I don’t get diet sodas. Don’t get me wrong, wanting to avoid the high sugar and high-calorie content of regular soda in favor of something that’s healthier — I get that. But diet sodas taste, well, how can I put this nicely? F*cking weird. There are plenty of sugar-free non sweetened beverages out there that taste delicious, and yet people choose to drink something that tastes like a cheap substitute just so they can drink more of it? That’s odd, right? An example of half-assed maximalism.
You want half the calories of Coke? Drink half a coke. That’s sure to be a far more satisfying experience.
Or… it would have been. But over the years, some people (a lot, in fact) have convinced themselves to like these flavors better. Aspartame is now preferable to these weirdos over real sugar. A few oddballs have even written articles about it, and clearly, the industry is healthy (as in sales, not actually healthy) because diet soda is everywhere — from fast food fountains to convenience store shelves. People do like this stuff, that’s undeniable… even if I don’t get it.
Which got me thinking — what if I didn’t know I was drinking the sugar-free version of my favorite soda? Is there a diet soda out there that tastes good enough to fool me? I set out to find out by blind test-testing all the diet sodas I could in search of the most delicious (and the one that could best match its own full sugar version).
Methodology:
In the past, we’ve blind taste-tested colas, cherry colas, fruit sodas, and root beer, and despite there being a lot of variety out there it doesn’t quite match the insane amount of sugar-free sodas out there. So in order to narrow our scope a bit, we decided to eliminate drinks that are solely designed to be sugar-free — La Croix, Zevia, and similar fruit-flavored “sparkling waters.” To make it on this list, the soda has to be a sugar-free version of a full-sugar soda.
If you want to find the best flavored sparkling water, hit up our flavored sparkling water taste test.
Here is our tasting class:
- 7-Up Zero Sugar
- Coca-Cola Cherry Zero Sugar
- Coca-Cola Move Zero Sugar (limited time Rosalía flavor)
- Coca-Cola Zero
- Diet Coke
- Diet Dr. Pepper
- Diet Pepsi
- Mountain Dew Diet
- Pepsi Zero Sugar
- Sprite Zero Sugar
- Virgil’s Zero Sugar Cola
I had each bottle/can of diet soda poured for me out of sight and brought to me at random. Because diet soda leaves a weird chemical stain on the palate, I drank lemon water between each new serving. My bladder has never been so full. Seriously.
Part 1: The Tasting
Taste 1
Wow, this is great. It’s fizzy and hits the tongue with a pronounced sizzle and has a deep rich flavor. It has an interesting cinnamon-like spice to it, but it’s different than a cola — the flavors constantly shift between dark and earthy and slightly fruity. It’s a bit hard to pin down. It’s very satisfying, and while the aftertaste lingers a bit too long, I don’t think I’d know this is diet soda if this wasn’t a diet soda blind taste test.
Was I wrong about diet soda?
I’d drink this over a real sugar version in a heartbeat.
Taste 2
Nope, I wasn’t wrong about diet soda. This is awful. It’s highly sweet on the tongue with a woody taste and a very syrupy body. It lays flat on the tongue and almost stains the palate. No fizz here.
Taste 3
This taste test is messing with my brain! This soda is amazing to me, I’m getting pronounced juicy fruit flavors with a perfect balance of lemon and lime. I wouldn’t know this was a diet soda at all, it’s been a few weeks since we did our fruit soda blind taste test, and this tastes just as good as anything in the top five of that list.
Taste 4
Unlike any soda I’ve ever tasted. A mix of kola nut and cinnamon with some sweet cotton candy and marshmallow notes and the faintest hint of coconut.
From my notes: “Good, but not great.”
Taste 5
Weird chemical sweet water. It tastes like someone mixed up Sweet in Low in water. There is a syrupy thickness to this drink, mouthfeel, and flavor-wise, it’s straight-up horrid. It’s flat, with absolutely no fizz.
Taste 6
Wow, this tastes exactly like Cherry Coke to me. There is a lingering artificial cherry sweetness to it, with a balance of chocolate and cinnamon notes. Delicious!
Taste 7
Ew. It’s like fizzy Kool-Aid. This one hits the palate in a very weird way. At the start, it’s completely flavorless, and then it hits your tastebuds with the worst combination of lemon and lime flavors I’ve ever tasted. This might be the worst diet soda in existence.
From my notes: “It tastes like lemon-lime if a big rig’s tire squeezed out the juice and then served it in an empty bottle of lemonade from a landfill that has been sitting in the sun for too long.”
Taste 8
Another take on cola, there is a strong chocolate and cinnamon flavor to this one. It doesn’t have the fizz that I want it to have, but the flavor is great. I wouldn’t think this was a diet soda, tastes like some kind of variation on Coca-Cola.
Taste 9
Very sweet, sweeter than most non-diet sodas I’ve ever tasted. There is a pleasing hint of caramel with cinnamon and chocolate, but it’s ruined by a stale chemically sweet flavor that lingers on the backend.
Taste 10
Very crisp with a juicy lemon and lime flavor and a nice strong bite at the end. Another diet lemon-lime soda that tastes interchangeable with the real stuff.
Taste 11
Sweet with a sizzling fizzy body. There is a very faint cola flavor here, but it tastes noticeably brighter than any cola I’ve ever tasted.
Part 2: The Ranking
11. Diet Mountain Dew (Taste 7)
Price: $3.48 (6 Pack)
There is something very funny to me about the fact that Mountain Dew made a diet soda and somehow wasn’t able to make it zero calories. This is the only diet soda on the market that still has calories, and it’s absolutely not worth it! What are those 10 calories doing? Because this shit tastes horrible!
Mountain Dew has a reputation for being one of the most sugar-heavy sodas on the market, and even when it comes to diet, they still managed to squeeze more sugar in there than the competition. That’s dedication! There is a Mountain Dew Zero Sugar on the market and it’s calorie-free, but I couldn’t find it at any of the convenience stores I visited. So apparently those 10 calories matter to someone.
The Bottom Line:
Mountain Dew failed to make a zero-calorie diet soda, and those 10 calories don’t make it any more palatable.
10. Pepsi Zero Sugar (Taste 5)
Price: $7.19 (12 Pack)
Coming in just a hair higher than Mountain Dew Diet is Pepsi Zero Sugar, Pepsi Brand’s answer to Coca-Cola Zero. It’s awful. Pepsi apparently took out all the fizz along with the sugar, as this soda was completely flat.
My taste buds are geared toward Coca-Cola, I’ve always thought of Pepsi as the lesser soda, but even regular straight Pepsi tastes significantly better than this stuff.
The Bottom Line:
It tastes like poison.
9. Virgil’s Zero Sugar Cola (Taste 2)
Price: $27.75 (12 Pack)
I’d really like to know what’s keeping Virgil’s in business. From what I’ve tasted from the brand, they make some mid-tier root beer and straight-up horrible cola. The weirdest thing is, Virgil’s Cola has been discontinued and all that exists is this zero-sugar version. That means people like this more than the OG flavor!
And yet, it’s bad. It tastes like wood, when I’m trying to drink a soda, I’m not looking for a wood flavor. This leads me to believe that diet soda drinkers have painfully low expectations.
The Bottom Line:
Stay away from Virgil’s at all costs.
8. Coca-Cola Move Zero Sugar (Taste 4)
Price: $6.99 (10 Pack)
We’re officially in the tasty territory, as this new flavor of Coca-Cola, made in collaboration with the Grammy award-winning artist Rosalía, is delicious. What’s interesting about this flavor is that it’s brand new, and since I haven’t had the non-sugar-free version of it, I have nothing to compare it to, which makes it truly novel.
I’m a huge Rosalía fan (you could call me a Moto Papi) and a big Coke head so I’ve been watching this soda with great interest, it combines two of my favorite things. There is no advertised flavor for Move — its main inspiration is transformation, and as ridiculous as it sounds, that is exactly what the flavor does. It’s constantly shifting between marshmallows, cotton candy, and coconut. It tastes unlike anything I’ve ever had in the soda space.
Take that as you will!
The Bottom Line:
Rosalía’s Coca-Cola collaboration is interesting and worth seeking out. If anything it’s made me curious to try the regular version and compare them. I’ll get to that next!
7. Diet Coke (Taste 11)
Price: $7.49 (12 Pack)
Diet Coke was always going to be a tough one to appreciate for me. Considering Coca-Cola is my all-time favorite soda, my taste buds have a natural aversion to this flavor profile. I’ve been given Diet Coke at a fast food drive-thru by mistake before, and it’s enough to make me park my car and go back in to dump it out in place of Coca-Cola.
You can really taste the aspartame in this one, and the cola notes, which are expected to be dark and rich, are too bright here. I’ll give Diet Coke this: from a design standpoint, it is visually the best diet soda on the market. It’s as distinct as actual Coca-Cola. That’s not enough to get it ranked better than this, but I feel like it was worth mentioning for the design nerds out there.
The Bottom Line:
If you like Coca-Cola, you’re never going to be able to adjust to Diet Coke. It just tastes wrong.
6. Diet Pepsi (Taste 9)
Price: $7.19 (12 Pack)
As I said earlier, I’m not on team Pepsi, I’m a Coca-Cola guy, but Diet Pepsi is just as good to my tastebuds as the real thing. Pepsi OG is made with real sugar, and you can feel that on your teeth as it sticks to and strips away your enamel. This doesn’t have that problem, it’s much softer and for the most part, tastes almost exactly the same to me.
The Bottom Line:
If you’re a Pepsi fan, consider switching to Diet Pepsi, it tastes incredibly similar to the real thing and doesn’t eat away at your teeth.
6. Coca-Cola Cherry Coke Zero (Taste 6)
Price:
This one is very very interesting to me. I love cherry cola, but I’ve always preferred the combination of Coca-Cola and grenadine (pro tip, you can easily make your own cherry coke at home and it’ll taste better than every pre-bottled variety) to the actual Coca-Cola brand version of the drink. The brand just goes way too heavy on the cherry flavor that it comes across as sickeningly sweet. But Cherry Coke Zero, on the other hand, is a bit more subtle and because of that, I think it’s even better than the original.
The artificial cherry flavor isn’t as overpowering here, and it has a mix of dark chocolate, cinnamon, and vanilla flavors. Altogether those notes combine for something that is delicious while still managing to be calorie-free.
The Bottom Line:
If you love Cherry Coke, switch over to Diet Cherry Coke Zero immediately. It’s even better than the real thing.
4. Coke Zero (Taste 8)
Price: $7.49 (12 Pack)
There are two common things people say about Coke Zero: 1). Coke Zero is just Diet Coke marketed to men who are too embarrassed to drink Diet Coke and 2.) Coke Zero taste just like Coca-Cola. Both are bullshit.
It doesn’t taste at all like Diet Coke, it has a darker flavor with more pronounced cinnamon notes and a hint of rich chocolate tones. Diet Coke has none of that. If you can’t taste the difference, your taste buds are broken. Having said that, this stuff doesn’t taste at all like actual Coca-Cola. It’s a completely different formulation of cola nut flavors. It doesn’t taste noticeably like a sugar-free soda, more like the differences between something like RC Cola and Coca-Cola.
The Bottom Line:
A good alternative to Coca-Cola, but don’t listen to the people that say it tastes the same. It doesn’t. Not even a little bit.
3. 7-Up Zero Sugar (Taste 3)
Price: $4.98 (12 Pack)
By far the biggest surprise of this diet soda taste test was the lemon-lime flavors. They taste almost identical to their sugared counterparts, so much so that I’m not sure why anyone drinks the non-diet versions. Do they know how similar 7-Up Zero Sugar tastes to regular 7-Up? Well, I’m here to tell you, it’s just as good as the real thing.
The Bottom Line:
7-Up Zero Sugar is an easy replacement for 7-Up Classic. Without actively tasting them side by side, the flavors are identical, and that’s coming from someone who just did a fruit soda blind taste test and 7-Up a top spot.
2. Sprite Zero Sugar (Taste 10)
Price: $7.46 (12 Pack)
In my blind fruit soda taste test, I ranked 7-Up higher than Sprite so how do I explain ranking Sprite Zero Sugar above 7-Up Zero Sugar even though I said the sugar-free versions taste essentially identical to the sugar versions? Because for whatever reason, the 7-Up Zero Sugar tasted slightly salty to me on the aftertaste, and this Sprite Zero is giving me none of that.
Sprite Zero Sugar is crispy, juicy, and delicious
The Bottom Line:
Another Lemon-Lime soda that tastes as good as the real thing. The only major difference between Sprite and Sprite Zero is that the bite isn’t quite as strong. It doesn’t burn your throat in the way that OG Sprite does. For some people, that’ll be a deal breaker, but if you’re more about the flavor than the bite, try Sprite Zero.
1. Diet Dr. Pepper (Taste 1)
Price: $7.19 (12 Pack)
Far and above the best diet soda we tasted was Diet Dr. Pepper. A common assessment of this drink is that it tastes like regular Dr. Pepper and that tracks, this tastes almost exactly like the real thing. I will say that it’s less intense than OG Dr. P, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing as the OG can sometimes taste too syrupy.
This is easily the most satisfying diet soda I’ve ever tasted, while 7-Up Zero and Sprite Zero taste as good as their sugary counterparts, there is something about the darker richer sodas that beat out the fruit-flavored stuff for me. The other diet sodas on this list failed to capture that though, as good as they are, I almost always rather have the sugar-packed versions over the diet stuff.
Diet Dr. Pepper is different. I actually think this is better than OG Dr. Pepper. It tastes nearly identical, and it doesn’t have sugar or calories, so why wouldn’t I opt for this instead? Getting actual Dr. Pepper over this offers no benefit; for that reason alone, this one is our winner.
The Bottom Line:
Believe the hype, Diet Dr. Pepper is the best diet soda on the market, hands down.
