After 5 Years of Testing, These Are the 12 Coffee Subscriptions We Keep Reordering

Whether you’re a third-wave coffee nerd looking to try a new craft roaster or a decaf drinker on the hunt for some actually good decaffeinated beans, there's a subscription for you. After five years of testing, Trade is our top pick—but depending on what kind of coffee you like, I have plenty of other recommendations.

• The best coffee subscription service overall: Trade
• Best single-origin coffee subscription: Atlas Coffee Club
• For the adventurous coffee drinker: Podium Coffee Club Platinum
• For people who want to taste a wide variety of coffee: Bean Box
• The freshest, most flavorful coffee subscription: Origin Roasted

I know coffee preferences can be wide-ranging, which is why my team and I have scoured the earth for subscriptions that offer tailored picks for different kinds of coffee lovers. To date, we've tested nearly two dozen options, and recommend the following wholeheartedly.

New in this update: We added a few more single-roaster subscriptions we're loving right now, including Folk Coffee Club, Coffee Project New York, and Onyx Coffee Lab.

Photograph by Isa Zapata

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Trade

Coffee Subscription

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Trade Coffee

Tester: Chris Morocco, food director
Best for: Someone looking for great specialty coffee with an interest in trying a number of different roasters and different roasting styles.

Trade is a multi-roaster subscription that sources coffee from independent roasters all over the country.

This was the easiest subscription I have ever set up, and Trade did such a good job of hitting my preferences right in their sweet spot: medium roast, medium body, medium fruit…just medium all around. I have gotten stuck in the past, tasting the same coffees or coffee styles over and over, and after just two bags, I could tell this would be different.

I set up an order for one 12-oz. bag of whole beans every two weeks. The first bag was Atomic Roasters Space Cadet out of Peabody, MA, and my second bag was Sparrows Coffee, Harmony Series All Seasons Blend from Grand Rapids, MI. I loved the Sparrows bag because it had just enough roast to feel pleasantly dense and weighty on my palate, yet with enough fruit, brightness, and acid to feel lively. When I clicked the box for “medium roast” coffee, this is exactly what I had in mind. I only do pour-over at home, and this was awesome in my Hario V60 coffee dripper.

The bottom line: There is a lot of great coffee in the world, but finding it and getting it right when you want it can be a challenge. Trade takes care of that for you, making this subscription absolutely worth it.

Yet another of Trade's roaster partners, Small Planes out of Washington DC.

Noah Kaufman

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Podium

Platinum Coffee Subscription

$30

Podium Coffee Club

Tester: Noah Kaufman, senior commerce editor, and Alaina Chou, commerce writer
Best for: People interested in discovering unique coffees from a variety of roasters.

If you’re the kind of person who’s always ordering the fun new seasonal pour-over option at your local craft coffee shop, or who hunts down rare bean varietals like it’s your job, Podium Coffee Club’s Podium Platinum is the coffee subscription for you.

Founded in 2023, Podium is a relatively new kid on the block in the world of coffee subs. The concept? A subscription service that solely sends out coffees that have stood on the podium (hence the name) at a major US coffee competition. The brand’s Podium Platinum subscription focuses on coffees that are unique and experimental in some way, be it flavor-wise, varietal-wise, or through the processing technique used.

In the two months we’ve tested this service, we’ve received two bags of coffee that have lived up to that claim. The first bag was a light roast from Royal Flamingo Coffee, a micro-roaster based in Columbus, Ohio. The beans, grown in Colombia, were made using the Black Honey process and mossto lactic fermentation, which you can read more about on Podium’s website. The notes of blueberries, white chocolate, and florals definitely came through in the brewed coffee in both smell and taste, though not too aggressively. We quite enjoyed this one.

The next coffee hailed from Wonderstate Coffee in Wisconsin and claimed notes of gummy bear, melon, and cooked berries. That might seem like a crazy flavor profile for a bag of coffee, but the brewed stuff was subtle and highly drinkable.

The bottom line: This is a great coffee subscription to get if you’re looking to explore, nerd out on coffee-making processes, or discover award-winning roasters from across the country. Note that Podium also offers a less expensive Podium Gold subscription option, which does not get you the same unique selection that the Platinum offers.

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Bean Box

Coffee Subscription

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Bean Box

Tester: Dan Siegel, head of video
Best for: People who tend to leave every cute coffee shop with a full bag of roasted beans to take home, regardless of the price.

Bean Box is focused on the “curation” experience. The service’s tasting team offers what they claim is the largest selection of specialty coffee online, with over 600 different brews in its rolodex. The selection is sourced from dozens of small-batch, sustainably focused roasters from around the country—meaning you could likely go years without tasting coffee from the same roaster twice.

Starting my subscription was exceptionally easy and clear. I appreciated the option to tailor the subscription to my own tastes: Bean Box asked me to choose among Light & Bright, Medium & Cozy, Dark & Toasty, Espresso, or Decaf. For this run, I selected the Curators' Choice option, marketed as the curation team’s seasonal favorites and a mix of new and old coffees. There is an app available to manage subscriptions and read lengthy details on each roaster or track the origin of your beans.

This subscription was not designed to save me money on coffee; this is for enthusiasts. My first bag from “Gimme! Coffee,” out of Ithaca, NY, hit hard on the Bean Box mission: The roaster is employee-owned, shipping fair trade beans from Coopfam, Brazil’s first certified fair trade coffee grower. This was a standout for any time of day as a medium-bodied brew, subtly sweet with virtually no bitterness or acidity via my automatic OXO 8-cup machine or my Hario V60 pour-over. My second bag, La Cumbre from Little City in Austin, was a bit too bright and fruity for my taste, advertising caramel, mango, and green apple tasting notes—but this was the path I chose with the Curator’s Choice option.

The bottom line: If you have the means, get the beans. I would keep this going for years if money were no object. The money seems to be going toward roasters that align with my values. One of my values is delicious coffee. But also treating workers at every stop along the way like human beings.

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MistoBox

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MistoBox

Tester: Alaina Chou, commerce writer
Best for: Anyone looking for some expert guidance in discovering new coffees from roasters all over the country.

If receiving personalized coffee picks from a catalogue of nearly 600 coffees from 60 different roasters sounds like your cup of tea (or, rather, joe), then I will point you toward MistoBox. I found a lot to love about this service after testing it for several months, particularly the way Misto tailored its selections to me and my taste.

The ordering process starts with a quiz covering your preferences: how you take your coffee, roast level, whole or ground beans, and frequency. But what sets MistoBox apart is what comes after: a second, more detailed quiz where you share how you brew, how you grind, and any other specifics to help the team dial in your order. The whole process feels genuinely personal, and that expert-curated aspect is, to me, the other major perk that makes a subscription worth it in the first place.

I’ve loved every coffee MistoBox has sent me so far. The first shipment was the Roma Espresso Blend from Parisi Artisan Coffee, which was aptly described as having notes of milk chocolate, almond, and honeysuckle. I tend to drink espresso, most often with milk in a cappuccino made using my Breville Oracle Jet. The Roma blend, which MistoBox sent me based on that information, worked beautifully for this.

After you receive each coffee, you’ll have the chance to rate it out of five and leave any tasting notes, which you can share with your curators if you’d like. Coffees you’ve tried show up in a customer dashboard, as will your “Brew Queue,” a.k.a. the lineup of the next coffees coming to your door. These will appear as “MistoBox’s choice” by default, but if you loved a coffee you tried and want it again, or spy a coffee in their collection that you’d like to request, you can opt to add specific coffees to your queue as well.

The bottom line: MistoBox’s user-friendly interface and extensive feedback options make it a great choice for anyone looking for some expert guidance in discovering new coffees from roasters all over the country.

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Swiss Water

Curated Coffee Subscription

$18

Swiss Water

Tester: Alaina Chou
Best for: Decaf drinkers who want in on the coffee subscription experience

If you’ve been reading all of this as a decaf drinker, we have good news for you: there are also some great decaf coffee subscriptions out there, including Swiss Water. This subscription offers a rotating selection of decaf coffees from roasters all across the US, all of which have gone through the Swiss Water process, a chemical-free decaffeination technique that you can read more about here. Note that Swiss Water currently only offers whole bean coffees, so you’ll need to grind your own beans if you decide to try it out.

I opted for biweekly shipments, though Swiss Water also offers weekly, monthly, and bimonthly. The first coffee I received was from Manzanita Roasting Company, based in San Diego. There was no informational card included, so all I really gathered about the coffee was that it was from Guatemala and had notes of berries and chocolate, which it did. For a decaf brew, I was impressed by the quality and nuance of the flavor. The same can be said for the second bag of beans I received, which was a blend called Kick Back from South Carolina–based Barista Alley.

The bottom line: You won’t find the kind of customization and curation options here that you see in most of the other subscriptions on this list, but if you’re okay with trying out a range of decaf coffees and aren’t married to one particular roast level or flavor profile, this service will work for you.

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There are a multitude of single-roaster coffee subscriptions out there today, from local roasteries-slash-cafés to companies specializing in mail-order beans. Below is an editor-curated list of single-roaster subscriptions from our recent tastings that we think are worth checking out.

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Atlas Coffee Club

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Atlas Coffee Club

Tester: Kelly Janke, former director of culinary production
Best for: The globally curious coffee connoisseur.

If you’re a curious coffee connoisseur looking to try single-origin coffee from around the world while directly supporting fair trade and sustainable practices, Atlas is the subscription service for you. Every month, you’ll get a bag of single-origin coffee from a different country that comes with an ID card detailing sourcing information and tasting notes.

The ordering process was easy. It asked me a few questions about my preferences in roast level, brewing type, and coffee quantity, with options ranging from a half bag to four bags per month. The shipping did seem to take longer than I expected, which was my main qualm with the service.

The beans I received in my first month were medium roast from Rwanda. I really enjoyed the cards that came in the box with tasting notes and information on the growing region. I had chosen two bags per month because I drink a fair amount of coffee, but it’s worth noting that this meant I received two of the same exact coffee (which wasn’t clear at the time of ordering—I had assumed they would be different). I ground the beans in my Oxo burr coffee grinder to a medium grind and brewed them in a Chemex with a metal reusable filter using a 1:16 coffee-to-water ratio. The coffee definitely tasted on the darker side of a medium with notes of grape, red apple, and roasted almonds.

The bottom line: I love to try new coffee varieties and appreciate the difference; if you feel similarly, then Atlas is a great option for you.

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Origin Roasted

Coffee Subscription

$25

Origin Roasted

Tester: Noah Kaufman
Best for: Adventurous coffee drinkers

Of every coffee subscription I’ve ever tried, this one is unique. Most coffee beans, even if freshly roasted, are stored as green beans for months. Origin Roasted beans hit the roaster almost immediately after harvest and get shipped out right after that. Truly, they are the freshest coffee beans you can get without picking them yourself. It’s a subjective call as to whether that makes the flavor "better," but it makes it different. Fruity or chocolate tasting notes that are present in beans that sit green are massively accentuated with Origin Roasted beans. If a flavorful cup of coffee is what you’re after, these beans are as flavorful as they come. The brand’s commitment to roasting at the beans’ origin has the added effect of bringing more coffee roasting work and expertise to countries of origin; roasting for most American coffees happens in the United States.

The ordering process is straightforward because there are no choices for you to make. Just give them your address and credit card number, and the coffee will be on its way to you at the end of each month. The company only sends the beans it is harvesting that month, which come from a single farm somewhere in Central or South America. The locations are limited to ensure that Origin Roasted can actually get the beans to your door while they’re as fresh as they’re supposed to be.

I got beans from all over Central and South America: Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, Colombia, Peru, and Brazil. Each coffee was entirely unlike the one that came before it. Shipments only get sent out on the 28th of every month, so I was limited to one bag per month.

The bottom line: Because of the harvest and roast process, this really is a boutique product, so you can’t order en masse the way you can with larger roasters. I don’t think it makes sense to identify my favorite beans here because you, dear reader, are not guaranteed to get them anyway. What you are guaranteed to get are incredibly cool coffees.

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Black and White Roasters

Coffee Subscription

$26

Black & White Roasters (1-Bag Specialty Subscription)

$20

Black & White Roasters (1-Bag Year Round Subscription)

Tester: Noah Kaufman
Best for: People who like funky coffee

If you find most black coffee off-putting, you might still love an unadulterated cup from Raleigh, North Carolina’s Black and White Coffee Roasters. Started by two American barista champions, Black and White are masters of the funky and fruity, with lots of experiments in co-fermented coffee (a process that uses actual fruit) and anaerobic fermented coffee (which produces very pronounced fruit notes).

It can be a very hands-off subscription. The only required information is whether you want one or two bags at a time and the frequency you need your coffee (anywhere between one and six weeks). Black and White will take care of the rest. If you do see a bag on their website you like, you can add it to your queue; otherwise, the team in North Carolina will select for you.

Every bag I received was of a funky variety, using ingredients like passion fruit, but they produce a number of more classic flavor profiles, which are available as part of their “year-round” subscription; the year-round is also about 20% cheaper than a subscription with the specialty bags.

The bottom line: If you're drawn to funky, fruit-forward coffee but don't want to think too hard about what to order next, Black and White is the subscription for you. Just set your frequency and let the barista champions decide.

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Wonderstate Coffee

Single Origin Flight Subscription

$35

Wonderstate Coffee

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Wonderstate Coffee

Blend Shuffle Subscription

$19

Wonderstate

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Wonderstate Coffee

Roaster’s Choice Subscription

$42

Wonderstate

Tester: Noah Kaufman
Best for: Mission-minded coffee drinkers

Admittedly, this is a bit of a homer pick, as I have long thought Wonderstate to be the preeminent coffee roaster from my beloved home state of Wisconsin. But for those of you not lucky enough to be from Wisconsin, you should get to know them too. A certified B-Corporation with a fully solar-powered roastery, a transparent farmer payment model, and a novel profit-sharing model, Viroqua-based Wonderstate has gained a lot of goodwill for its business practices, but it also makes really good coffee.

Twice named roaster of the year by Roast magazine (which is probably how it ended up as part of the Podium Coffee subscription), Wonderstate regularly has delicious, clean limited edition single origins—I like to get them as part of the single origin flight subscription. The subscriptions themselves come in a few varieties. The single-origin flight delivers three 100-gram packages of Wonderstate’s rarer coffees every two weeks. Roaster’s choice delivers a different single-origin coffee at an interval of your choosing. And the single coffee subscription gives you a regular delivery of the Wonderstate blend of your choosing, if you’re the type who wants more consistency of flavor in your morning cup.

The bottom line: Wonderstate makes excellent coffee and runs an ethical business, which is a combination that's rarer than it should be. If you care about where your money goes as much as what's in your cup, this is the subscription for you.

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Folk Coffee Club

Monthly Subscription

$59

Folk Coffee Club

Tester: Alaina Chou
Best for: Artsy coffee lovers who are into rare beans

If you're into the idea of coffee drinking as a ritualistic ~experience~, Folk Coffee Club is for you. Founded by a Q-Grader, a.k.a. a sommelier for the coffee world, Folk specializes in rare coffees that score at least 86 points (in Q-Grader speak). Unlike many of the other coffee subscriptions on this list, Folk gives you zero options; instead, they'll send you one shipment every month with two expert-curated coffees.

What really sets Folk apart, though, are the intentional extras they included with each shipment. Along with the two coffees, each month features a piece of art, a curated playlist, some thought starters, and a tasting guide that elevate the mundane ritual of coffee brewing and drinking into a full-blown experience you're encouraged to slow down and savor. The whole package, coffees included, is meant to draw on a unifying theme.

Folk's first shipment, Volume 00, was titled “Off Script,” and featured two Gesha coffees—a distinctive varietal that takes supreme care to grow. Each coffee tasted unlike any other I've had, one with notes of jasmine and caramelized peach, the other reminiscent of blood orange and dark chocolate. The whole thing was beautifully packaged and felt like a luxurious gift to receive, the thoughtful intention behind each component highly evident.

The bottom line: Think of Folk like a monthly ritual, complete with art, a playlist, and rare coffees you won't find anywhere else. If you're the type to linger over your morning cup, this one's worth every penny.

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Coffee Project New York

Roaster’s Choice Subscription

$26

Coffee Project New York

Tester: Olivia Tarantino, senior commerce editor
Best for: Coffee enthusiasts ready to explore the deeper end of the specialty coffee world.

Founded in 2015 in NYC's East Village, Coffee Project NY has grown from a single café into a full operation spanning retail, roasting, wholesale, and education. Owner Chi Sum Ngai is a certified Q grader and roasting championship competitor who personally oversees the roasting program, sourcing from small-scale cooperatives and family farms committed to improving conditions for workers.

The subscription is straightforward: select the Roaster's Choice Single Origin Subscription and receive one to three 10-oz. bags one to two times a month. Coffee Project New York is not shy about its credentials; each bag arrives with tasting notes, farm sourcing, processing methods, and MASL (metres above sea level, which indicates the altitude at which beans were grown and profoundly impacts flavor). My standout was the Cabra Noir Wush Wush from the Competition Series, a runner-up at Mexico's prestigious AMCCE competition. Produced through anaerobic fermentation, I hand-ground the beans for a Hario pour-over and was met with such vivid guava notes that I double-checked the bag to make sure it wasn't a cofermentation. It wasn't. It was just that good.

Bottom line: Any coffee drinker will appreciate the expertly sourced beans, but this is a subscription where nerds can truly geek out, sampling rare cultivars and competition-level coffees from around the world.

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Onyx Coffee

Club Subscription

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Onyx Coffee

Tester: Noah Kaufman
Best for: Someone who wants a little experimentation thrown in with their regular blends.

There is no better proof point that the world of exquisitely roasted coffee beans has anchored itself absolutely everywhere than the Onyx Coffee Lab. Onyx was started by Jon and Andrea Allen (who would later become a U.S. barista champion) in Springdale, Arkansas, in the Ozarks, and as it has spread throughout the state, it has also become one of the most recognizable names in specialty coffee. Such is Onyx’s reputation that it’s bled over into other areas, landing the Rogers, Arkansas headquarters a nod as a James Beard Award finalist for the best bar program in America.

As for the coffee subscriptions themselves, they’re straightforward to set up: simply tick the box for quantity and the box for frequency. Onyx offers the reliable roaster’s choice option with a lot of interesting single origins and one-offs (I particularly liked a Rwandan washed coffee from Kanzu Station) that all include the most informative explainers I’ve ever seen attached to a bag of coffee. The cards include a breakdown of all the inputs that contribute to the cost, detailed brewing instructions for both pour-over and espresso, and an explanation of the fermentation and roasting process.

For people looking for more familiar flavors, Onyx has subscription options that combine a small amount of more adventurous beans like the Kanzu with its more familiar blends, letting curious drinkers dip their toes in something new. And for a more special experience, Onyx releases a small number of memberships to what it calls “Echelon” for monthly deliveries of its rarest coffee.

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Intelligentsia

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Intelligentsia

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Intelligentsia

Tester: Noah Kaufman, senior commerce editor
Best for: People who want high-quality coffee, but aren’t interested in choosing from a dizzying array of adventurous options

Intelligentsia, out of Chicago, is one of the OG players in third-wave coffee (if you’re unfamiliar, "third wave" has a specific meaning, but is sometimes used as shorthand for a generation of coffee roasters deeply invested in quality, consistency, and unique flavors in coffee). Intelligentsia’s House Blend and Black Cat espresso roast have become staples at bakeries and coffee shops all over the country, and its subscription service gives you a regular supply of those two as well as its deeper catalog of different beans. There’s one single origin option, but the subscription itself is mostly based around Intelligentsia’s blends, which rotate seasonally.

This is a pretty simple, straightforward subscription. There is no quiz or process to determine what kind of coffee is “best for you”; rather, you just manually put in which subscription you want, choosing between the same blend (including espresso), rotating blends, or the roaster’s choice. You can also select how many times a month you want beans and how many bags you want per shipment. Changing to a different subscription is also quite easy. While you won’t find the same kind of personalized curation options as some of the other subscriptions on this list, Intelligentsia does offer one of the widest ranges of grind types if you aren’t getting whole bean coffee, running from the finest Turkish coffee grind to a super coarse (even coarser than cold brew) percolator grind.

I got “Intelligentsia's Choice” because I’m a sucker for single-origin beans (and have had the opportunity to try all their classic blends already). The beans came from some of the strongholds of international coffee production: Ethiopia and Nicaragua. Making a carafe of pour-over coffee a day, enough for two people or one me, I used about one bag every two weeks. The most noteworthy coffee to me was a very fruity natural process Ethiopian coffee. After testing it extensively, I can tell you that this is a reliable, relatively affordable subscription; the Intelligentsia Classics subscription is only $17 a bag. It would be worthwhile for anyone who wants quality but isn’t trying to be too adventurous with their morning coffee.

Just to note, in 2015, Peet’s bought up a majority stake in Intelligentsia. I don’t think it has changed the quality of the coffee at all, but it is something worth being transparent about.

Counter Culture

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Counter Culture

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Counter Culture

Tester: Carly Westerfield, associate manager of audience strategy
Best for: Someone who likes high-quality beans and doesn’t know exactly what flavor they’re looking for, but might get overwhelmed by some of the multi-roaster options on this list

Counter Culture is a longtime favorite roaster of many a BA staffer (food director Chris Morocco included). It has storefronts in several major cities, and you can find Counter Culture’s coffee in stores across the country, but they also offer several subscription options online.

I had a really easy time ordering the coffee. There aren’t endless options to choose from, which is nice because subscriptions like these can sometimes be a lot to manage. Because I wanted to see a variety of beans, there were only two: the Single-Origin Subscription and the Blend Box. I opted for the latter. As someone who’s often overwhelmed by choices, I always appreciate a curated shopping experience where there are fewer things to choose from and therefore fewer things to compare, contrast, and potentially have buyer’s remorse over. I did struggle a little to figure out how to end the subscription; Counter Culture makes that part a little trickier than everything else.

This subscription sends two different blends (12-oz. bags) at a time at a frequency of your choosing. Options there ranged from every week to every eight weeks, and the ability to change this post-purchase was clear. The Blend Box subscription pulls from six blend options ranging from light to dark roast, plus any “seasonal blend’ they have available, so you will end up seeing the same beans after about four deliveries. Shipping was fast and the email communication from CC made it so I always knew when I was being charged and when the box would be shipped and delivered.

While trying out this subscription, I received four different coffee blends: Iridescent Winter Blend, Big Trouble, Fast Forward, and Forty-Six. At home, I use a Moccamaster Thermal Carafe Coffee Brewer and a Baratza Encore Coffee Grinder. With each of the blends I received, I was able to use the same measurements that I always use (9 g of coffee per 6 oz. of water) and found the coffee to be the right strength for me. Each blend has spot-on tasting notes provided as well. Overall, while the flavor profiles were totally different, none were overwhelmingly bitter or acidic—a big no-no in my book. These coffees all had a really well-rounded, almost creamy quality to them that actually resulted in me using way less half-and-half than I normally take in my coffee. By far my favorite blend is, sadly, the limited edition Iridescent Winter Blend. Big Trouble came in a close second.

This subscription is great for someone who likes high-quality beans but doesn’t know exactly what flavor they’re looking for—perhaps, for instance, a recent college grad who’s been drinking coffee for years but hasn’t had to buy it for their own home yet. The ability to pause or change how often the deliveries come also makes it nice for someone who might travel often or need to have more coffee on hand at random times (maybe they have frequent house guests?).

Stumptown Coffee Roasters

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Stumptown

Coffee Subscription

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Stumptown

Tester: Maria Paz Mendez Hodes, director of creative development
Best for: Eager-to-learn beginners

Stumptown is a Portland, OR–based roaster that’s been around since 1999. It offers three subscription options: Roaster’s Choice, Blend Shuffle, and Favorite on Repeat. As a novice coffee brewer, I wished there were a little more elaboration on the differences between Roaster’s Choice and Blend Shuffle. In the end I opted for the Roaster’s Choice, which promised to be a tour of seasonal, single-origin, and occasionally rare coffees, changing every two weeks.

I wasn’t 100% sure until the bag showed up at my door that I was ordering whole beans versus ground coffee. To some that may be glaringly obvious, but just another reminder that the site did not seem aimed at rank beginners like me. From what I can tell, Stumptown subscriptions are all whole-bean-only. Beyond that, the ordering process was clear and easy! My first bag arrived three days after ordering, and the next one almost exactly on schedule.

A guilty confession: We keep breaking the Hario V60 carafe that I use to make pour-over, and I’ve gotten hooked on the extravagant convenience of bottled cold brew. The arrival of the Stumptown beans was exciting enough that we couldn’t wait for a replacement to arrive from Amazon, so we improvised by setting the dripper over a mason jar. Unglamorous setup aside, the first brew was an immediate reminder of the sense pleasures of the morning coffee ritual, dramatically amplified by using the fanciest beans I’d ever purchased. The freshness of the seasonal beans was obvious upon opening the package—they were lustrous and almost oily, with juicy notes that I’ve rarely detected in the supermarket brands near me. I don’t have a highly attuned coffee nose, but I could certainly taste distinct differences between the bags I received: light, bright fruit in the Montes de Oro from Costa Rica and deep caramel and spice in the Duramina from Ethiopia.

There were blurbs on the back of each bag sketching details about the coffee producers (e.g., how long they’d partnered with Stumptown and some unique features of their agricultural operations). It’s a good initiation for an interested newbie, but I think a coffee enthusiast could still glean quite a bit from these brief details. The one addition I would have loved would have been a card in the box with some deeper insights connecting the tasting notes and flavors to the processes and places mentioned. While there were tasting notes on the website for “Pick of the Week,” the coffee described wasn’t one I had received—another argument for a card in the box.

Equator

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Equator Coffees

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Equator Coffees

Tester: Travis Rainey, staff photographer/visuals editor
Best for: People who like a little personality in their morning coffee

Founded in Marin, CA, Equator is another old-timer in the direct trade coffee world. My ordering experience was relatively easy. It takes a few more clicks than you’d think on the site to arrive at the actual coffee subscriptions, but the process is still very straightforward. The variety was pleasantly much more than I was expecting; I sat and deliberated for a while about which kind of subscription I wanted to try. If there’s a specific Equator coffee you know and love, you can subscribe to a single type, it also offers a wide range of curated subscription options (espresso, single-origin, blend, fair trade) so you can get quite specific about what kind of coffee you're interested in, even if you want to mix it up.

I was tempted to choose a curveball and select the espresso subscription, but opted for a more American coffee experience this time. I chose to test the Curated Single Origin subscription, which sends you a different single-origin coffee bean each week. The first bag of beans I received was from Concepción Huista, just north of Huehuetenango in western Guatemala. It was a very light, almost delicate kind of coffee. I had to adjust the grinder setting to a finer coffee ground to make the coffee a little more bold. For the most part, I make coffee with a pour-over method. A new coffee arrives each week, so the next selection was from Abana Estate near Jimma in southwestern Ethiopia. This has been my favorite coffee to make so far. It's distinctive, spiced, but still goes down smooth. The third variety is Panangan Mata from Aceh on the northern tip of Sumatra in Indonesia. I’ve only had one cup yet, but it’s fruity, which is a fun surprise.

In general, I’ve found that each Equator coffee has had a distinct personality, making this subscription ideal for people who want to have opinions about coffee—the beans here are the kind that sort of demand one of you. I also appreciate that the containers the coffee beans come in feature detailed, but succinct information on where the coffee is coming from.

Partners Coffee Roasters

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Partners Coffee

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Partners Coffee

Tester: Hana Asbrink, deputy food director
Best for: Both novice and experienced coffee drinkers alike who want their coffee selections handled for them

Partners Coffee Roasters is a Brooklyn-based roaster committed to sustainable sourcing practices and community. The service’s offerings include both blends and single-origin roasts, and you can either subscribe to a single variety or opt for the “Roaster’s Choice” subscription.

My ordering experience was straightforward. I chose the Roaster’s Choice Subscription, so I didn’t know what I’d be getting first. My first bag (Honduras San Francisco whole beans) had a roast date just three days before it arrived at my house, so you can’t get much fresher than that. I appreciated this first blind bean as I’m not sure I would have chosen it for myself based on my personal preferences. I used a medium grind on the whole beans for my drip coffee maker. I’m curious to see how I’ll enjoy it pulled in the big boy coffee maker as an Americano.

The bag touts tasting notes of strawberry, raspberry, and dark chocolate, which are spot-on. The first whiff gave me a fruit-and-nut chocolate bar, and the taste matches in a delicate way with a touch some floral undertones.

Blue Bottle Coffee

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Blue Bottle

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Blue Bottle Coffee

Tester: Carina Finn
Best for: Best for someone with a high-end caffeine routine

You can find a Blue Bottle café in most major cities—the brand makes a reliably great cup of coffee, whether you’re into fruity pour-overs or sophisticated seasonal lattes. Blue Bottle’s coffee subscription makes it easy to recreate that experience at home. It has around 10 different subscription options for things like instant espresso and matcha powders to rotating single-origin offerings and subscriptions tailored to specific roast level preferences.

I loved that Blue Bottle offers a ton of variety while still coming from a single roaster. The quality is consistent across offerings, but it's easy to customize. Since I drink both espresso and matcha, I subscribed to a monthly tin of ceremonial-grade matcha powder and a biweekly bag of rotating single-origin espressos. I know we’re focused on coffee beans here, but I’ve tried a lot of matcha powders, and the Blue Bottle is one of my all-time favorites. It’s great hot or iced, mixed with water or in lattes, and doesn’t require sweeteners to mask any unpleasant flavors. For espresso, I went with the assortment, since I like some nuance in my daily flat white. My favorite was the Hayes Valley Espresso, one of the brand’s longtime stalwart blends, because I love a smooth, chocolaty shot. The fruitier Opascope was a close second.

Sightglass Coffee

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Sightglass

Tester: Alaina Chou
Best for: Someone looking for seasonality in their coffee

Sightglass is a coffee-shop-slash-roaster based in San Francisco. They offer subscriptions for all of the coffees in their regular lineup if you find a fave you want to stick to, but we’d recommend trying out one of their rotating options to get a taste for all the brand has to offer. That leaves you with either the Blend Shuffle or the Seasonal Variety subscription. The ordering process is simple: Just select which subscription you want, how much coffee you want in each shipment (12 ounces, 2 pounds, or 5 pounds), what kind of grind you want, and how often you’d like to receive deliveries.

One of the things I like about Sightglass, as opposed to some other coffee shop-roaster hybrids, is that they regularly introduce new single-origin coffees, which might feature in that seasonal subscription. You can also opt in to get notified about any new drops through the Sightglass Batches text-to-order service.

I'm partial to Sightglass’s Blueboon blend. It's a medium roast with notes of milk chocolate, mandarin, and honeysuckle that I quite enjoy brewed as espresso and used in my morning iced latte. It’s beautifully balanced, and the components get changed seasonally to retain the right ratio of sweetness, body, and acidity.

Driftaway Coffee

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Driftaway

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Driftaway

Tester: Alaina Chou
Best for: People who want to hone their coffee-tasting skills

If you dream of being able to approach the coffee world with sommelier-like expertise but you aren’t quite there yet, a Driftaway coffee subscription will help. Driftaway is an immigrant-owned, woman-led roastery based in Brooklyn, NY, and it’s the only service we’ve tried that starts out with a blind tasting. When you go to place your first order, you’ll have the option to choose between light roast, medium, and dark roasts, or espresso (which each include two or three different 4-oz. bags of coffee to blind taste test), or opt for the Explorer Box, which includes five different coffees spanning all roast levels.

If the tasting aspect of this service appeals to you, I’d recommend going with the Explorer Box option. Each initial Explorer Box comes with five mystery coffees, a wheel with flavor notes, a tasting form, and an envelope revealing the identities of your coffees. Driftaway offers weekly virtual tasting classes free of charge, but if you’d rather taste on your own time, they also have prerecorded tasting tutorials available on their website. Regardless of whether you opt for the Explorer Box or a roast-specific subscription, after your initial order, you’ll give feedback on which coffee you preferred in order to inform your future shipments. Many coffee companies even give you the option to send the farmer feedback, which I appreciated.

Along with the Explorer Box, I also tried out the espresso subscription. I was partial to the Burundi Turihamwe and Guatemala Ella blend, which was wonderfully nutty and had notes of milk chocolate and stone fruits. I loved being able to read more about the women farmers behind this blend and trace the story of the coffee from harvest to brewing, a feature that’s in keeping with Driftaway’s overall ethos.

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Our editors have used every one of these coffee subscriptions in their homes over several months, and some for years. We’ve made sure to try a variety of bean types where possible, and to try the beans with a variety of brewing methods to see how well they perform as espresso, pour-over, drip coffee, and French-pressed coffee.

Our editors are continually testing many of these services and constantly trying new coffee subscriptions to keep this list updated as the market changes, so be sure to check back as we update it often.

There are hundreds—if not thousands—of coffee subscriptions out there, so I followed two guiding principles when selecting which subscriptions to test:

• Fresh-roasted beans: A coffee’s freshness has a huge impact on its flavor once brewed, no matter if you’re using a fancy espresso machine or a simple French press. The best subscription services will guarantee freshly roasted beans, either roasted to order or within a week or so of shipping.
• Whole beans: The other major factor in your coffee’s flavor is how recently the beans were ground. I'm a big advocate of ordering whole-bean coffee and grinding the beans just before brewing, so all of the options we tested offer that. (Of course, I know that many people may prefer the convenience of ground coffee. Most of the services below offer that as an option, too, although my colleagues and I will continue to raise our eyebrows at you until you get a good coffee grinder.)

Now that you've read all about the best coffee subscription services out there, it's time to upgrade that old drip coffee machine or invest in a new espresso setup.