The Best Coffee Subscriptions to Keep You Wired
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The Best Single-Origin Roaster
The Best Multi-Roaster Subscription (Now With Cold Brew)
The Best Gift Set
Best Delicious Coffee Grown (and Roasted) by Women
You never need a cup of coffee tomorrow. You need it now. An empty bag is panic, and tragedy, a trip to the store in your pajamas. The WIRED guide to the best coffee subscriptions is designed, in part, to make sure this moment never happens.
A coffee subscription is your ticket to the whole world of beans, ready to come speeding through the night to join you. You can choose how often, select your favorite roasts, or go with the roaster's choice to experiment with new blends and broaden your taste in coffee. The WIRED Reviews team has been testing and recommending coffee subscriptions online for a half-decade. Coffee writer Matthew Korfhage has been writing about coffee on both coasts for more like 15 years, and might go through four bags a week while testing coffee machines. These are the best and most interesting coffee subscriptions we've found, among many terrific roasters and retailers nationwide.
Be sure to check our other coffee buying guides, including the Best Drip Coffee Machines, Best Mushroom Coffee, Best Espresso Machines, Best Cold-Brew Coffee Makers, Best Latte and Cappuccino Machines, and Best Coffee Grinders.
Updated May 2025: We’ve added Cometeer flash-frozen coffee and Sunday Coffee Project to our top picks, and added Trade Coffee's cold-brew subscription to its offerings. We've also updated prices and descriptions, and rearranged and retested coffee subscriptions throughout. An earlier version of this guide was prepared by former WIRED reviewer Jaina Grey.
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Roasters vs. Retailers
There are two kinds of coffee subscription providers: roasters and retailers.
Roasters are cafés, coffee roasteries, and small-batch producers who buy the raw beans from farmers and roast them to perfection. By buying from a roaster, you're directly supporting the people who make your favorite coffees; there's no middleman between you and your coffee. The downside is you won't have as broad a selection available. Roasters sell only their own coffee, but that often means special blends and single origins are available from a roaster that you can't get from a retailer.
Retailers are coffee subscription providers who buy their beans from roasters then ship them to you. That means they will often have a much broader selection of coffees available (from multiple brands) to ship to your doorstep. The downside is that since you're not buying directly from a roaster, which means the coffee may not be as fresh (this is where this guide comes in, we can tell you how fresh they are)
Both roasters and retailers sell great coffee. This guide contains a mix of both.
Subscription Beans vs. Locally Roasted Beans
These subscription services all produce killer coffee beans, and they all taste great. But if you can get great coffee roasted locally delivered to you, do it. Look up your local coffee roasters, or visit your favorite coffee shop and ask where they get their beans. Ordering locally helps minimizes the environmental impact of coffee, which, let's be honest, is pretty big. It's a fun way to explore when you're traveling, too. The best coffee you can find is often the cup you drink when you're on the road, in a new place, tasting something new. Even if you don't live on the road, it's fun to explore different shops when you do travel.
How We Tested
To test these subscriptions, we tried a variety of beans from each service, both our own picks and any curated options. We brewed each bag in different ways to see which beans were best suited to which brewing method. Scott Gilbertson covers the spectrum of grinds with espresso, moka pot, French press, pour over, and Turkish or cowboy coffee. Matthew Korfhage wanders through espresso, AeroPress, drip, cold brew, pour-over, and a wealth of somewhat unclassifiable devices. It's worth doing the same if you have access to different brewing methods, especially if you opt for a subscription that offers a lot of variety. A roast that makes a great shot of espresso does not necessarily make the best pour-over coffee, and vice versa. It can also be rewarding to take notes on your favorites. Some of these services offer a way to do this on the site, which is handy, though a paper notebook works well enough. If you'd like some more pointers on brewing, be sure to read our guide to brewing better coffee at home.
The Best Single-Origin Roaster
Atlas offers a globetrotting tour in bean form: high-quality, single-origin beans from all over the world, delivered to your doorstep at a price competitive with the premium (but far less fresh!) bags at your local supermarket. Each month, the Austin, Texas-based roaster offers beans from a different country—whether an Indian bean that tastes gently of marzipan, or one from Peru that brims with toffee. Those countries and farms keep changing, as Atlas forms new relationships with growers all over the world—including lesser-known coffee-producing regions such as Thailand or Yunnan, China. Atlas has also recently introduced a subscription option for functional mushroom blends, the latte version of which earned top billing in our guide to mushroom coffee.
Atlas' coffee is excellent, and the service is truly outstanding. Take your druthers between light-to-medium or medium-to-dark roasts—or choose both. But note those who want the extremes of light or dark roasting may not find them here. Atlas stays instead in the fat part of the bell curve where aromas are most pronounced and easy to extract. This can mean deep-chocolate Central American dark roasts best for espresso, or fruit-forward light-to-medium African roasts made for drip or pour-over.
Subscriptions can be monthly or bimonthly, there is no weekly option. You can also choose whether you'd like to receive whole beans, your precise favorite coffee grind for your favorite brewing method, or even pods fit for Keurig or Nespresso. Reviewer Scott Gilbertson said he's never seen a late shipment. The bags are pretty. The beans are pretty, and they taste pretty.
Using the code WELCOMECOFFEE, you can get $8.50 off of your first bag. —Matthew Korfhage
Roaster. Delivery options: every two or four weeks. Coffee changes each month.
The Best Multi-Roaster Subscription (Now With Cold Brew)
Trade Coffee is like a helpful curator for beans. Rather than roast themselves, Trade acts as a middleman to ferry beans to your door from small roasters all over the country, according to your own desires. To determine your tastes, Trade will ask you a series of questions about what you want out of your daily dose of caffeine: how you brew and drink your coffee (with milk, without, etc.), how dark you like your roast, and whether you like balanced flavors or bold and fruity.
At the end, you'll learn what bags are coming based on your responses—whether a roasty, smoky espresso blend from Feast Coffee in California, or a light-bodied Kenyan from Tennessee that tastes like citrus and berry.
Trade's selection is huge, with well over 400 coffees to choose from, and Trade is constantly adding new roasters and coffees to their stable. This means you never have to repeat a bag if you don't want to. But more important, this makes Trade's subscription a great way to discover entirely new coffees, new growers, and new roasters. Also, Trade just added a new cold-brew subscription with at least 90 bags specifically selected for how good they taste when brewed cold. Hot girl, shmot shmirl: Welcome to cold-brew summer. —Matthew Korfhage
Delivery options: every two or four weeks, starting at one 11-ounce bag per delivery.
The Best Gift Set
A lot of coffee subscription providers offer some kind of seasonal gift option, but Bean Box's Perfectly Paired Chocolate + Coffee Tasting set is the first one I found myself wanting to reorder. Each coffee is paired with a different artisan chocolate to bring out the depth in both items. I'm not always a big breakfast person; my favorite foods are breakfast foods, but I don't usually get hungry until I've been awake for a while. Having a little snack with my morning coffee was a fun tweak on my usual ritual, and I have to say, the pairings are perfect. The chocolate brings out flavors in the coffee I'd otherwise have missed, and the coffee reveals flavors in the chocolate that I just couldn't taste without it. —Jaina Grey
Retailer. One-off purchase.
Best Delicious Coffee Grown (and Roasted) by Women
There are only about 400 certified coffee Q graders in the United States—basically, the master sommeliers of coffee. Two of them are the mother-daughter team of Rachel and Jiyoon Han at New York's Bean & Bean. Some of the rarest and most exquisite beans in the world pass through their roaster: geshas from Taiwan, honey-milled Cup of Excellence winners from El Salvador.
But quietly, Bean & Bean has also been on a mission to source these excellent beans from female growers all over the world who often face serious obstacles in seizing the means of production. Subscriptions from B&B include Las Damas beans highlighting beans from a women growers cooperative in Peru, and a seasonal Sumatra blend from an 890-grower women's cooperative in Indonesia. Or, you can just let the Hans surprise you with their favorite light roast of the moment. Note that one of former WIRED coffee reviewer Jaina Grey's favorite coffees of all time is a Bean & Bean Mountain Water Process decaf from Guatemala, available as part of a seasonally rotating decaf subscription whose beans taste shockingly full-caffed. —Matthew Korfhage
Roaster. Delivery options: two weeks or four weeks. Priced per bag or selection.
Best if You Live Your Life by Text Message
Partners Coffee is a Brooklyn-based small-batch coffee roaster that offers subscriptions by blend. Partners roasts and ships all orders within two days, so it arrives at your door as fresh as possible. I tested the whole bean Manhattan roast and Ghost Town decaf, and both were excellent. Overall, I would call Partners a great source for those who like light to medium roasts. One thing I really like about subscribing is the ability to manage your subscription by text, allowing you to skip your order, double up if you have visitors coming, or swap your normal blend for something new. You also get regular emails just before your next subscription blend ships, letting you know about any deals and limited-release coffees. —Scott Gilbertson
Roaster. Delivery options: one, two, three, and four weeks. Priced per bag.
Mind-Bendingly Good Instant Coffee
Look, I get it. Not everyone has room in their life for a big, beautiful espresso machine and an excellent grinder, or the interest in staring thoughtfully into the middle distance while preparing a meditative pour-over. Or maybe you're just at your office or in a hotel a lot. And yet you still want terrific coffee that is interesting and full of flavor. Well, here's Cometeer. The first time I tried it, I of course was skeptical. But I couldn't believe how aromatic and straight-up distinctive each coffee was, despite being flash-frozen.
It goes like this: Cometeer pods contain coffee from some of the finest specialty roasters in the world—Black & White, Onyx, Proud Mary, you name it—that's been lovingly brewed and condensed with the power of science, then flash-frozen into little single-serve capsules. All you've gotta do is drop them into a cup, then thaw them with 5 ounces of boiling or near-boiling water. And then, blammo—an oddly terrific cup of coffee, miles above powdered instant or coffee pods. It's not quite the same as a fresh cup: The mouthfeel is different, the flavors are rounder and smushier and less crisp. But on light roasts especially, the coffee aromatics are big, bold, and wild. I kinda love it. Former WIRED coffee writer Jaina Grey also kinda loved it (8/10, WIRED Recommends). They don't come cheap if you order a single box at a time, but subscription prices are quite reasonable—about $2 a capsule for very fancy coffee. But note that you'll have to keep your capsules frozen or they'll get less fresh in a hurry: They keep full flavor for one day at room temp or three days in a cooler or hotel fridge. —Matthew Korfhage
Retailer. Delivery option: once every four weeks. Priced per 40 capsules.
A Roaster Supporting Animals
Grounds and Hounds offers small-batch roasted blends and single-origin coffee, with 20 percent of its profits going to benefit animal shelters. The brand has some of my personal favorite coffees, especially the dark roasts. (Try the Snow Day Winter Roast when it's available.)
There are a few kinds of subscriptions at Grounds and Hounds—a plan where you pick a couple roasts you'd like to keep getting, a limited-term gift plan if you're buying for someone else, and multiple rotating plans where Grounds sends you its favorite roasts of the moment. We tested the last of these, opting for whole bean (ground and single-serve pods are also options), and its “Roaster's Select” beans, which let us sample a few different varieties. As soon as we found what we liked, we switched the subscription to that bean. When you sign up, Grounds and Hounds will let you know how your money is helping animal shelters. In the case of a single bag, a weekly subscription provides roughly 800 meals per year to shelters. —Scott Gilbertson
Roaster. Delivery options: One, two, four, or eight weeks. Priced per bag.
The Best Subscription for Decaf
Swiss Water, the company behind the Swiss Water decaffeination process, offers its own subscription service to bring you the very best decaf roasts from across the US. I had a chance to sample Swiss Water's offerings recently, and as a longtime fan of decaf I came away very impressed.
The coffees were all full-flavored and robust, and managed to retain both delicate floral notes and richer chocolatey notes despite the decaffeination process. They also all passed the smell test. If a coffee is decaffeinated improperly, you can tell from the way it smells. You shouldn't be able to tell a coffee is decaf just from the aroma; if you can, you should pick something else. —Jaina Grey
Retailer. Delivery options: Weekly, biweekly, monthly, or bimonthly. Priced per bag.
Pure, Bright Fun in a Cereal Box
Portland, Oregon, is perhaps the densest home to craft coffee in the country: Heart, Coava, Stumptown, the home of the Specialty Coffee Association, multiple national coffee publications, and a craft coffee festival. I've been writing about coffee in Portland and elsewhere for more than a decade. And yet somehow Sunday Coffee Project still kinda stands out for the sheer Portland of it all. So what's the deal?
The Sunday Coffee Project is a roaster without a café, like a hobby gone haywire. It roasts only one day a week (on Monday, not Sunday, obbbbbbviously), usually something wacky and bright and funky and special and rare, like maybe a yeast-fermented Thai light roast that tastes a whole lot like Sangria, or an Ethiopian so floral you'll swear you got invited to a spring wedding. On Tuesday, the company will mail you your coffee in a little art box, designed to look like a coffee-themed children's cereal complete with games on the back and a little cartoon character on the front: something like a sheep lifting weights or a snake playing tennis. As soon as Wednesday, the coffee will arrive. And the coffee will taste surprising, bright, and fun. Lucky you. Portland gonna Portland. You might as well like it. (Note that my subscription glitched when I went to cancel, but an email was answered nearly immediately, and the problem was fixed just as fast.) —Matthew Korfhage
Delivery options: every week, two weeks, or month. Priced per bag. starting at $15 for 12 ounces. Shipping is $7.
The Best International Roasters
The Origin Roasted folks must have some amazing connections, because each month they send a 12-ounce bag of specialty beans that are roasted, packed, and shipped directly from the same part of the world where the coffee was harvested. Shipping straight from the origin within one to three days of roasting means the coffee is going to be as fresh as possible when it arrives. A side benefit is that more of the proceeds from the coffee sales go directly to the growers and roasters in their home countries.
After drinking Origin Roasted coffee since the service launched in the summer of 2021 (when it was known as Quintal), I've found all the selections to be just superb, with floral and fruity notes that I've rarely tasted in store-bought coffee. I've also done internet searches for some of the names on the labels of my favorite bags (Jalapa Producers from Guatemala; Azahar from Risaralda, Colombia), and these beans are pretty special. Even if you can find them stateside, they command higher prices than what you pay through Origin Roasted. This subscription service is brought to you by the same people who make the VacOne coffee brewer, which we gave high marks to when we reviewed it. But you don't need a special brewer to fully enjoy these beans; I drink mine using a pour-over method. —Michael Calore
Roaster. Delivery: Ships on the last Friday of every month. Priced per bag.
A Third-Wave Pioneer Roaster Who Helps You Choose
Blue Bottle is one of the early greats from the third wave of coffee, and one of the longest-lasting coffee subscriptions. Some of the newcomers and retail subscriptions might offer more selection. But where Blue Bottle stands out is the logistics and wile that come from being around a minute. They're able to send their beans out fresher, and offer smart custom tailoring to individual preferences.
Blue Bottle promises to ship your coffee within 24 hours of roasting, and splits out its roasts into individually tailored subscriptions to match each customer to their ideal coffee, whether “bright," “bold,” single-origin, espresso, decaf, or cold brew. Each preference carries a curated little selection ready to arrive at your doorstep—and each individual favorite coffee blend can also be made into a subscription. This means my colleague Scott Gilbertson can luxuriate with the darks he enjoys best, and I can nerd out on single-origin light roasts. —Matthew Korfhage
Roaster. Delivery options: One, two, three, or four weeks. Priced per bag.
A Roaster Reducing Heartburn
Trücup is most notable for its unique, low acid coffee, which makes it a great option for coffee lovers with sensitive stomachs or those who suffer from gastroesophageal reflux disease or heartburn (standard disclaimer: if you've been diagnosed with GERD, talk to your physician before you try any coffee).
Trücup claims to be about 60 percent less acidic than “leading national coffee brands.” I did not actually pH-test Trücup, but going by taste I'd say that sounds about right. And Trücup is worth your time even if you're fortunate enough to have a stomach that can handle normal coffee. It's my top pick for drinking in the afternoon and evenings, as it's mellow and easier on the stomach. —Scott Gilbertson
Roaster. Delivery options: One through 12 weeks. Priced per bag.
Coffee Roasted Over an Open Flame
Campfire Coffee is a bit different in that it roasts its coffee over an open flame. Does this make it better? I'm not sure, but it sure is good coffee. I would recommend this to anyone who likes a delicious, smooth, dark coffee. I've brewed it as espresso, in a moka pot, pour over, and as Turkish or “cowboy” coffee, which feels like the right way to do it. It was excellent no matter what I did to it.
Technically Campfire Coffee doesn't have a subscription service, but you can grab the sampler I've linked to here and when you know what you like, order up some bags of beans. If you're headed into the outdoors, or are just traveling, Campfire Coffee also has some convenient pour-over packs ($13 for an 8-pack). There's no coffee equipment needed—just put them over your mug and pour your boiling water.
Campfire coffee also runs a program called Campfire Explorers Club, which is a nonprofit helping people who would not otherwise be able to explore the outdoors get outside and experience some wilderness. —Scott Gilbertson
A Great Roaster From the Big Easy
French Truck Coffee got its start in New Orleans and now has a dozen of its signature yellow storefronts scattered around town. I'm a fan of the Big River blend, which has a deep, rich, and very robust flavor profile that's especially well-suited to pour-over brewing. In fact, French Truck has some of the most detailed brewing instructions I've seen. While French Truck might not produce exactly what everyone wants, it gives you a great starting point from which you can make your own adjustments.
Subscriptions are available for all the company's various beans and blends and prices range from $15 to $17 depending on the beans you want (and yes, there is a blend with chicory). There's also a roaster's choice option which will bring a little more variety to your door, though it is more expensive at $21 a bag. Delivery options are limited to weekly or monthly and you can get ground coffee delivered, though we highly suggest going with beans for maximum freshness (get your own coffee grinder). —Scott Gilbertson
Roaster. Delivery options: every week or every month. Priced per bag.
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A Bird-Friendly Coffee
Tropical agriculture—like coffee—is a major source of biodiversity loss. That's where Birds & Beans coffee can help. The dark roasts are delicious and genuinely dark (Scarlet Tanager is my favorite) and all Birds & Beans coffee is sourced from Smithsonian-certified, bird-friendly farms.
It's also certified fair trade and organic. That means the coffee comes from coffee plantations that are making an effort to increase tree cover and create more biodiverse farms. A 12-year study in Costa Rica found that even coffee plantations with "modestly higher tree cover" had higher bird diversity, a good indicator of overall biodiversity. Buying your beans from bird-friendly coffee sources like Birds & Beans can help improve the overall biodiversity of tropical farms. It's a way to have an impact on the long-term sustainability of tropical crops, wildlife, and people, along with a great tasting cup of coffee. —Scott Gilbertson
Roaster. Delivery options: every two to 13 weeks. Priced per bag.
Honorable Mentions
There are so many coffee subscriptions out there, and honestly, a lot of them are very good. This list would need to be three times as long to capture every one of them at the least! I have way more subscriptions I've loved than I have space to talk about them, so here I've gathered some past picks that we here at WIRED like; some of these provide very specific services too. Have a favorite we haven't tried? Send an email to matthew_korfhage@wired.com.
Stone Creek Coffee for $40 (two bags): Milwaukee-based Stone Creek' Creek Coffee delivers its fresh, flavorful coffee in big 1-pound bags, with a variety of blends and single-origin options available. The Cream City blend in particular is a delightful medium roast with some warmer flavor notes like chocolate and brown sugar rounded out by some fruity flavors, according to former WIRED coffee writer Jaina Grey, giving the coffee an almost cocoa nib flavor. Add a little milk and it's almost like drinking hot cocoa. A monthly subscription delivers two bags a shipment.
Grit Coffee for $15 a bag: From its roastery in Charlottesville, Virginia, Grit Coffee roasts up some of our favorite blends, including an excellent, roasty, chocolatey Side Hustle blend with a subtle high note of acidity to balance it out. But what really differentiates Grit from other roasters is grit. The roaster makes long-term, often 10-year commitment to its coffee farmers.
Lady Falcon for $45 (two bags): Lady Falcon Coffee Club may draw you in with the art nouveau-style bags. But the luscious, velvety coffee within is what will keep you coming back, according to former WIRED reviewer Jaina Grey. Each coffee blend is thoughtfully mixed to heighten the flavors present in the contributing coffees, and the flavor notes are spot-on.
Angel's Cup for $23 a bag: Angel's Cup is more like a distance-learning coffee school than a box subscription service. I recommend giving the Black Box subscription a try. You will learn what you actually like and dislike about coffee, along with some education through the app, roaster's notes, and notes from fellow tasters.
Mistobox for $15 a bag: With more than 500 coffees from 50-plus roasters, Mistobox makes a good gift subscription, especially if you don't know what kind of coffee to get someone. Somewhere in those 500 choices, your coffee fanatic should find something that will make them happy.
