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Brand review · 3 min readNescafé Dolce Gusto coffee review
What Nescafé Dolce Gusto sells, what it costs against the rest of the market, and who should buy it.
Nescafé Dolce Gusto sells 11 coffees in the UK and the cheapest comes out at 19p a cup, which is less than most of the pods 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
Weekday capsules for people who want the cup, not the ritual, and it costs very little.
Cheaper than 98% of the pods coffee we track
- Tastes
- Dark, smoky and bold
- Strength
- Very strong
- Best for
- Quick weekday cups
- Valuecup price vs the format median
- 5/5
- Easy to likefrom the roast profile
- 4/5
- Good for beginnersblend, roast and pack size
- 4/5
Cheapest cup£0.19across 11 products
Against the market−63%vs the pods median
Two cups a day£2.67a week, £4.58 less than typical
Mostly roastedDarksmoky, bold
Buy it ifyour machine takes these capsules
Skip it ifyou want a light, fruity roast
Nescafé Dolce Gusto 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 Dolce Gusto sells pods in the UK, and we track 11 of their coffees, in 90 pods, 48 pods, 45 pods and 24 pods.
Expect blends here rather than named farms: 100% of the classified range is blended. The trade is a familiar one. You give up the story on the label and you get a cup that does not drift between orders. 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. Colombia turns up in 64% of the range, so it is fair to call that the backbone of what they buy. Capsules here are Dolce Gusto, so check that against your machine before anything else on this page matters.
Formats and origins
What Nescafé Dolce Gusto sources and sells. Each one is a live filter across every brand we track.
What Nescafé Dolce Gusto coffee costs
The range runs from 19p to 42p a cup across 11 products. That is a 2.2× spread inside a single brand, which is why "is Nescafé Dolce Gusto expensive" is the wrong question; the right one is which bag you pick. The cheapest is Café Au Lait in the 90 pods, and the dearest is Latte Macchiato in the 24 pods.
| Product | Format | Size | Per cup | Per kg |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Café Au Lait | pods | 90 pods | £0.19 | — |
| Latte Macchiato | pods | 90 pods | £0.19 | — |
| Café Au Lait Intenso | pods | 48 pods | £0.21 | — |
| Americano Intenso | pods | 48 pods | £0.21 | — |
| Espresso Intenso | pods | 48 pods | £0.21 | — |
| Americano | pods | 48 pods | £0.21 | — |
| Flat White | pods | 48 pods | £0.21 | — |
| Cappuccino | pods | 45 pods | £0.38 | — |
| Cappuccino | pods | 24 pods | £0.42 | — |
| Latte Macchiato | pods | 24 pods | £0.42 | — |
Bags themselves run £10.00 to £17.19. 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 Dolce Gusto, buy Café Au Lait. At 19p a cup it comes in around 63% under the median for pods coffee, and that is measured against every brand in our catalogue rather than against Nescafé Dolce Gusto'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 Dolce Gusto£0.19 per cup£139
- Typical pods£0.52 per cup, our median£378
At 2 cups a day, Nescafé Dolce Gusto costs £239 less a year than the typical pods coffee we track. That is the same coffee habit, bought better.
How Nescafé Dolce Gusto tastes
We have not tasted Nescafé Dolce Gusto, 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 Dolce Gusto 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. Nescafé Dolce Gusto 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 pods coffees we track to Nescafé Dolce Gusto, 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 Dolce Gusto
The closest pods 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 Dolce Gusto price guideEvery bag priced per cup and per kilo, with the cheapest route to each one.BrandAll Nescafé Dolce Gusto pricesLive prices on all 11 products, cheapest cup first.CompareEvery pods coffeeAll 129 of them on one per-cup basis, filterable by roast and origin.Reviewby Amazon reviewThe closest brand to Nescafé Dolce Gusto on price, at 19p a cup.OffersToday's best valueEverything currently priced well under the median for its own format.