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Brand review · 3 min readSTARBUCKS coffee review
What STARBUCKS sells, what it costs against the rest of the market, and who should buy it.
STARBUCKS sells 8 coffees in the UK and the cheapest comes out at 45p a cup, which is less than most of the whole bean 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 85% of the whole bean coffee we track
- Tastes
- Balanced, caramel and chocolate
- Strength
- Medium
- Best for
- Everyday coffee, black or white
- Valuecup price vs the format median
- 4/5
- Easy to likefrom the roast profile
- 5/5
- Good for beginnersblend, roast and pack size
- 5/5
Cheapest cup£0.45across 8 products
Against the market−29%vs the whole bean median
Two cups a day£6.30a week, £2.52 less than typical
Mostly roastedMediumcaramel, balanced
Buy it ifyou finish a 1.8kg bag inside six weeks
Skip it ifyou are chasing a named farm or origin
STARBUCKS 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
STARBUCKS sells whole bean, ground and pods in the UK, and we track 8 of their coffees, in 10 pods, 1.2kg, 1.8kg and 250g.
88% of the STARBUCKS 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 buying reaches 5 countries across the range, which is a wide book for a brand this size. 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. Colombia turns up in 50% of the range, so it is fair to call that the backbone of what they buy. Capsules here are Nespresso Original, so check that against your machine before anything else on this page matters.
Formats and origins
What STARBUCKS sources and sells. Each one is a live filter across every brand we track.
What STARBUCKS coffee costs
The range runs from 30p to 72p a cup across eight products. That is a 2.4× spread inside a single brand, which is why "is STARBUCKS expensive" is the wrong question; the right one is which bag you pick. The cheapest is Decaf by Nespresso in the 10 pods, and the dearest is Guatemala Antigua in the 250g.
| Product | Format | Size | Per cup | Per kg |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Decaf by Nespresso | pods | 10 pods | £0.30 | — |
| Blonde | whole bean | 1.2kg | £0.45 | £24.99 |
| Colombia | whole bean | 1.8kg | £0.48 | £26.83 |
| Pike Place Roast | whole bean | 1.8kg | £0.51 | £28.27 |
| Pike Place Roast | whole bean | 1.8kg | £0.51 | £28.27 |
| Guatemala Antigua | whole bean | 250g | £0.72 | £39.96 |
Bags themselves run £3.00 to £50.88. 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 STARBUCKS, buy Decaf by Nespresso. At 30p a cup it comes in around 42% under the median for pods coffee, and that is measured against every brand in our catalogue rather than against STARBUCKS'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?
- STARBUCKS£0.45 per cup£328
- Typical whole bean£0.63 per cup, our median£460
At 2 cups a day, STARBUCKS costs £131 less a year than the typical whole bean coffee we track. That is the same coffee habit, bought better.
How STARBUCKS tastes
We have not tasted STARBUCKS, 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 STARBUCKS 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 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. STARBUCKS 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 whole bean coffees we track to STARBUCKS, and the comparison hubs will put all of them on the same per-cup basis if you want to go wider.
Coffees priced like STARBUCKS
The closest whole bean 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
PricesSTARBUCKS price guideEvery bag priced per cup and per kilo, with the cheapest route to each one.BrandAll STARBUCKS pricesLive prices on all 8 products, cheapest cup first.CompareEvery whole bean coffeeAll 812 of them on one per-cup basis, filterable by roast and origin.ReviewAnonymous Coffee reviewThe closest brand to STARBUCKS on price, at 45p a cup.OffersToday's best valueEverything currently priced well under the median for its own format.