Best Ice Cream Brands
Ice cream sparks fierce loyalty like few other treats — everyone has a favorite brand they'll defend to the last spoonful, whether it's for the creaminess, the flavors, or sheer nostalgia. From supermarket staples to artisanal darlings, the competition for the title of best ice cream brand is as heated as it is delicious. Cast your vote and help crown the true champion of the freezer aisle!
What counts: Best is judged by taste quality, flavor variety, ingredient quality, and cultural popularity. Prices are approximate US retail per pint/quart and may vary by region and retailer.
Ben & Jerry's
Two Vermont hippies with a $5 correspondence-course certificate turned chunky, pun-named flavors like Cherry Garcia and Half Baked into a cultural institution that made 'craft' ice cream mainstream before craft was a marketing word. It changed the game by proving ice cream could have politics, personality, and enormous mix-ins all at once, and it still earns its spot as the flavor-innovation gold standard.},{
Taste Quality: 8.5/10Avg. Price: $5.5Founded: 1978Flavor Variety: 9/10Widely Available: ✓
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Häagen-Dazs
Invented in the Bronx with a fake Danish name to sound exotic, it single-handedly created the 'super-premium' category and made 16% butterfat and dense, egg-yolk-rich vanilla feel like luxury. Its Dulce de Leche and coffee flavors remain benchmark-setting, and no ranking of great ice cream can ignore the brand that taught America what premium even meant.
Taste Quality: 8.7/10Avg. Price: $6Founded: 1961Flavor Variety: 7.5/10Widely Available: ✓
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Breyers
The self-proclaimed 'All Natural' pioneer built trust on a short ingredient list decades before 'clean label' was a trend, and its butter-almond and mint chocolate chip became suburban freezer staples. It's since diluted with frozen dairy dessert lines, but its historic role in setting a mass-market quality bar earns it a place here.
Taste Quality: 7/10Avg. Price: $4Founded: 1866Flavor Variety: 7/10Widely Available: ✓
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The clear plastic jar with the peel-back lid turned gelato into a grocery-store phenomenon, and Sea Salt Caramel Gelato Layers became an Instagram-era obsession practically overnight. It brought authentic Italian density and slow-churned texture to the freezer aisle, proving indulgent gelato didn't need a scoop shop.
Taste Quality: 8.3/10Avg. Price: $5.5Founded: 2003Flavor Variety: 8/10Widely Available: ✓
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A small-town Texas creamery whose Homemade Vanilla built a near-religious regional following, Blue Bell earned the nickname 'the little creamery in Brenham' for a reason — devoted fans stockpile it when it's out of state. A 2015 listeria recall shook consumer trust, but the brand's rich, old-fashioned churn and fierce cult loyalty still make it a Southern icon worth ranking.
Taste Quality: 8.2/10Avg. Price: $4.5Founded: 1907Flavor Variety: 6.5/10Widely Available: —
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With '31 flavors' as a founding promise, this chain turned ice cream into an experience of endless choice, from Jamoca Almond Fudge to seasonal novelties like Polar Pizza. It shaped how generations experienced ice cream as social ritual rather than pint-at-home indulgence, cementing its place in pop-culture memory even as quality varies by flavor.
Taste Quality: 7/10Avg. Price: $5Founded: 1945Flavor Variety: 9.5/10Widely Available: ✓
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Magnum
The Belgian chocolate-shell bar turned the humble ice cream stick into a status symbol, its thick cracking-chocolate coating and gold wrapper making 'take pleasure seriously' a global slogan. Magnum proved that packaging and crackly texture could be as important as the ice cream itself, redefining the novelty aisle worldwide.
Taste Quality: 8/10Avg. Price: $5Founded: 1989Flavor Variety: 6/10Widely Available: ✓
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0Turkey Hill
A Pennsylvania dairy-turned-ice-cream giant, Turkey Hill built loyalty through affordable, creamy classics like Cookies 'n Cream that never chased trends but nailed comfort. It's the ice cream equivalent of a reliable neighbor — unglamorous, consistent, and beloved in grocery carts across the Northeast and Midwest.
Taste Quality: 7/10Avg. Price: $4Founded: 1931Flavor Variety: 6/10Widely Available: —
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Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams
Jeni Britton Bauer rebuilt her ice cream philosophy from scratch after a business collapse, engineering a stabilizer-free base that let bold flavors like Brambleberry Crisp and Salty Caramel taste shockingly clean and true. Jeni's proved farm-to-cone artisan ice cream could scale nationally without losing its soul, making it the darling of the craft-ice-cream renaissance.
Taste Quality: 8.9/10Avg. Price: $8Founded: 2002Flavor Variety: 8/10Widely Available: —
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0Starting as a bright yellow food truck in Brooklyn, Van Leeuwen turned French-style custard bases and oddball flavors like Earl Grey Tea and vegan cashew-milk pints into a viral, Instagram-friendly brand. It represents the modern indie-to-national arc, bottling hipster credibility into supermarket freezers.
Taste Quality: 8.8/10Avg. Price: $8Founded: 2008Flavor Variety: 7.5/10Widely Available: —
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Klondike
The chocolate-covered ice cream square wrapped in foil became an advertising legend with 'What would you do for a Klondike Bar?', turning a simple novelty into decades of cultural catchphrase. It's less about gourmet flavor and more about nostalgic, crunchy-shelled Americana that earns its spot through sheer staying power.
Taste Quality: 6.8/10Avg. Price: $4.5Founded: 1922Flavor Variety: 5.5/10Widely Available: ✓
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Friendly's
Born as a Depression-era ice cream stand, Friendly's built its identity on the sundae-shop experience — Jim Dandies, Reese's Pieces Sundaes, and the iconic 'Happy Ending.' It's less about pint innovation than about the diner-booth nostalgia it sells, a reminder that ice cream's cultural power often lives in the ritual around it.
Taste Quality: 6.5/10Avg. Price: $4Founded: 1935Flavor Variety: 6/10Widely Available: ✓
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Halo Top
Halo Top detonated the diet-ice-cream category by cramming under 400 calories into a whole pint and marketing itself like a lifestyle brand, sparking a genuine 2017 grocery-store frenzy. It proved indulgence could be re-engineered for macros-counting culture, even if purists argue the icy, protein-thickened texture never matched real cream.
Taste Quality: 6/10Avg. Price: $5.5Founded: 2011Flavor Variety: 7/10Widely Available: ✓
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A beloved upstate New York family brand since 1918, Perry's built loyalty through rich, small-batch-style flavors like Peanut Butter Blast, deepened further by a partnership with Wegmans that cemented regional star status. It's proof that a well-run family company can compete on quality without national ad budgets.
Taste Quality: 7.5/10Avg. Price: $4.5Founded: 1918Flavor Variety: 7/10Widely Available: —
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Cold Stone turned the mix-in ritual into performance art, with employees smashing candy and fruit into ice cream on frozen granite slabs to a soundtrack of singing scoopers. It commodified the sundae-bar experience into a retail concept, prioritizing spectacle and customization over any single signature flavor.
Taste Quality: 7.5/10Avg. Price: $6.5Founded: 1988Flavor Variety: 8.5/10Widely Available: ✓
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0Dreyer's / Edy's
Splitting names east and west of the Rockies for decades, Dreyer's/Edy's built its reputation on affordable Slow Churned lines that made lower-fat ice cream taste indulgent to millions of grocery shoppers. It's the dependable middle-market workhorse that never chased trends but kept freezers stocked coast to coast.
Taste Quality: 6.8/10Avg. Price: $4Founded: 1928Flavor Variety: 6.5/10Widely Available: ✓
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Cincinnati's French Pot process — small batches churned two gallons at a time — produces those famous inch-wide chocolate chip shards in Black Raspberry Chip that regional devotees consider nearly a religious experience. Graeter's earns its spot by proving old-world small-batch technique can still outclass mass production on pure texture and chip integrity.
Taste Quality: 8.6/10Avg. Price: $7Founded: 1870Flavor Variety: 7/10Widely Available: —
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0So Delicious
So Delicious helped legitimize dairy-free ice cream long before oat and almond milk were trendy, building coconut-milk pints that made vegan dessert feel like a genuine treat rather than a compromise. It opened the freezer aisle to lactose-intolerant and plant-based eaters, reshaping who gets to enjoy 'real' ice cream culture.
Taste Quality: 6.5/10Avg. Price: $6Founded: 1980Flavor Variety: 6.5/10Widely Available: ✓
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