Best Drip Coffee Makers of 2025, Tested by Experts
Consumer Reports’ engineers evaluated more than 100 drip-style coffee makers to find the best for your daily brew
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It’s hard to beat the convenience of a drip coffee maker. A good one will brew coffee within the optimal temperature range to extract the best flavor from the grounds, keep the coffee hot, and not make a mess on your counter. It should also be intuitive to operate and easy to clean.
To find out which ones perform best, Consumer Reports has rigorously tested more than 150 coffee makers (more than a hundred of them drip-style) within a wide price range. Some models our engineers tested come with bells and whistles that can add to the cost, and you might not necessarily need them.
“In general, for a higher price, you can get add-ons like a water filter, clean cycle, clean indicator, permanent filter, or thermal carafe,” says CR test engineer Ginny Lui.
Read on to see the top-performing coffee makers currently available, listed in alphabetical order by type (traditional drip, grind-and-brew, and self-serve). For more options, check out CR’s comprehensive drip coffee maker ratings. And if you’re looking for a different type of coffee maker, check out our full coffee maker ratings, which also include single-serve (pod) coffee makers, dual coffee-makers, cold-brew coffee makers, and more. Not sure which to choose? See our coffee maker buying guide for smart shopping tips.
Traditional Drip Coffee Makers
With automatic drip coffee machines, you fill a chamber with water, put coffee into a filter basket, and flip a switch to heat the water and run it through the grounds and into a carafe.
Cuisinart makes several top-performing drip coffee makers in Consumer Reports’ ratings, including the currently available Cuisinart PerfecTemp 14 Cup Programmable DCC-3200 and similar Cuisinart PerfecTemp DCC-3200CP. You can expect excellent brew performance for the best-tasting coffee from these machines. They’re very convenient and easy to use, and the carafes are easy to hold and pour from. Each of these models brews 14 cups. As a coffee maker brand, Cuisinart earns an excellent score for owner satisfaction in CR’s member surveys, meaning owners of these coffee makers are likely to recommend their models to friends and family.
The Bunn HB Heat N Brew Programmable receives strong marks across the board in our performance tests. But it’s a bit bare-bones. While it features auto-shutoff, a cleaning indicator, and programmability, it lacks essential options such as a brew-strength selector or a small-batch setting, despite its relatively high price. Still, you’re likely to love this machine. Bunn drip coffee makers have earned an excellent reputation for owner satisfaction and are more reliable than most, according to data from our latest member surveys. Its unusual design moves all the brewing mechanisms above the glass carafe.
The Haden 14-Cup Programmable coffee maker is striking to look at, with your choice of copper or chrome flourishes. But even more impressive is its excellent brew performance, allowing for the best-tasting coffee from your beans. It makes a full pot in about 9 minutes, and the included carafe is easy to handle and pour from, with no dribbling or dripping. Plus, our convenience evaluations found that it’s easy to use and clean.
The Hamilton Beach 12-cup Programmable 49465R is one of the least expensive drip coffee makers in CR’s tests, plus it’s CR Recommended, which indicates it meets our highest standards. It’s programmable, meaning you can set it to brew before you even get out of bed. It also demonstrates excellent brew performance (based on the Specialty Coffee Association’s brew temperature guidelines), meaning you can expect great-tasting coffee.
Ninja, as a coffee maker brand, earns an impressive score for owner satisfaction in CR’s member surveys, and the Ninja Specialty CM401 coffee maker is one reason why. It’s a feature-packed machine with numerous options for customizing brew strength, a small-batch setting, and programmability. It brews a full pot in 7 minutes, quicker than many of the drip coffee makers we’ve tested. You can also just brew directly into a single cup. This machine comes with a fold-away milk frother for fancier coffee drinks.
Grind-and-Brew Drip Coffee Makers
Grind-and-brew drip coffee makers do exactly as the name says: They grind whole coffee beans before brewing you a mean cup of coffee.
For an especially fresh-tasting cup, Cuisinart Next-Generation Burr Grind & Brew 12-cup DGB-800 grinds whole coffee beans immediately before brewing. It features a stainless steel finish, a permanent cupcake-type filter, a water filter, auto-shutoff, programmability, and brew-strength control. It isn’t the most intuitive to use and clean, but the carafe is easy to handle even when it’s full. Its bean hopper holds half a pound of coffee beans.
Like the Cuisinart Grind and Brew model, the Melitta Aroma Fresh Plus 10-Cup takes whole coffee beans and grinds them fresh for each pot, which it brews in about 11 minutes. Our lab testers found the Melitta especially convenient to use, based on setup, operation, and cleanup—plus, the Melitta’s carafe was easy to hold, pour from, and empty. The Melitta also features auto-shutoff and an indicator to notify you when cleaning is necessary.
Self-Serve Drip Coffeemakers
Instead of brewing coffee into a carafe, a self-serve drip coffee maker brews coffee that’s kept hot in a reservoir inside the machine. That means there’s no need to lift a carafe every time you want a cup. Instead, you dispense it with the push of a button.
The Cuisinart Coffee on Demand DCC-3000 excelled in our brew performance test, maintaining an optimal brewing temperature for the best coffee concentration. It receives a very good score for convenience, so it’s fairly easy to fill the reservoir, install the coffee filter, gauge how much coffee’s left, and clean up.
How CR Tests Drip Coffee Makers
In CR’s lab, each drip coffee maker we rate brews roughly 65 cups by the time our engineers are through with it. Our brew-performance tests measure the brew temperature and contact time—how long water stays within the optimal flavor extraction range of 195° F to 205° F. We determine concentration using a refractometer, a device that measures the amount of coffee dissolved in each brew.
Our convenience tests look at how easy it is to set timers, fill the reservoir, clean the machine, and more. We also incorporate data for predicted reliability and owner satisfaction using survey results collected from thousands of CR members.
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