Best Ice Cream Makers of 2026

Four quarts, a bucket, a bag of ice and a box of rock salt: this is the old-fashioned route, and it's still the cheapest way to put ice cream in front of a crowd. The motor sits on the bucket, the dasher turns inside the canister, and the ice and salt do the freezing. The carrying handle matters more than it looks, because a full bucket is a two-hand lift out to the porch.

We recommend it for exactly that occasion: a summer party, a birthday, a house full of kids, where four quarts disappear in one sitting and nobody wants to hear that a bowl needed 24 hours. It's also the machine to buy when your freezer has no room to spare, because the canister never goes in it. Four quarts also means one long churn instead of three short ones, which is the difference between serving people together and serving them in shifts.

Texture is the other thing to know. Run it the full 20 minutes and you get soft, spoonable ice cream; leave it longer or freeze the leftovers and it firms toward scoops. The canister and dasher come apart and hand wash quickly, and the motor just wipes down.

One pint, which is one serving for a serious appetite or two modest ones. This is the smaller sibling of our top pick, and it uses the same pre-frozen bowl idea in a package that fits on a single shelf. If you have ever wanted homemade ice cream without clearing a drawer for a two-quart bowl, that is the whole case for it.

What it gets right is the fiddly stuff. The motor unit detaches and lifts off, the lid and paddle are dishwasher safe, and the whole thing packs down to a stackable body with the cord wrapped around the base. There's a built-in funnel for pouring the base and adding toppings, and the bowl, once frozen, churns in 25 minutes or less.

For one person or a couple, this is the tidy option, and it costs about the same as the Dash mugs while making a firmer, more scoopable result. What it can't do is dessert for four, and the lid stacks away neatly enough that the machine disappears into a cupboard between batches instead of claiming counter space all summer.

The most expensive machine here is also the heaviest, at just over 24 pounds, and we think it earns both for one specific buyer: someone who wants ice cream tonight and has no freezer drawer to surrender. A built-in compressor chills the bowl itself, so there's no pre-freezing, no ice, no salt, and no planning tomorrow's dessert today.

The routine is simple. Pour in a chilled base, press start, and the LCD counts down on an audible timer you can hear from the next room. Two quarts arrive in closer to an hour than 20 minutes, which is the price of not pre-freezing anything, and the aluminum mixing bowl lifts out for washing. The stainless shell wipes clean, and the motor protection cuts the machine out rather than straining when a batch gets stiff.

Noise is the part we noticed most: a compressor hum under the churn that you won't mistake for a quiet appliance, though it's a steadier sound than the grinding of the frozen-base machines. Otherwise it simply works, with a timer that tells you when to come back and a bowl that never asks you to plan a day ahead.

The CREAMi isn't a churn, it's a shaver. Where the Cuisinart turns liquid into ice cream, this turns a solid, frozen pint into ice cream by grinding it down with a paddle until it's smooth. That sounds like a technicality until the first spoonful, because the result is thick and scoopable straight out of the tub, closer to a good store-bought pint than the soft serve most home machines produce.

The cost is in the calendar. You blend a base, freeze it in one of the two pint containers for a full day, then choose one of seven programs: ice cream, gelato, sorbet, milkshake, smoothie bowl, lite ice cream or mix-in. A re-spin button rescues a crumbly first pass. Two pints mean one can be freezing while the other is being eaten, and every part goes in the dishwasher.

Where it earns its place here is ingredient control. If you're chasing a high-protein, low-sugar or dairy-free pint, you choose what goes in and the machine only handles texture, which is the sort of base a freezer bowl handles badly. It's a personal machine, though: two pints is a snack for two people, not a family dessert.

What it can't do is hurry. There is no version of this where dessert happens tonight unless the pint is already frozen, and a half-frozen base comes out crumbly no matter how many times you hit re-spin.

Twelve inches on a side and holding four quarts, this is a cube rather than a bucket, which makes it easier to park in the corner of a counter than the round machines. The canister is aluminum, the outer bucket is plastic, and the periwinkle finish is loud in a way some kitchens will love and others will move to the garage.

It works like the other ice-and-salt machines: mix the base in the canister, pack ice and rock salt around it, switch on the 50-watt motor and let it churn. A four-quart batch takes around 45 minutes and comes out soft, ready to firm up in the freezer if you want scoops.

Against the Nostalgia, the differences are small: a squarer footprint, a motor rated for the full four quarts, and the same ice-and-salt routine. What you give up is the carrying handle, which makes a full bucket a two-handed carry to the porch rather than a one-hand lift.

So who buys it? Someone who wants four quarts, has no freezer space to spare, and would rather put the money into cream and vanilla. For a machine that comes out a few times a summer, that's a fair trade.

Two mugs, each holding half a pint, each living on a freezer door shelf until you want dessert. That's the entire pitch, and we think it's a good one for anyone whose freezer is already crowded: the mugs take the space of two glasses, and if you freeze both at once there's always one ready. A small kitchen, a dorm room or a single person's dessert habit is exactly the target.

Fill a mug, drop in the paddle and turn it on; roughly 20 minutes later you're eating soft serve out of the mug you churned in, with the lid chute letting you drop in chips or fruit near the end. The mugs nest together for storage, which is the difference between this and a machine that has to be found a cupboard. It is soft serve, though, loose and quick to melt once the mug leaves the freezer.

It suits one or two people, and four servings means running it twice, at 20 minutes a go. Where it wins is spontaneity: keep a mug cold and dessert starts when someone asks for it, with no base to chill and no bucket of ice to buy.