in the 95g, and the dearest is Decaffeinated in the 125g.
| Product | Format | Size | Per cup | Per kg |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Decaf Instant | instant | 95g | £0.17 | £85.26 |
| Classico | ground | 250g | £0.43 | £24.00 |
| Intenso | ground | 250g | £0.48 | £26.64 |
| Espresso Bold Roast | ground | 250g | £0.48 | £26.64 |
| Classico | whole bean | 1.5kg | £0.52 | £28.80 |
| Coffee | pods | 10 pods | £0.55 | — |
| Costa Rica | whole bean | 250g | £0.57 | £31.68 |
| Decaffeinated | ground | 250g | £0.58 | £31.96 |
| Decaffeinated | whole bean | 250g | £0.58 | £32.00 |
| Brazil | whole bean | 250g | £0.58 | £32.00 |
| Decaffeinated | ground | 125g | £0.65 | £35.92 |
Bags themselves run £4.49 to £43.20. Ignore that column. A bigger bag costs more and almost always costs less per cup, which is the only number that follows you home.
The one to buy
If you buy one thing from illy, buy Classico. At 43p a cup it comes in around 39% under the median for ground coffee, and that is measured against every brand in our catalogue rather than against illy's own list prices. Nothing else in the range gets close on that test.
What that costs over a year
How much coffee do you drink?
- illy£0.43 per cup£315
- Typical ground£0.71 per cup, our median£516
At 2 cups a day, illy costs £200 less a year than the typical ground coffee we track. That is the same coffee habit, bought better.
How illy tastes
We have not tasted illy, so we are not going to invent a tasting note. A flavour score we did not earn would be worth less than none, and this section would be the easiest place on the site to quietly make one up. What we can show you is measured: where every coffee in the range sits on our own five-point roast scale, and which origins go into it. Roast is the strongest single predictor of whether a cup arrives bright and fruity or dark and chocolatey, so it is the closest honest answer to what this brand is like to drink.
How illy roasts
Every coffee standardised onto our own five-point scale rather than the roaster's. Read these as tendencies: origin, process and how you brew all move the cup.
Who it suits
- People who found something they like and want it to taste the same next year, which is what a blend is for.
- Pod machine owners, though price a compatible capsule for your machine before committing to the brand's own.
- People who already know they like a medium roast, because that is essentially all there is here.
Is it good value?
Our test is simple, and it is the same one we apply to everything: cost per cup against the median for the same format. illy clears it comfortably on at least one product, which more brands fail than pass. Worth knowing that the saving is concentrated in the larger bags rather than spread evenly, so buying the small size gives most of it back.
What else to consider
No brand is worth buying without knowing what sits next to it on price. These are the closest ground coffees we track to illy, and the comparison hubs will put all of them on the same per-cup basis if you want to go wider.
Coffees priced like illy
The closest ground coffees on price per cup, from brands we also track. If one of these is cheaper for the same thing, that is worth knowing before you order.
Compare against the market
Keep reading
Pricesilly price guideEvery bag priced per cup and per kilo, with the cheapest route to each one.BrandAll illy pricesLive prices on all 11 products, cheapest cup first.CompareEvery ground coffeeAll 483 of them on one per-cup basis, filterable by roast and origin.ReviewKimbo reviewThe closest brand to illy on price, at 43p a cup.OffersToday's best valueEverything currently priced well under the median for its own format.