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Brand review · 3 min readLittle’s coffee review
What Little’s sells, what it costs against the rest of the market, and who should buy it.
Little’s asks 14p a cup at its cheapest, which is more than most instant coffee we list. Plenty of brands charge that and are worth it. The question is what you get for the difference, so here is the range, what it costs against everything else, and where we would put the money.
Short answer
A jar for the mornings when thirty seconds is the budget, at a price that expects you to care.
Cheaper than 20% of the instant coffee we track
- Tastes
- Balanced, caramel and chocolate
- Strength
- Medium
- Best for
- Speed over ceremony
- Valuecup price vs the format median
- 1/5
- Easy to likefrom the roast profile
- 5/5
- Good for beginnersblend, roast and pack size
- 5/5
Cheapest cup£0.14across 14 products
Against the market+31%vs the instant median
Two cups a day£1.96a week at its cheapest
Mostly roastedMediumcaramel, balanced
Buy it ifyou want a cup in thirty seconds
Skip it ifButterworth and Son at 13p would do
What kind of roaster this is
Little’s sells pods and instant in the UK, and we track 14 of their coffees, in 100g.
Little’s is a blender: 100% of the range we can classify is blended rather than sold as a named origin. That is a choice, not a shortcut. A blend can be rebuilt season to season to taste the same, which is what you want if you buy the same coffee every month and would rather it did not move under you. The roasting spans 3 of our five levels, so there is a genuine choice to make inside the range rather than one house style applied to everything. Nothing here comes in a kilo bag. That keeps the coffee fresher in your cupboard and costs you the bulk discount, which is the trade you are making whether or not anyone points it out. Decaf is 21% of the range, which is unusually well served; most brands treat it as an afterthought.
Formats and origins
What Little’s sources and sells. Each one is a live filter across every brand we track.
What Little’s coffee costs
Everything Little’s sells lands at the same 14p a cup, across 14 products. That makes the choice about roast and origin rather than money.
| Product | Format | Size | Per cup | Per kg |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lively Ethiopian | instant | 100g | £0.14 | £70.00 |
| Dreamy Decaf | instant | 100g | £0.14 | £70.00 |
| Smooth Colombian | instant | 100g | £0.14 | £70.00 |
| Bold Italian | instant | 100g | £0.14 | £70.00 |
| Organic House Blend | instant | 100g | £0.14 | £70.00 |
Bags themselves run £4.25 to £7.00. 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
Lively Ethiopian is the cheapest thing Little’s sells, at 14p a cup. We cannot yet set that against a market average for instant coffee, so treat it as the floor of the range rather than a verdict on value.
What that costs over a year
How much coffee do you drink?
- Little’s£0.14 per cup£102
- Typical instant£0.11 per cup, our median£78
At 2 cups a day, Little’s costs £24 more a year than the typical instant coffee we track. Worth knowing before you commit to a subscription.
How Little’s tastes
We have not tasted Little’s, 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 Little’s 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.
- Slow drinkers, and anyone who would rather buy little and often than watch a kilo go stale.
- People who want to choose their own roast rather than take the roaster's word for it, since the range covers 3 of our five levels.
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. Little’s lands around the middle. It is not the cheapest way to a cup of coffee, and the money above the median buys convenience and consistency rather than a smaller bill. Whether that is a fair trade is genuinely your call, not ours.
Little’s 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 else to consider
No brand is worth buying without knowing what sits next to it on price. These are the closest instant coffees we track to Little’s, and the comparison hubs will put all of them on the same per-cup basis if you want to go wider.
Coffees priced like Little’s
The closest instant 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
PricesLittle’s price guideEvery bag priced per cup and per kilo, with the cheapest route to each one.BrandAll Little’s pricesLive prices on all 14 products, cheapest cup first.CompareEvery instant coffeeAll 45 of them on one per-cup basis, filterable by roast and origin.ReviewButterworth and Son reviewThe closest brand to Little’s on price, at 13p a cup.OffersToday's best valueEverything currently priced well under the median for its own format.