The Best Coffee Subscription Services

This subscription is run by an established coffee brand that sources and roasts its own beans. The bean changes every two weeks, meaning you could try up to two new types of beans every month. The bag we received came from a Guatemalan farm that Stumptown has been working with since 2005. We appreciated the details about the coffee selection that were available online, including the bean varieties. We were also impressed with the coffee itself, which had notes of “candied nut,” “apricot,” and “chocolate.” The customer support team was responsive and quick to answer our questions.

We liked that this subscription service was quick to process our order. Since the company rotates its coffee offerings every two weeks, there are two new types of beans to try each month. We tasted a delicious light roast coffee from a Nicaraguan coffee farm that Counter Culture has had a relationship with since 2009, according to Counter Culture’s website, which was easy to access and navigate. We learned about everything from processing methods and elevation of the farm to harvest time and how much the company paid for this particular coffee compared to industry average. On the packaging, we found tasting notes of “pear, dark chocolate, and almond,” which matched our tasters’ own observations of “milk chocolate,” “fruity,” and “nutty notes.” We emailed the company’s general inquiries address with a question, but we didn’t hear anything; we eventually got in touch via a different email address attached to its promotional emails. Once we got hold of them, they were very helpful.

This subscription service is owned by a cooperative of coffee growers from Africa and the Americas. Each single-origin coffee it features comes from a partnering farm and the selection changes based on harvest season. For instance, in the late fall the selection will switch to beans from Yirgacheffe, Ethiopia, which are some of the most sought-after beans in the world and are harvested in late summer. We received a medium roast coffee from Nicaragua with “vanilla,” “pear,” and “chocolate” flavors that our tasting panel loved. If you wish to receive more than one bag of coffee in a month, make sure to change your cadence to weekly or biweekly after sign-up. The coffee changes monthly, so users who select weekly or biweekly shipments will receive some repeats. Each bag comes with information about the co-op, but we couldn’t find more details educating us about the varieties of the coffee.

This subscription doesn’t roast coffee; it connects customers with roasters from around the country. You may be matched with a recognizable brand or with small-scale roaster that you’ve likely never heard of. Our bag came from Topeca Coffee Roasters in Tulsa, Oklahoma. When we signed up, we filled out a survey about our favorite roast level and whether we drink coffee with milk or black. We set the preference to “light” and habit to “black,” which algorithmically matched us with a delicate, light roast coffee that reminded us of “citrus,” “apple,” and “caramel.” The online interface of this subscription was easy to navigate and even had a dashboard where we could keep track of every coffee we tried. The coffee arrived seven days after it had been roasted, which is slightly longer than ideal for flavor. The company’s customer support was responsive when we reached out and helped us replace a shipment that had gone missing.

Founded in Chicago, this coffee brand has expanded to many coffee shops around the country. The subscription’s coffee selection rotates once a month. Our first bag was from West Guji, Ethiopia, a coffee-growing region that’s known for highly prized heirloom varieties of coffee. We learned about the coffee and how the beans were processed, which helped us make informed decisions later. We enjoyed this “complex” coffee’s notes of “blueberry” and “bittersweet chocolate.” We liked that this service offers a wide range of grinding options from coarse grinds for percolators to medium grinds for pour-over coffee makers to fine grinds for espresso. It even offers two brand-specific grind sizes for users of Kalita and Hario V60 pour-over cups. For those who don’t own a dedicated coffee grinder but still want to get their hands on some top-tier coffee, this feature can be really convenient. We couldn’t get hold of the company’s customer support. We reached out several times with questions about the coffee but never heard back. There was no number to call.

This Australian coffee company is known for its rotating list of hard-to-find coffees. It offers two tiers of subscription, the standard and the deluxe; we tried the former. The standard sends you about 9 ounces of single-variety beans, such as Bourbon, from one farm; the pricier deluxe tier sends you 3.5 ounces of award-winning single-variety beans, such as Gesha, from one farm. We enjoyed the Salvadorian coffee we received, which consisted of Bourbon beans, a highly prized variety of Arabica coffee known for rounded, honey-like flavors. The coffee had notes of “orange blossom,” “raisin,” and “nougat” that broadly matched the flavor profile the company listed on its website. The information provided online helped us learn more about the beans, the farms that cultivate them, and the processing method. The company’s website was nicely designed and contained easy-to-understand explanations of potentially unfamiliar technical terms. The company never responded to our emails, and we were never able to get in touch with them.

This famous coffee brand has coffee shops around the country and the world. Its single origin coffee changes twice a month. We enjoyed a lovely and delicate coffee with “clementine,” “grassy,” and “tea-like” notes. The educational resources helped us learn more about the coffee, which came from a farm in Honduras, along with some tasting notes that guided us through its nuances. But we were disappointed about how long it took our beans to arrive. From the date we placed all our orders to the date the coffee arrived, this box took the longest: 12 days. The beans were roasted the day after we placed our order, but they waited in the warehouse for another five days before the courier picked it up. Because coffee beans start to lose flavor and aroma after roasting, the faster they reach consumers’ hands, the better.

This subscription sources coffee beans from around the world and roasts them. We filled out a quick survey about our coffee preferences and received a bag of Tanzanian coffee in our box. Our tasters liked its “mango,” “pineapple,” and “marshmallow” flavors. The box arrived with a card specifying the country where it came from, some basic information about the country, and some tasting notes. It lists “Kilimanjaro” as the subregion where the coffee is from but no further detail about where exactly. The notes on the card also didn’t make a ton of sense “In Tanzania, a mighty and sprawling range of flavor.” Unlike every other bag we received, there was no “roasted on” date on its packaging. We reached out to customer support, which was very responsive and helpful; a representative assured us that the company’s coffee was roasted to order and took seven days to arrive.

Though you can find Peet’s in most supermarkets, we were intrigued by its single-origin subscription service, the least expensive subscription in the lineup. It features a new coffee every month. We received a dark roast called “Aged Sumatra” coffee from Indonesia; we reached out for more information about the aging process but didn’t get a clear answer about how exactly the beans were aged. Rather, the reply stated only that “the aging process deepens flavors of the beans...accentuating certain notes over others.” It also didn’t give further details on where in Sumatra the coffee beans were from. Our tasters showed the least excitement for this coffee when they tasted it. It arrived 11 days after it had been roasted. The company can grind the beans but only offers two options for coarseness: French press or drip.

This subscription service was among one of the first companies to connect consumers with small coffee brands through an algorithm-powered system. We filled out a survey that asked for our coffee preferences, including our preferred brewing method (espresso) and roast level (light to medium) as well as our daily coffee intake. We appreciated that the service would customize our grind to our coffee maker of choice. Although we picked “single origin” as our preferred type of subscription, we were sent an espresso blend that listed “Peru and Colombia” as its origins. We were disappointed that the company had no offerings that were both single-origin and suitable for espresso. The coffee was fine; our tasters picked out “nutty,” “nougat,” and “toasty fruit” flavors from it but also noted that it was “bitter.” We didn’t learn much about the coffee we received aside from some jargony marketing phrases on its bag. We had to contact customer service due to shipping delays caused by the courier; the customer support was responsive and helpful.