In co*cktail terms, vodka is a little bit like stock: It's a fairly neutral base for other recipes. Vodka is—by legal definition—supposed to "be without distinctive character, aroma, taste or color," though different brands and styles have their own unique, subtle characteristics. It's also one of the least expensive spirits to produce. You can make it anywhere, from anything that will ferment, and it doesn't have to spend any time aging in a barrel. What all that boils down to is that you don't need to pay a lot for a great bottle of vodka, especially if you plan to mix it into drinks or use it as the base for a homemade infusion. Our Top Picks Best Overall: Best Small-Batch: Best Flavor Selection: Best for Moscow Mules: Best Organic: Best Budget: In This Article Our Picks What to Look for FAQs Launched in 2011, New Amsterdam Vodka is a relatively young superstar in the vodka category and a favorite of the frugal drinker. It's distilled in California, from a mix of grains led by corn, which leads to surprising smoothness for the price. (The brand is owned by an expert in inexpensive booze: E&J Gallo, the massive winery behind labels including André, Barefoot, and Manischewitz.) Don't hesitate to keep New Amsterdam in stock to mix into just about any adult beverage, from the vodka tonic to the spicy Bloody Mary. The brand's flavored vodka line is also filled with fun and tasty finds. Despite the simple names, they're rather complex: The peach flavor also incorporates orange blossom and vanilla, while mango adds tropical papaya and passion fruit to its mix. Beyond that, choices include apple, grapefruit, pineapple, watermelon, and more. Origin: California | ABV: 40 percent | Tasting Notes: Nectarine, bittersweet, oily Deep Eddy brings a craft-distillery feel to cheap vodka, with its stylized label that proudly proclaims it's from Austin, Texas. (It's actually distilled in Dripping Springs, about 20 miles west of Austin, but close enough.) It's made from 100 percent corn and blended with water from a Texas aquifer, for a true taste of the Lone Star State. The all-corn mashbill gives Deep Eddy a silky smoothness, with some nice sweetness alongside it. The brand's flavored vodkas stand out for their natural ingredients—a rare treat for a low-priced brand. The citrus flavors—lemon, lime, orange, and ruby red grapefruit—all use real juice, and the Southern classic sweet tea vodka is sweetened with local honey. It's a favorite of The Spruce Eats' former commerce editor Taylor Rock, who says "the sweet tea flavor is so refreshing you could drink it on the rocks, but mixed with lemonade? It's summertime in a glass." Origin: Texas | ABV: 40 percent | Tasting Notes: Subtly sweet, vanilla Potato makes for a vodka with an almost creamy mouthfeel, and it's popular as a base ingredient throughout Eastern Europe. Luksusowa (which, ironically, means "luxury vodka" in Polish) is a great example of a potato vodka, and at a surprisingly low price considering that the brand uses the same recipe and method it has since 1928, requiring about 45 spuds to make each bottle. We love that Luksusuowa's rich texture makes it a good choice for bubbly highballs or drinks with assertive fruit flavors, so if you’re avodka cranberrydrinker or enjoy the occasionalscrewdriverwith brunch, it’s a great find. Origin: Poland | ABV: 40 percent | Tasting Notes: Herbal, creamy, starchy The 6 Best Highball Glasses for Your Home Bar Grain is a common base ingredient for vodka, but different types of grain make very different finished spirits. Corn and wheat create soft and sweet spirits, while rye vodka has some nice spice, with enough complexity to work as an on-the-rocks sipper. Sobieski is distilled in Poland from 100 percent Polish-grown rye, resulting in a vodka that's almost the opposite of the potato-based Luksusuowa above. Sobieski doesn't have the creamy body of a potato vodka; instead, it's all about spice, with cinnamon and peppery notes. It has enough complexity and interest to enjoy solo, though it's priced low enough to use in co*cktails. We like this on particularly in the Cosmopolitan, where its flavors harmonize with the other ingredients rather than just fading into the background. Origin: Poland | ABV: 40 percent | Tasting Notes: Spice, vanilla Finlandia is a reliable, affordable vodka you might find as the well brand in many a bar. As the name suggests, it's distilled in Finland, from a special strain of barley bred to thrive in the cold climate and near-24-hour summer sun of the Scandinavian country. Barley makes for a light-bodied, dry spirit, an ideal blank canvas upon which to build a co*cktail—or a flavored vodka. The brand makes a handful of complex and tasty flavors, but we especially like Finlandia's grapefruit bottling. It's got the fruity and sour flavors of any citrus, along with the distinctive bitterness that makes grapefruit, grapefruit. Try it in place of orange or citrus vodka for an extra dimension to drinks like the Cosmopolitan riff and the white Cosmo. Origin: Finland | ABV: 40 percent | Tasting Notes: Grapefruit, citrus, subtle bitterness When Life Hands You Lemons, Use These 9 Citrus Juicers to Make Lemonade Pinnacle Vodka was at the heart of the dessert vodka boom, producing a variety of novelty flavors, including this whipped-cream vodka that tastes...disturbingly accurate. The 24 bottlings from Pinnacle embrace artificial flavorings to produce some pretty out-there options, from cucumber and habanero to salted caramel and just straight-up birthday cake. If you want to experiment with wild co*cktail flavor combinations, this brand is a great choice—and it's inexpensive enough that you can pour failed attempts down the sink without feeling too bad about it. The original Pinnacle Whipped (there are also orange and chocolate whipped-cream flavors, too) is arguably the brand's best-known. Its creamy sweetness works nicely in a sweet drink like the white Russian or an espresso martini (or added to hot cocoa). All the different flavors pretty much obscure Pinnacle's base spirit, but its standard unflavored vodka is also solid, distilled from wheat for a gentle, subtle sweetness. Origin: France | ABV: 35 percent | Tasting Notes: Sweet, creamy After the Moscow mule was invented in the 1940s, it went on to become one of the first vodka drinks popular in the US. Smirnoff was the vodka in that original, and it's still the best choice to make the sweet and bubbly drink, whether you're serving it in the traditional copper mug or not. Overall, Smirnoff is one of the most reliable and inexpensive vodkas, available just about anywhere you look: In fact, it's the world's best-selling vodka. Originally a Russian brand, Smirnoff has gone through multiple rounds of corporate purchases and mergers—it's actually distilled in Illinois today, and owned by Diageo, a British-based company. It's distilled from grain for a very neutral palate, ideal in co*cktails. Smirnoff is available in 80-, 90-, and 100-proof strengths to best fit whatever you're mixing it with, and the brand also makes a variety of flavored vodkas and unsweetened vodka "infusions." Origin: Illinois | ABV: 40 percent | Tasting Notes: Smooth, dry, mild Moscow Mule In vodka, as in anything else, ingredients matter. Prairie is made from 100 percent corn, all of it USDA-certified organic and grown in the Midwest, near the brand's Minnesota distillery. The result is faintly sweet and creamy, with floral and fruity notes you'll enjoy in just about any vodka co*cktail. Prairie has a small but diverse portfolio, using the same base spirit for a cucumber vodka and a savory, herbal gin. For a complex flavor mix to drink on the rocks, try the brand's lower-ABV Sustainable Seasons bottlings: grapefruit, hibiscus, and chamomile for winter; watermelon, cucumber, and lime for summer; and apple, pear, and ginger for fall. Origin: Minnesota | ABV: 40 percent | Tasting Notes: Melon, pear The 7 Best Sweet and Sour Mixes in 2024 Even among our list of inexpensive vodkas, Taaka stands out as the absolute cheapest. It might be found on the bottom shelf of your local store, but it's a solid vodka that will work in almost any co*cktail you want to mix it into. Despite its low price, it has a solid pedigree: Taaka was one of the first American-made vodkas on the market, launched in 1952 by Sazerac, the spirits company behind legendary bourbons including Buffalo Trace, Blanton's, and Pappy Van Winkle. Taaka is made from just "grain," which probably means mostly corn, and it's charcoal-filtered to remove as much flavor as possible. The resulting vodka is very neutral, simply a source of alcohol that won't interfere with any other flavors you mix it with. This isn't the kind of spirit you'll necessarily want to savor neat, but it's a quality vodka at an extremely low price. Origin: Kentucky | ABV: 40 percent | Tasting Notes: Clean, smooth Final Verdict You don't need a pricey vodka to round out your at-home bar—we love that New Amsterdam Vodka is not only inexpensive but goes well in any sweet or savory co*cktail. However, if you're looking for the cheapest of the cheap, we recommend Taaka Vodka because even though it is pennies on the dollar compared to other options, it is still clean and smooth. Vodka is made by fermenting something that contains starch or sugar to produce alcohol, and then distilling the result to concentrate the alcohol. That something is the main determinant of the flavors in the finished product. Grain (or a mix of grains) is the most common base ingredient for vodka today, and it yields a light-bodied spirit, with either sweet notes from corn or wheat, or spicier ones from rye. Another popular choice is potato, which makes for a rich and creamy-textured vodka. Beyond that, you can make vodka out of anything that will ferment—there are spirits out there made from milk, honey, apples, and more—but these are typically more expensive. Alcohol boils at a lower temperature than water, and distillation works by boiling the fermented mash and then condensing the alcohol-rich vapor back into liquid. Each time you repeat the distillation process, you get closer to pure alcohol, leaving behind water as well as the chemicals that add flavor notes. (Many vodkas brag about being distilled dozens, even hundreds, of times; this doesn't mean they've gone through the entire still that many times—it means the still is set up with a series of plates that make the vapor condense and reboil many times on each trip through the process.) Filtration is another way of removing any color or flavor for a purer vodka, with less-noticeable flavor notes (which is not always a good thing.) Distilleries use very fine filters that remove things like oils that can make the vodka less than crystal clear. More distillations and more filtrations mean a more neutral vodka, but anything beyond three to five times becomes fairly meaningless except for marketing. Many vodka brands (especially cheap ones) have a range of flavored bottlings, too. Some flavored vodkas use real juices and all-natural ingredients while others use artificial flavorings; the bottle doesn't have to have a full list of ingredients, but it will say whether it uses natural or artificial flavors, or both. Another thing to keep in mind is that many flavored vodkas have added sugar and are bottled at a lower proof than straight vodka. Make sure to take a look at the label for the proof, give it a quick taste for sweetness, and adjust recipes accordingly. You can start by buying better-tasting cheap vodka! A low price does not always mean a low quality. But if you're stuck with some less-than-optimal vodka, try mixing it with assertive flavors that will drown it out. Sweetness and acidity both work well, so look for a drink that's high in sugar or citrus content. Bubbles also help, so mix in some club soda. Online legends claim that putting cheap vodka through a coffee filter or Brita-style water filter—often multiple times—can help reduce the harsh bite. However, experimental taste tests have been underwhelming. The filtration processes distilleries use are finer and more effective than anything you can get at home, so pouring vodka into a water filter will pretty much just ruin the water filter. For this story, we set our price limit at twenty bucks for a standard 750-milliliter bottle. That's complicated by the fact that spirits prices and availability can vary pretty wildly from state to state and retailer to retailer, so the $20 figure might not hold up perfectly where you live. Regardless, the vodkas above should be relatively easy to find anywhere in the US, and their prices range from well below average to somewhat below average. Colleen Grahamis a food and beverage writer with over a decade of experience writing about co*cktails, beer, and wine. She is the author of two books and has toured several distilleries to get a first-hand look behind the scenes and talk to the experts who craft distilled spirits. Kate Dingwall, a sommelier and spirits writer, updated this roundup. She has been writing about the bar and spirits world for five years and has her BarSmarts and WSET certification. She loves a good martini. The Spruce Eats commerce writer Jason Horn further updated this roundup. A former editor at Liquor.com and longtime co*cktails and spirits writer, he knows his booze. In fact, he tasted through cheap vodkas on camera for Playboy a few years ago. The 10 Best Cheap Gins of 2024:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/Spruce-great-brands-of-inexpensive-vodka-759244-43c5d40ea302417191ca307cbee1845f.jpg "Drinking on a Budget? These Cheap Vodkas Actually Taste Good (1)")
Best Potato
Luksusowa Potato Vodka
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Best Rye
Sobieski Vodka
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Best Flavor Selection
Pinnacle Whipped Flavored Vodka
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Best for Moscow Mules
Smirnoff Vodka
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What to Look for When Buying Vodka
Base Ingredient(s)
Distillation and Filtration
Flavors
FAQs
How do you make cheap vodka taste better?
Can you filter cheap vodka?
What price is "cheap" for vodka?
Why Trust The Spruce Eats?
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Article Sources
The Spruce Eats uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read our editorial process to learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.
https://www.ttb.gov/images/pdfs/spirits_bam/chapter4.pdf
United States Department of Agriculture.Guidelines for labeling distilled spirits with organic references. 2009.
