7 Iced Pumpkin Spice Lattes, Ranked — This One Was The Absolute Best

Though pumpkin spice can be a little polarizing, if you're looking for the best pumpkin spice latte out there, there's a good chance you're a pumpkin spice fan. Generally, a pumpkin spice latte has a mellow base to replicate that of the pumpkin but then gets most of its flavor through a mixture of spices. Since this mixture is so varied, the balance of flavors can be wildly different between chains. Though the pumpkin spice latte (or PSL) is everywhere, not all pumpkin spice lattes are created the same. In fact, some of them are just bad and give credence to those who roll their eyes at this seminal fall classic.

As someone who is very picky when it comes to this favorite fall treat, I've been eager to determine where you can get the best ones. After tasting several, it became clear that some coffee shops follow a similar formula, but the lattes that stood out were the kinds of drinks that could take even a pumpkin hater to a lover. I wonder where your favorite ranked among those I sampled.

Once upon a time, Panera was one of my go-to spots for a quick and tasty lunch or light dinner. As the quality of the food seemed to be on something of a steady decline, I visited less often, and nearly never ordered coffee while in the café. However, for this tasting, I was eager for Panera to impress with its own iteration of the iced pumpkin spice latte. As you can tell from its placement on my overall ranking, it was something of a disappointment.

Panera makes its iced pumpkin spice latte with the usual suspects: espresso, milk, and pumpkin flavoring with whipped cream and Panera's own version of a topping with pumpkin spice-flavored crumbles. These little bits made for a few uncomfortably crunchy sips. Even worse, those crunchy bits had a rather dull and stale taste to them, as though they had been sitting in a Tupperware container for too long. 

Taste-wise, it was an unfortunate jumble of flavors that didn't really read as pumpkin spice initially. As those flavors lingered, that pumpkin came a little stronger, but it was still not very enjoyable. Panera may not be making a comeback in my go-to places anytime soon, but thankfully, the pumpkin spice lattes took a massive leap up from here.

I'm newer to the Dutch Bros world, but I've noticed that the brand doesn't do anything simply. It's no surprise, then, that a typical pumpkin spice latte simply wouldn't be the go-to for Dutch Bros. The closest I could find was the Caramel Pumpkin Brûlée Iced Latte. This drink includes espresso and milk, of course, but it uses a mixture of pumpkin sauce (that doesn't use real pumpkin) and salted caramel for flavoring. The topper is the brand's classic soft top, which is something like a cold foam and sprinkles of raw sugar.

I was excited to try this one because I love a crème brûlée, but I was instantly skeptical when I noticed the sprinkles at the bottom of the cup. With a sip through the straw, I got a gritty, almost sand-like texture. I'm all for a fun topping, but not when it turns to something like sand in your mouth. This definitely wasn't a great first impression. 

Unfortunately, it didn't get much better considering the taste, either. I love both pumpkin and salted caramel, and there's definitely a way to do them well together, but the mixture here was just odd and muddy. It didn't taste as bad as the Panera offering, but the pumpkin spice flavoring was done much better in most other chains I sampled. In order to make the sprinkle topping work, I felt that the pieces need to be a little bit bigger, and the pumpkin or salted caramel addition needed to be adjusted so that one flavor is a little bit more favored over the other.

Starbucks is the original pumpkin spice latte innovator, dating back to 2003. The chain may not have been the first one to add baking spices flavors to pumpkin, but it certainly popularized it as a latte. Then, the flavor made its way into cereals, creamers, donuts, and even options like ramen noodles.

Since the very first pumpkin spice latte over 20 years ago, a lot has changed with the recipe. It seems each year the flavor tastes slightly different, and this year is no different. The 2026 iteration has a slightly spicier taste than others. Starbucks' version is essentially a baseline PSL, and my biggest complaints of it came mostly from the espresso. As a former Starbucks barista, I'm acutely aware of Starbucks' bitter signature espresso taste, and the blonde roast provides a much better tasting experience. This drink would have been much better with a different roast. The signature espresso was just so bitter it tasted like to was trying to overpower the pumpkin and even spices. 

The pumpkin spice flavoring put up its own sweet fight, too, trying to balance the drink. There's plenty you can do to order a better PSL from Starbucks, but as is, the Starbucks version is the most baseline of the pumpkin spice latte world, and it tasted like it: not great, but passable.

Where Starbucks struggles with drinks that taste too bitter, Dunkin' has made a too-sweet pumpkin spice latte as part of the chain's 2026 fall menu. Though this piece is all about this seminal fall flavor, while ordering I silently ogled Dunkin's tiramisu flavor as a welcome alternative to pumpkin spice overkill – my own personal burden to bear at this point in the tasting.

The pumpkin spice latte from Dunkin' was one of the creamier-looking options I tried, and it had a surprisingly tasty flavor. More than most of the other options I sampled, Dunkin's reminded me more of a candy version of pumpkin spice than trying to capture the essence of fall like most chains do. Similar to the way that fruity candies often have a very specific kind of flavor to them, this version of pumpkin spice was exceptionally sweet and didn't have very much spice. It's definitely leaned into a crowd that needs a lot more sugar with its coffee, and not those who might want more of an even mixture of flavors where you can actually taste the coffee. 

Still, I appreciated the smoothness of the drink. It was actually a little better than Starbucks' pumpkin spice offering, a conclusion that admittedly surprised me.

Perhaps my newest favorite coffee spot is Scooters. With the rather extreme variety of drinks (even Red Bull infusions), Scooters has many similarities to 7 Brew and Dutch Bros. Better than Dutch Bros though, Scooters offered a near-perfect pumpkin spice latte with a balance of pumpkin and fall spices.

Scooter's version of the pumpkin spice latte is the adorably named Iced Pumpkin Caramelicious Latte with pumpkin sauce and Caramelicious sauce with caramel drizzle and cinnamon powder over whipped cream. The caramel and pumpkin played much better together here than the caramel and pumpkin in the Dutch Bros drink. It's that balance that really made this one. 

Scooter's latte tasted like the kind of pumpkin spice drink you might have found before chains everywhere took PSL enthusiasm to extreme lengths. The only reason I didn't rank Scooters even higher is because the offerings from 7 Brew and Foxtail were just that good.

7 Brew, like Dutch Bros and Scooters, is a coffee drive-through that specializes in a whole slew of unique offerings. For instance, to celebrate the spooky season, 7 Brew offered a Frankenchai Matcha Latte with a mixture of matcha and pumpkin chai. For a more traditional PSL experience, I went for the chain's Pumpkin Blondie Breve with a combination of the chain's blondie mixture (vanilla and caramel) and pumpkin. The breve version of the drink is simply the use of half-and-half rather than 2% or whole milk, so it's probably no surprise that this drink was incredibly creamy.

Unlike other pumpkin spice drinks, this one didn't have whipped cream or any other kind of topper. The breve certainly offered more than enough creamy feel and taste than any other offering, though, so I didn't miss the whipped cream. Taste-wise, it was very mild, and the espresso easily mixed with the breve and flavoring. 

7 Brew's Pumpkin Breve was effortlessly easy to drink, with the pumpkin offering a nice base and the spice barely sitting on top of the flavor profile. Of any of the coffees I sampled, this is the best for those that love creamy coffees, like me.

I may have been impressed by 7 Brew's coffee, but Foxtail's pumpkin spice latte was even better. The Foxtail location I visited was newly opened, so I got to see firsthand the excitement of opening the new coffee shop, and I have to say, the brand was doing it up right with adorable paintings on the windows and rustic wood accents throughout. The space was absolutely beautiful and uniquely decorated.

Bonus? The coffee was outstanding. It had a simple cinnamon sprinkle on top that wasn't trying to be too extraordinary, and the pumpkin flavor was mild with the spice playing a heavy role. The espresso had a nice, smooth flavor that complemented the drink well, and it was effortlessly tasty. Foxtail had the advantage of feeling like a small-town coffee shop, while also being a chain, but it certainly knows how to do seasonal drinks very well. 

I have no scruples about saying this was definitely one of the best pumpkin spice lattes that I've ever tasted, and the only downfall was that the chain isn't more widespread. Foxtail is one of those chains that could certainly make it big and reach many more parts of the country, and thankfully, it seems to be expanding beyond sunny Florida.

Over the course of several days, I visited as many coffee chains as I could find with a pumpkin spice latte-esque offering. Since so many places now offer pumpkin spice drinks, they weren't always labeled as pumpkin spice lattes. In these cases, I chose the drink that felt most like a pumpkin spice competitor and went with that for my taste testing. 

My ranking was based on the flavor of the drinks. Offerings that had a great taste, were sweet (but not too sweet), and had an excellent balance of flavors found their way toward the top, while those that struggled to balance flavors and taste fell toward the bottom. In the end, my favorite drink was one that offered a simple pumpkin spice latte, but made it taste anything but simple. It felt like an elevated classic.