The best vodka for cocktails

• Best overall: Smirnoff Red Label
• Best budget vodka: Russian Standard
• Best value for money: Smirnoff Red Label 1L
• The vodka people buy most: Smirnoff Red Label 1L
• Best rated: Haku
• Honourable mention: Grey Goose

BUT if you want to know why we think it’s the best, keep reading. You’ll find out which vodka is the best value for money, which has the biggest and best reputation, which sells best on Amazon, and which is highest rated. That’s a lot to unpack, so let’s dive right in.

The vodkas in contention

So which vodkas are we comparing? Here’s the list:

• Smirnoff Red Label
• Absolut
• Grey Goose
• Skyy Premium
• Reyka
• Crystal Head
• Haku
• Cîroc
• Russian Standard
• Wyborowa
• Żubrówka Bison Grass
• Belvedere

Are there any vodkas you think should be on this list, but aren’t? Let us know on X or Facebook!

The prices, rankings and ratings below are from when we ran this comparison, so they’re a few years old now. Check the latest before you buy.

How I’m gonna choose the best vodka for cocktails

The best way to work out which is the best vodka for cocktails is to analyse them, compare them, rank them and give them points. I think the best and fairest comparison comes from actual stats and data, rather than opinion.

So I’m going to rank each vodka on four tests:

• Value for money.
• Reputation.
• Position on Amazon’s vodka best sellers list.
• Amazon rating.

In each test, first place gets 12 points, second gets 11, and so on down to 1 point for twelfth. Sound good? Great! Let’s start comparing vodka.

Value for money

Value for money is one of the most important things people think about when buying vodka for cocktails. Why? Because very few people will buy a £30-plus bottle of vodka just to add a mixer to it. Most of the time, people spending that much are buying for taste: connoisseurs who want to sip it and enjoy the flavour.

That said, some of the more expensive vodkas can add a lot to a cocktail. Anyway, wherever your head’s at on how much you’d pay for a bottle, here’s how they compare. Since most of these vodkas come in 70cl bottles (only two come in 1-litre bottles), I’m comparing 70cl prices.

Russian Standard and Smirnoff Red Label top the list, with a bit of a gap to Wyborowa in third. All three are great value for money… but perhaps not the best value. The table only covers 70cl bottles. If you count 1-litre bottles too, and consider the value based on the amount of alcohol, the picture changes slightly (more on that below).

Brand reputation

This part of the test gets a little… sketchy. Let me explain.

We used YouGov’s ratings to see which vodka brands are most popular with the British public. YouGov is an international research and data company based in London, and the most quoted market research source in the UK, so it’s a great source of data. Its list covers all alcohol, not just vodka, so you can even compare vodka brands with other spirits. Cool stuff.

On the face of it, the results were as you might expect. Or more accurately, as I expected: Smirnoff and Absolut at the top of the pile, battling for first and second place. But there was a problem.

Data issues

Not all the brands were on the list… or were they? Some of these vodkas belong to bigger companies, so they didn’t appear on their own. For example, Skyy Premium isn’t on the list, but it’s part of the Campari Group (find out more about Campari). It didn’t seem fair to count it, though, as Campari is a far more popular brand as a whole than Skyy is on its own.

Some brands just aren’t on the list at all. Why? I’m not sure, but my best guess is they just hadn’t come up in YouGov’s data for whatever reason. In any case, six of the 12 vodkas weren’t on the list, and it’s quite surprising which ones made the cut. Żubrówka made it, yet Wyborowa didn’t. In my mind, Wyborowa is a much better-known brand, but there ya go.

ANYWAY, here’s which vodkas made the list, and in what order:

As I (and probably you) expected, Smirnoff and Absolut are the two best-known vodkas. But that doesn’t tell the whole story. YouGov’s list had 184 alcohol brands, and Smirnoff was the 2nd most popular in the UK, just behind Baileys. 2nd. That’s impressive.

The next most popular vodka was Absolut… but way down the overall list in 28th, with Grey Goose 3rd for vodka but 38th overall. So despite Smirnoff and Absolut being 1st and 2nd here, on YouGov’s list they’re 26 places apart.

Despite not every vodka being on the list, I think this is still a valuable test. But to be fair, when I add up the points I’ll show two tables: one with the reputation points and one without.

Amazon best sellers

Comparing vodkas on Amazon’s vodka best sellers list is quite an important test. Why? Because it shows exactly which vodkas people buy most, whatever the price. And it led to a couple of interesting observations. Take a look for yourselves:

Bigger bottles = better value for money

The two vodkas that come in 1-litre bottles sell the best. Of course, the 1-litre bottles cost a little more, but they’re better value. When we wrote this, a 1-litre bottle of Smirnoff cost £16 and the 70cl cost £13. The 70cl works out at £18.57 a litre: a rather sizeable £2.57 more. Absolut’s 70cl and 1-litre bottles tell a similar tale.

Quality vodka sells

Earlier, I said not many people would pay top dollar for a vodka they’re just going to mix into a cocktail. That may be true, but nobody told the Amazon best sellers list. Grey Goose came 4th, despite being the second most expensive vodka in our comparison. Crystal Head came 7th, despite being the most expensive.

This says a lot. It says people don’t mind paying for quality vodka, and there just might be something in spending a little more on your spirits.

Amazon ratings

This test tells us not only how well buyers rate each vodka, but how many of them went out of their way to leave a review. The results were a little surprising. Take a look for yourselves:

Good vodka was picked

I think these results show just how good a selection of vodka this is. The lowest rating on the list is 4.5 out of 5. Just as impressive is the number of reviews each vodka had. If one of them had just one 5-star review, this test would have been next to meaningless.

The fewest reviews was 6, for Russian Standard. There could be two reasons for that: it had only recently started selling on Amazon (most likely), or because it’s “cheap and cheerful” and does the job, people don’t tend to come back and review it. But that’s just speculation.

The best rated vodka

I think it’s interesting that Haku is the best-rated vodka, but even more interesting that Grey Goose came 2nd. Haku scored 4.9 from 46 reviews, but Grey Goose got 4.8 from 740 reviews. Yes, 740. That’s impressive. Add in its place on the Amazon best sellers list, and Grey Goose has to be a strong contender overall, right? Let’s take a look.

The final scores

So this is it: the final rankings for the best vodka for cocktails. As promised, there are two tables: one with the brand reputation points, and one without.

With brand reputation

Given the earlier tables, Smirnoff and Absolut were always going to take the first two places. They topped, or came close to topping, every test. Impressively, Grey Goose came joint 3rd with Russian Standard, despite coming second to last on value for money.

Without brand reputation

As you can see, not much changes at the top. Grey Goose loses its 10 reputation points and drops below Russian Standard, 2 points behind, but that’s about it. At the bottom, there’s one big change: Żubrówka Bison Grass drops from joint 7th to last.

What’s the best vodka for cocktails? Our verdict

I think it’s clear which vodka is best for cocktails: Smirnoff. It topped, or came near the top of, almost every test in this comparison. (Want more on Smirnoff? Read is Smirnoff good vodka?.)

But Grey Goose gets an honourable mention. Coming near the top of both the Amazon best sellers and the ratings speaks volumes. OK, it’s not the cheapest vodka, but sometimes you get what you pay for.

Quick overview

Here’s a quick overview of each test, so you can choose the vodka that meets the criteria that are important to you:

• Most cheap and cheerful: Russian Standard 70cl
• Best value for money: Smirnoff Red Label 1L
• The vodka people buy most: Smirnoff Red Label 1L
• Best rated: Haku (4.9 out of 5 from 46 reviews)
• Honourable mention: Grey Goose

Want some cocktail ideas?

Okay, now that we know the best vodka for cocktails, you’re probably thinking: I wanna make some cocktails! Here are a few of our favourite vodka cocktails to try our recommendation out in. Happy mixing!

• 

  Pornstar Martini

  5 ingredients · 2 mins

  Vanilla vodka, Passoa, passion fruit juice, lime juice

• Cosmopolitan

  Cosmopolitan

  5 ingredients · 2 mins

  Lemon vodka, Cointreau, lime juice, cranberry juice

• Sex on the Beach

  Sex on the Beach

  5 ingredients · 2 mins

  Vodka, peach schnapps, orange juice, cranberry juice

• 

  Moscow Mule

  4 ingredients · 2 mins

  Vodka, lime juice, ginger beer

Further reading

• Is Smirnoff good vodka? Our honest review
• The best white rum for cocktails

Sources:

• Amazon UK: best sellers in vodka
• YouGov: the most popular alcohol brands