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Brand review · 3 min readNESCAFÉ coffee review
What NESCAFÉ sells, what it costs against the rest of the market, and who should buy it.
NESCAFÉ sells 11 coffees in the UK and the cheapest comes out at 6p a cup, which is less than most of the instant 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 jar for the mornings when thirty seconds is the budget, and it costs very little.
Cheaper than 96% of the instant coffee we track
- Tastes
- Balanced, caramel and chocolate
- Strength
- Medium
- Best for
- Speed over ceremony
- 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£0.06across 11 products
Against the market−41%vs the instant median
Two cups a day£0.88a week, £0.61 less than typical
Mostly roastedMediumcaramel, balanced
Buy it ifyou want a cup in thirty seconds
Skip it ifyou are chasing a named farm or origin
NESCAFÉ 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
NESCAFÉ sells whole bean and instant in the UK, and we track 11 of their coffees, in 190g, 750g, 500g and 1kg.
NESCAFÉ 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. 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 18% of the range, which is unusually well served; most brands treat it as an afterthought.
Formats and origins
What NESCAFÉ sources and sells. Each one is a live filter across every brand we track.
What NESCAFÉ coffee costs
The range runs from 6p to 33p a cup across 11 products. That is a 5.2× spread inside a single brand, which is why "is NESCAFÉ expensive" is the wrong question; the right one is which bag you pick. The cheapest is Gold Blend Intense Premium in the 190g, and the dearest is BARISTA Espresso Blend in the 1kg.
| Product | Format | Size | Per cup | Per kg |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gold Blend Intense Premium | instant | 190g | £0.06 | £31.58 |
| Gold Blend Signature | instant | 190g | £0.06 | £31.58 |
| Gold Blend Smooth Premium | instant | 190g | £0.06 | £31.58 |
| Gold Blend Espresso | instant | 190g | £0.07 | £34.21 |
| Gold Blend Decaf Premium | instant | 190g | £0.07 | £36.84 |
| Gold Blend | instant | 750g | £0.07 | £37.32 |
| Alta Rica Gold Blend | instant | 190g | £0.09 | £46.16 |
| Gold Blend | instant | 500g | £0.09 | £47.00 |
| Gold Blend Decaf | instant | 500g | £0.11 | £57.18 |
| Brasile | whole bean | 1kg | £0.30 | £16.61 |
| BARISTA Espresso Blend | whole bean | 1kg | £0.33 | £18.23 |
Bags themselves run £6.00 to £28.59. 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 NESCAFÉ, buy Brasile. At 30p a cup it comes in around 53% under the median for whole bean coffee, and that is measured against every brand in our catalogue rather than against NESCAFÉ'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?
- NESCAFÉ£0.06 per cup£46
- Typical instant£0.11 per cup, our median£78
At 2 cups a day, NESCAFÉ costs £32 less a year than the typical instant coffee we track. That is the same coffee habit, bought better.
How NESCAFÉ tastes
We have not tasted NESCAFÉ, 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 NESCAFÉ 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.
- Anyone whose real comparison is supermarket own-brand, judged per cup rather than by the label.
- 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. NESCAFÉ 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 instant coffees we track to NESCAFÉ, and the comparison hubs will put all of them on the same per-cup basis if you want to go wider.
Coffees priced like NESCAFÉ
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
PricesNESCAFÉ price guideEvery bag priced per cup and per kilo, with the cheapest route to each one.BrandAll NESCAFÉ pricesLive prices on all 11 products, cheapest cup first.CompareEvery instant coffeeAll 45 of them on one per-cup basis, filterable by roast and origin.ReviewLyons reviewThe closest brand to NESCAFÉ on price, at 6p a cup.OffersToday's best valueEverything currently priced well under the median for its own format.