13 Popular Zero-Sugar Sodas, Ranked Worst To Best

Have you tried a zero-sugar soda? Even if you haven't, you've likely seen them lining convenience store fridges and grocery store shelves everywhere over the last few years. Virtually every major soda brand is pushing sugarless versions of its most iconic beverages as an alternative to sodas labeled as "diet." Zero-sugar sodas commonly incorporate the same branding as their regularly-sweetened antecedents, albeit with a bit of sleek black to make them look ... slimmer? We're not exactly sure, but it's just different enough for you to realize you're not drinking the regular stuff.

The very idea of a zero-sugar soda sounds a bit too good to be true, and indeed it might be. The jury is still out on artificial sweeteners health-wise, but that hasn't stopped soda makers and other food producers from jumping on the bandwagon. Many of the bigger brands' zero-sugar versions are sweetened with aspartame, the artificial sweetener that some studies have associated with an increased risk of cancer.

Still, zero-sugar might be clock as a better option for those on low-sugar diets or anyone who needs to watch their sugar intake. And hey, if it feels close enough to the real thing, maybe it's worth it anyway, artificially-sweetened risks and all. But the question still begs: do any zero-sugar sodas actually taste like their originals? Heck, are any even worth trying at all? Our ranking should help you with that.

Zevia is a soda company made for this kind of taste test. All of its soda offerings are zero sugar, but for the sake of this ranking, we only tried the cola. Stevia leaf extract is the main sweetener here, so Zevia wins plaudits for not turning to aspartame like the majority of zero-sugar sodas. The main detraction is that stevia lends a bit of an unfamiliar taste to soda — not bad, necessarily, but one you might not expect or know how to classify.

For what it's worth, Zevia Cola is decent. It's almost like this soda is designed more to smell like a classic cola than taste like one because the scent that hits your nose when you crack the can make it seem like the real deal — the rest of the drink, though, not so much. Like many of Zevia's other sodas, the flavor rings hollow and feels as if it were made by a soda printer that ran out of ink. It's more playing around with the concept of being a cola rather than actually working as one. Credit to Zevia where it's due for using a sweetener other than aspartame, and we'll even toss it some bonus points for the ergonomic bright blue can. But unless you're hell-bent against drinking an aspartame-sweetened soda, there are much better zero-sugar options than this.

Like several other entries on this list, there is nothing fundamentally wrong with Sprite Zero Sugar as a drink. It's perfectly fine, and even lives up to its brand's infamous amount of carbonation. Seriously, we suspect this stuff would explode if you accidentally slipped it into your car's cupholder a little too quickly. If you want bubbles and some vague, artificially-tinged aspartame lemon-lime flavor, this is the soda for you. 

For our tastes, though, we thought the artificial nature of this beverage was a bit too obvious. That's somewhat of a silly thing to say when you're talking about a zero-sugar soda, but it really felt like a detraction. Diet and zero-sugar sodas are born out of the desire to appeal to a health-conscious market, at least in theory. But perhaps, on a deeper level, they also exist as a ploy to get you to crave the regular version of the same beverage. If that's the play here, then Sprite Zero wins — after a few sips, we found ourselves dying for a sugar-filled Sprite. Without that cockamamy conspiracy we just cooked up, though, it's a pretty unsatisfying beverage.

If you're like us, you probably think that cherry flavor can really help to improve cola. After all, we enjoy Pepsi Wild Cherry more than regular Pepsi, so we figured the same would hold true with the zero-sugar varieties.

Surprisingly, though, the improvement was nonexistent. In fact, Pepsi Zero Sugar Wild Cherry is just as unremarkably plain as Pepsi Zero, save for the brief artificial cherry scent that jolts your nostrils when you crack it open. Perhaps we should blame that whiff on getting our hopes up, but the rest of the cherry flavor was nowhere to be found. These two sodas are virtually interchangeable, so don't take the numbers next to them seriously — that quick cherry smell is actually why this one is slotted higher. The branding is slightly better too, even if all that boils down to are a few little cherries and some red accents to break up the black label. When your packaging has more of a cherry feel than your actual soda, you probably messed up somewhere.

Personally, we liked it better when Coca-Cola Cherry was known as Cherry Coke. It's a better identity and is responsible for some of the coolest soda branding and packaging we've ever seen, including its "punk rock" era from 1995-2002. As much as we'd love to wax poetically about soda cans, though, we're here to taste the new-fangled stuff, and Coca-Cola Cherry Zero is halfway decent. It doesn't come with the same satisfaction as cracking one of those classic red and black cans and glugging the cherry goodness, but as a sugarless version, we're here for it.

Unfortunately, it faces the same pitfall as Pepsi's zero-sugar cherry version. You get a hint of cherry scent when you open the bottle, but after that, the fruit flavor is almost nonexistent. Coke's cherry flavor has always felt a little more syrupy than Pepsi's, which is more artificial. And while we prefer Pepsi Wild Cherry to Coca-Cola Cherry when both are normally sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup, that extra saccharine cherry-ness actually leans us in Coke's direction when it comes to the zero-sugar iterations.

Ginger ale has long been used as a catch-all treatment for countless maladies over the years, from common colds to the occasional bout of indigestion. Even though modern big-brand versions are packed with sugar, ginger ale is still the pinnacle of medicinal soda (with respect to 7UP). Still, we didn't know how to gauge a zero-sugar version. Would it maintain that characteristic gingery pep? The carbonation that aids aching tummies? Could the lack of sugar bring down this beloved beverage?

To put it bluntly, Canada Dry Zero Sugar assuaged all of those concerns immediately. After the first sip, we realized this is exactly what ginger ale should taste like. Even trying to imagine this with the requisite 35 grams of sugar per 12-ounce serving seems absurd — how could ginger ale ever have been that sweet? As far as we can tell, this hits all the same notes as the regularly-sweetened stuff. We're still not the biggest ginger ale fans, at least as a standalone beverage, but if we're awarding points for replicating the brand's sugar original, this one shoots right to the top. You can still tell it's zero sugar because of what's on the label, but if Canada Dry decided to swap the packaging, we suspect only the most ardent ginger ale guzzlers would notice.

Like Zevia, Virgil's Zero Sugar Root Beer is sweetened in part with stevia leaf extract, and despite being differently flavored, there's one striking similarity — the scent. This stuff smells mostly like a regular ol' root beer when you crack the bottle, which is no small feat. Our sense of smell is responsible for upwards of 80% of our perception of taste, so making your naturally-sweetened soda look and smell like the sugar-filled version is literally more than half the battle.

When it comes to taste, though, Virgil's Zero Sugar Root Beer separates from both Zevia and the only other root beer on this list. Its sweetener blend (stevia leaf, monk fruit extract, and erythritol) rounds out the flavor surprisingly well. The brand's cane sugar-sweetened root beer is a mainstay in our ranking of best root beer brands, and we think the sugarless iteration absolutely belongs in the conversation. Whenever you can replicate the sweet sudsiness of root beer without controversial sweeteners, you've accomplished something special. And yes, extra points for branding here, too — there's nothing like a burly fella serving gigantic root beer mugs to a couple of overly excited children, one of whom is holding a husky puppy. As far as we're concerned, it's a work of art within a work of art.