The Best Single-Serve Coffee Maker for All the Pod People Out There (2025)

We know that, based on the popularity of coffee pod machines, we’re outnumbered in our general less-than-enthusiastic opinion of them. But, even if the quality of their coffee is all over the place, we can’t deny they’re convenient, whether you’re looking for a quick caffeine fix in a hotel room or craving some decent coffee without needing to toss beans in a grinder or learn to operate the knobs on a complicated espresso machine.

The best single-serve coffee makers

• Best single-serve coffee maker overall: Nespresso Vertuo Plus
• Best single-serve coffee maker for cold brew: Cumulus
• Best K-Cup compatible machine: Chefman Caffeinator
• Best pod-free single-serve coffee maker: Cuisinart Custom Grind and Brew

In addition to plastic and aluminum pods, there are also a few grounds-based coffee makers that specialize in one-cup-at-a-time brewing. So if you’re interested in the ease of pod machines, low-volume brewing for one, or just can’t avoid K-cups, here are the machines we think brew them the best.

Why we don’t (generally) recommend capsule or pod coffee

Thanks to the revival of pour-over and French press coffee making and the proliferation of chic matte-finish electric kettles, there are plenty of ways to brew a single cup of coffee without a dedicated machine and, in general, they give you better results. We will also note that many fancier drip coffee makers (like our favorites from Fellow and Oxo) can now be programmed to brew just one cup of coffee at a time—and do so without the plastic waste of pods. If you want true versatility and have the counter space, we’d advise you to consider a machine that will let you brew for yourself or a crowd, if needed. But we understand the convenience factor of capsule machines, which is why, if you must pop a pod for your daily cup, we’ve made our recommendations below, plus suggested some non-pod options too.

New in this update: We tested several new machines, including a couple we really liked from Cuisinart and Technivorm. The Cuisinart replaced our former top pick for a K-Cup compatible machine from Instant, because it’s no longer available.

Best single-serve coffee maker: Nespresso Vertuo Plus

What we love: Simply put, Nespresso’s capsule coffee machines offer the best output of any pod-based system we’ve tried. The Vertuo Plus wins in our book for a few key features, namely that it is part of the Vertuoline family of machines that can brew both espresso and larger-format coffee drinks (from 1.35 oz. all the way up to 8 oz.) depending on which Vertuo pods you purchase. Each recyclable (!) aluminum pod is printed with a barcode to tell the machine how to brew it, meaning the Vertuo Plus offers truly one-touch simplicity with its single button. No matter your choice of pod, the coffee is rich and flavorful with a layer of foamy crema on top. Pair it with a milk frother and you can get a Nespresso cappuccinos and lattes without barista-lavel mastery of a fancy espresso maker.

We also like the easily-removable 40-oz. water tank (the Deluxe model can hold 60 oz.) that pivots to the side or the back of the machine, depending on how you want it oriented for your kitchen setup. Up to 10 used pods drop into an internal bin so you’re not left constantly emptying it out between uses. And other than a recommended descaling cycle, the Vertuo Plus requires virtually no cleaning or maintenance. Finally, you can source pods from many major retailers in-store or set up a subscription on nespresso.com, where you’ll find even more roasts, special editions, and other options.

What we’d leave: Not much. The only flag we have is on the convenience of actually making good on the promise of recyclable coffee pods. The good news is that Nespresso pods are recyclable. But the bad news is that most people can’t just drop the pods in their recycling bins. Instead they’ll need to bag their used capsules up in a prepaid UPS bag and either have a UPS driver pick them up (if that’s an option where they live) or put them in a dropbox. New York City residents can throw them into their curbside recycling bins, however.

Read more about the Nespresso Vertuo Plus here.

Best single-serve coffee maker for cold brew: Cumulus

What we love: We have an in-depth review of the Cumulus cold-brew machine for more details, but here’s the gist: You could, in some ways, consider this the Nespresso of cold coffee with its recyclable aluminum capsules that are filled with an extremely concentrated, well, concentrate. The machine does the job of chilling water via an onboard compressor, meaning no ice is required in your cup. For texture, the Cumulus offers three settings—still, nitro, and espresso—making it one of the best machines we’ve tried for cold coffee connoisseurs. (Oh, and it achieves that “nitro” coffee without any gas canisters by using ambient air.) It vacuums out the capsules, leaving them empty and ready to recycle after you’re done brewing. And at just 6″, wide it’s got a relatively small footprint and front-loading water reservoir, making it easy to use and keep on the countertop.

What we’d leave: At its current nearly $700 price tag, this is a luxury item—though if you’re dropping $5 on cold brew every day, maybe it’s not?

Best K-Cup compatible machine: Chefman Caffeinator Single-Serve Coffee Maker

What we love: If you’re looking for a streamlined and smart-looking machine to brew your K-Cups, Chefman’s Caffeinator wraps its capsule machine in a chic shell. There’s a snazzy drip tray that slides up and down for differently sized cups, and backlit touch buttons that disappear into the satin finish exterior (in Concrete or Midnight) when not selected. In addition to looking good, it also produced a pretty good cup of coffee, both from pods and grounds thanks to three simultaneous streams of water.

For a pod machine it offers a lot of customization possibilities, with three hot temperature options from “warm” to “piping hot” (the latter of which raised the temp about 20 degrees from default “hot”), plus a lower temp iced coffee mode, and three brew strengths in addition to multiple cup size selections. If I had to choose a capsule machine that wasn’t Nespresso or Bruvi, this would be it, simply because I could use all of these customizations to get my coffee a little closer to the way I want it, even if it comes from a plastic pod.

What we’d leave: Clearance for larger cups and tumblers is pretty low, unless you remove the drip tray entirely, giving you 8.25″ of height, but doing so leaves a ring and fixed “divot” about the width of a cupholder that some bigger travel mugs still may not fit into. One disconcerting aspect is that there isn’t a “power off” button like on the Ninja Pods and Grounds, so it feels like this would need to be unplugged between uses, even though the machine goes to sleep after 10 minutes. I wish the water tank was a bit bigger, wasn’t rear-mounted, and had a sturdier lid, however it requires only a slight lift to remove it from the base so it’s easy to manage, even if you can’t see behind the machine. I also wish, like the similar Ninja, it had a place to store the K-cup/grounds adapter inserts when not using one or the other.

Best Pod-Free Single-Serve Coffee Maker: Cuisinart Custom Grind & Brew Single Serve Coffee Maker

What we love: Why settle for stale pods when you can have freshly ground coffee at the touch of a button? This single-serve machine from Cuisinart has a built-in stainless-steel conical burr grinder that grinds beans only when you’re ready for a cup of coffee. The bean hopper holds up to half a pound of coffee beans and features a gasket-sealed lid to keep them relatively fresh (even my very fancy grinder-equipped espresso machine hopper doesn’t have that). It’s the convenience of the built-in grinder that gives the Cuisinart the nod over something like Technivorm’s Moccamaster Cup One or the Ratio Four, both of which make better coffee in small amounts. The latter two machines have a traditional setup, and you have to measure and grind your beans for each brew. If you’ve come looking for a pod coffee maker, you’re likely looking to skip that step.

I was also impressed with the fineness of the sediment that was left in the bottom of my cup using the mesh filter. You should expect anything that uses only a mesh filter to leave at least a little bit of ground coffee sediment, but in this case it wasn’t unappealing during the last sips. Even if it did bother you, the basket is also paper filter compatible. Grinding and brewing are both relatively quiet operations that probably won’t wake up anyone, and gentle beeps let you know your coffee is ready. Also, while you’ll need to find a carafe or container that fits under the machine, the fact that the Cuisinart can brew up to 24 oz. of hot coffee means you could, in a pinch, use this for a few guests over for brunch.

What we’d leave: Cleaning the filter after every use is a chore (and some people choose single-serve machines specifically to avoid it by using pods) That said, there are more gentle beeps to remind you the filter access door hasn’t been opened since the last brew, so at least you won’t forget. Clearance for cups, even with the drip tray completely removed, is still rather low for travel cups at just seven inches, which would irk me if I was brewing a bunch of hot coffee for a winter excursion or during iced coffee season. When brewing at the 24 oz. setting, the coffee was noticeably weaker than smaller cup sizes, which makes sense since the filter basket only has so much capacity for grounds.

How we tested single-serve coffee makers

With so many proprietary pods out there, we did our best to compare apples to apples by attempting to find Starbucks pods of similar roasts for every machine that could use them (Bruvi was the only exception), not because the brand is our favorite coffee roasters, but because it is the most cross-pollinated among all types of machines. For Keurig machines, we also tested using K-cups from Illy coffee. Fresh grounds were used for any machines that offered a refillable pod. We tested the different brew size, strength, and style options on each machine as well.

What makes a good single-serve coffee maker

Other single-serve coffee makers we liked:

Bruvi

This touchscreen pod machine is everything we wish most K-cup machines could be. It offers rich, balanced, and nuanced coffee, plus eight brewing sizes, one-touch presets for low-acid, americano, iced coffee (which brews hot over ice), and cold brew (which uses cooler water), as well as simple customizations to any of these like temperature control and brew strength. And it does all this using its own proprietary pods made with specially treated polypropylene, which will (mostly) break down in a landfill. So other than you need to use its proprietary coffee pods, Bruvi offers all of the convenience of capsules and the fancy-pants settings of high-end coffee makers and good coffee with little downside.

Nespresso Essenza Mini

The Essenza Mini comes from Nespresso’s Original line, which uses smaller capsules and only brews 1.35-oz. espresso shots or 3.7-oz. Lungo cups of coffee. And it does so using 19 bars of pressure for extraction, as opposed to the VertuoLine’s centrifugal extraction method. It doesn’t make plain old cups of coffee, however, but we’ve included it here as a good option for pod coffee drinkers who prefer espresso drinks and want a simple way to make beverages like cappuccinos and macchiatos.

Moccamaster Cup-One

Like its larger Moccamaster brethren, Cup-One has a timeless, old-school design and a single, tactile glowing “on” switch would make it look at home in a truck stop diner or a trendy modern apartment. And speaking of diners, the coffee, even in a 10-ounce default brew, was diner quality (I mean that affectionately), with robust flavor and texture — though that may have had something to do with the fact that I used the recommended four tablespoons of grounds, twice what other machines suggest for eight ounces. Considering its higher price tag, it appears to be pretty low tech. Okay, okay, it’s just an automatic pour-over machine. But it brewed one of the best single cups from grounds I’ve had from any drip machine. And it’s quiet, no bubbling or burping. What can I say? The small footprint and retro vibes also won me over. It’s a small luxury. It’s a vibe. As the kids say, it’s aesthetic.

Now for the minuses: Yes, you could get a (really nice) gooseneck kettle and pour-over system for, like, half the cost. Give and take. Low clearance under the drip spout means you’re stuck with brewing into mugs and low-profile tumblers. The included measuring scoop and a needle-like poking tool for clearing the filter holder have no home onboard the machine, adding to your “things we need to keep but don’t know where else to put” drawer.

Mr. Coffee 4-in-1 Single-Serve Latte, Iced, and Hot Coffee Maker

When you think of Mr. Coffee, you probably think of a basic, no frills drip machine sitting on your grandparents countertop. And, for the most part, this multifunction machine is still just a small, simple rain-shower-style drip coffee maker designed for one-cup-at-a-time brewing. The reservoir and reusable mesh filter sit under the lid and feature graduated measurements for water levels from 4 oz. up to 16 oz. You can fill the removable filter with grounds using a double-ended measuring scoop that nests on the side of the machine and has guidelines for different sizes and styles of coffee, whether you’re brewing a “shot” for milk-based drinks or a tumbler full of iced coffee. The bonus of this machine is that, while still retaining a small footprint, it also includes a decent self-contained, stainless-steel milk frother cup with presets for hot milk and cold foam that can be used completely independently from the coffee-making portion.

As for taste and texture, everything I tasted like middle-of-the-road drip coffee, however I found that following the instructions for the weakest iced coffee (one large scoop) actually gave me decent results that weren’t as watered down as other machines on this list. It also comes with a 22-oz. plastic tumbler just for iced coffee—and enough brewing clearance to fit such a large cup—so if you’re someone who flip-flops between iced and hot coffee and aren’t too finicky about dialing in precise strength, it’s a practical option.

L’or Barista

If, for whatever reason, you want to brew Nespresso pods but don’t want to actually get a Nespresso machine, the L’or is your choice. It brews Original Nespresso pods along with its own proprietary pods (which are cross-compatible with classic Nespresso machines). L’or’s brewer offers three brewing sizes and extracts coffee from the pod at 19 bars of pressure through two spouts, similar to the way coffee comes out of a semi-automatic espresso machine. This produces a delicious layer of crema that’s as good as Nespresso’s. It was only in a head-to-head matchup that we slightly preferred Nespresso.

Nespresso Vertuo Next

If you like the idea of Nespresso but not the idea of being stuck with one-cup-at-at-time brewing, the Vertuo Next has brew sizes ranging from a single shot of espresso up to 18 oz. of coffee with the proper pods (an optional carafe is available for the biggest brews). This smart machine also has Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity, so you can track your favorite pods and get firmware updates. However, the Next is a smaller machine than the Vertuo Plus, and with that comes a smaller water tank. And like the Vertuo Pop+ below, the closing and locking mechanism is a bit clunkier than we’d like. But for all out versatility, it’s probably your best Nespresso brewing option.

Cuisinart Premium Single Serve Brewer

If you’re looking for a K-cup-compatible coffee machine that can do a little more, this is a good option. It comes with a reusable filter capsule that, while a little finicky getting it to work properly, does, indeed, work. It also has a 72-oz. water tank for less-frequent refills, as well as settings for five cup sizes and two brewing temperatures. The biggest boost we’ll give this machine is that it produced superior tasting coffee using K-cups than any Keurig machine we’ve tried.

Single-serve coffee makers we don’t recommend

Additional testing and reporting by Emily Farris

Pod coffee is fine, but the fresh stuff is even better

• A good coffee subscription can get show you just how different coffee beans can be
• Good coffee doesn’t need to be complicated coffee thanks to the new cadre of excellent automatic coffee brewers
• Even fresh beans and a good brewer can’t save badly ground coffee, which is what a nice burr grinder is key