Ice Cream Brands, Ranked

A recurring vanilla benchmark in expert blind panels and the #2 best-selling branded ice cream in the U.S. behind Ben & Jerry's — its ultra-low overrun and short ingredient list make it the rare brand winning on both sales and critical texture consensus.

A consistent top pick in premium and artisan rankings (Chowhound, Food & Wine), praised for its buttermilk-based, low-overrun body and inventive flavors like Brambleberry Crisp; commands roughly $12/pint on the strength of that critical acclaim.

Frequently named a top value-per-dollar premium pick by expert guides, and its Old-Fashioned Vanilla routinely places at or near the top of grocery blind taste tests — premium richness from a farmer-owned cooperative without super-premium pricing.

Chocolate-dipped bars with a genuinely thick, crackable Belgian chocolate shell over dense premium ice cream. The milk-fat chocolate-coating innovation (which lets a real-chocolate shell crack cleanly instead of shattering) and consistently high butterfat make it a global gold standard for a stick novelty.

Cincinnati's French pot process yields incredibly dense, low-overrun ice cream with iconic giant chocolate chips. A cult favorite that rivals Jeni's for artisan credibility and arguably beats it on texture.

The #1 best-selling branded ice cream in the U.S. by dollar sales and one of the most recognized brands in Statista surveys — a sales and awareness juggernaut docked just below S because critics rate its heavy, mix-in-dense base below the smoother super-premium texture leaders.

A perennial top-of-category gelato pick in supermarket taste rankings and a growth star in the Magnum Ice Cream Company (formerly Unilever) portfolio, praised for its dense, low-overrun texture that reviewers rate above most mass-market pints.

Despite distributing in only about half the country, Blue Bell ranks among the highest-volume ice cream brands in the U.S., and its Homemade Vanilla routinely tops fan polls thanks to a fiercely loyal regional following.

The frozen-granite-slab mix-in experience delivers rich, dense super-premium ice cream customized on the spot. Consistency and quality are high, though it lands just below the very top on value and occasional over-sweetness.

The world's largest ice cream scoop-shop chain and a household name with among the highest U.S. brand awareness — it scores on ubiquity and its rotating '31 flavors' novelty more than on critical taste rankings.

One of the most popular and highest-awareness ice cream brands in the U.S. per Statista surveys, but its signature Blizzard is technically soft-serve, keeping it out of the premium pint tiers.

A mass-market volume leader consistently among the top ice cream brands consumed in the past 12 months per Statista, but reviewers rate it as solid-but-unremarkable, placing it in the mid-tier.

Sold as Edy's in the eastern and midwestern US, it's a reliable, widely available mainstream carton. Solid Slow Churned line and dependable flavors, but firmly mid-tier next to premium competitors.

The global Heartbrand umbrella (Wall's in the UK) behind Cornetto and countless bars. Massive reach and dependable everyday novelties, but broadly mainstream rather than premium.

A perennial mid-pack finisher in grocery-brand rankings (Daily Meal, Tasting Table) — a budget-friendly regional staple that rarely cracks the top of blind taste tests, the definition of a middle-of-the-road pick.

A leading U.S. frozen-novelty brand by sales, but its chocolate-shell bars are a nostalgia-driven convenience product; taste rankings routinely knock the thin, waxy coating and unremarkable vanilla core, placing it firmly in the average tier.

Ubiquitous and nostalgic soft-serve blended with mix-ins, but the notoriously broken ice cream machines and thin, airy base keep it firmly in convenience-tier territory.

Reclassified many flagship flavors from 'ice cream' to 'frozen dairy dessert' (below the FDA's 10% milkfat threshold) and drew viral backlash plus false-advertising suits over vanillin; side-by-side testers consistently prefer real ice cream, describing a gummy film and 'metallic' finish.

After a widely panned 2022 reformulation, review aggregators and Reddit filled with words like 'chemical' and 'garbage'; Tasting Table and Mashed rank it at or near the bottom, citing a watery, chalky, icy texture and an artificial diet aftertaste.