After years of running side-by-side vegan taste tests, we’ve tried just about everything—yogurts, cream cheeses, shredded cheeses, you name it. At this point, we’ve tested dozens (maybe hundreds) of products, making us pretty well-versed in spotting the hits and the misses.
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So when it came time to tackle vegan sour cream, we knew we could give you a true expert take. We’ve gathered six different brands—no repeats, all plain flavors—for a fair, unbiased comparison.
We tasted, we analyzed, and we took notes so you’ll know exactly which ones are worth adding to your fridge.
If you’ve followed our past taste tests, you already know we don’t sugarcoat things (or, in this case, sour-coat them). This is all about honest opinions from real-life vegans who’ve spent years putting plant-based products to the test.
Keep reading to find the winner!
WATCH: Taste Test to Find the Best Vegan Sour Cream
PSA:
We know that everyone has different taste buds. What we may think is the best, may completely vary from what you actually like.
You may ultimately think our best is the worst and that’s okay. We created this video as hopefully a starting point for people and we can only go off our opinion.
What vegan sour cream brands did we try?
Despite trying out 6 different brands, we know that there are even more out there. We just didn’t find them local to us. The brands that we did find and try are:
- Wayfare
- Kite Hill
- Tofutti
- Foragers
- Follower Your Heart
- Good Karma Foods
How did we do the vegan sour cream taste test?
It was really quite simple.
We made some homemade vegan french fries (follow the link for our recipe and we did steps 1-5)
We then dipped a french fries into each vegan sour cream brand and then taste each one.
We were looking for mostly taste and texture. Our goal was to find the one closest to what we remember dairy-based sour cream tasting like.
Follow Your Heart Dairy Free Sour Cream Alternative
Thoughts: We found this one at our local natural health store and were really surprised by how much we liked it. It was the first one we tried in our taste test video and it has a nice texture and was really smooth.
Where to Buy: Follow Your Heart Store Locator
Ingredients: Filtered Water, Coconut Cream, Expeller-Pressed High-Oleic Safflower Oil, Organic Coconut Oil, Organic Tapioca Maltodextrin, Less than 2% of: Natural Flavors, Tapioca Starch, Pectin, Glucono Delta Lactone, Gellan Gum, Organic LemonJuice Concentrate, Calcium Phosphate, Locust Bean Gum, Lactic Acid, Calcium Lactate, Guar Gum, Sea Salt, Sodium Alginate. Contains: Coconut
Allergens: Coconut.
Price: $5.99
Forager’s Organic Dairy Free Sour Cream
Thoughts: Unfortunately, this was really the only one that we were both like absolutely not. It was chunky in texture and the taste was completely off. We really want to like this brand, but for us, it seems like their products just miss the mark. We also commented on how it tastes almost exactly like how we remember the yogurt yogurt, almost like they just put it in this jar and called it sour cream.
Where to Buy: Forager’s Store Locator
Ingredients: Coconut & Cashewmilk (Filtered Water, Coconut Cream*, Cashews*), Tapioca Starch*, Sea Salt, Pectin, Distilled Vinegar*, Lactic Acid, Locust Bean Gum*, Tricalcium Phosphate, Agar, Live Active Cultures (S. Thermophilus, L. Bulgaricus, L. Acidophilus, Bifidus, L. Lactis, L. Plantarum).
*Organic
Allergens: Coconut. Cashews
Price: $3.99
Good Karma Plant Basee Sour Cream Dairy Free Alternative
Thoughts: The immediate reaction when we opened this container was that it smelled like vanilla birthday cake. Larisha liked this one overall but Andrew did not and said he would not buy again. The texture was really nice.
Where to Buy: Good Karma Store Locator
Ingredients: Water, Coconut Oil, Tapioca Flour, Pea Protein, Dextrose, Corn Starch (Unmodified, Identity Preserved), Tricalcium Phosphate, Sea Salt, Sunflower Lecithin, Lactic acid (Vegan), Natural Flavor, Vitamin A Palmitate, Vitamin D2, Vitamin b12, Live and Active Cultures.
Allergens: Coconut.
Price: $3.99
Kite Hill Sour Cream Alternative
Thoughts: We were surprised that we liked this one. Andrew liked this one slightly more than Larisha did but overall it was decent.
Where to Buy: Kite Hill Store Locator
Ingredients: Almond Milk (Water, Almonds), Coconut Oil, Rice Starch, Coconut Milk, Maltodextrin, Chickpea Protein, Salt, Cultures
Allergens: Coconut. Almond.
Price: $4.99
Tofutti Better than Sour Cream
Thoughts: Tofutti for us has been hit or miss and that’s ok. We actually really liked this one. With it being the easiest one to find we would definitely recommend it over some of the other ones that we showed in the taste test.
Where to Buy: Tofutti Store Locator
Ingredients: WATER, EXPELLER PROCESSED NATURAL OIL BLEND (SOYBEAN, PALM FRUIT, AND OLIVE), MALTODEXTERIN, NON-GMO (SOY PROTEIN, TOFU), NON-DAIRY LACTIC ACID, ORGANIC SUGAR, BLEND OF NATURAL GUMS (LOCUST BEAN, GUAR, CELLULOSE AND XANTHAN) AND SALT.
Allergens: Soy.
Price: $2.99
Wayfare Dairy Free Sour Cream
Thoughts: We like many Wayfare products and overall are a big fan of the brand. We loved the taste and texture on this one and would definitely recommend it.
Where to Buy: https://wayfarefoods.com/store-locator/
Ingredients: WayFare Dairy Free Base (Water, Organic Butter Beans, Organic Oats), Organic Coconut Oil, Organic Gum Arabic, Organic Cultured Dextrose, Sea Salt, Calcium Citrate, Organic Konjac Root Powder, Organic Citric Acid, Lactic Acid.
Allergens: Coconut.
Price: $4.99
Are these vegan sour cream brands allergy friendly?
We listed the allergens under each but just so it’s easier to find we wanted to list it here as well.
All of these are vegan so they are automatically dairy free and egg free. None of them listed gluten or peanuts as an ingredients. They are also all fish and shellfish free.
That leaves treenuts and soy as top allergens in the US.
- Contains Coconut – All of them except Tofutti contain coconut.
- Contains Soy – Tofutti
- Contains Nuts – Forager’s (Cashews), Kite Hill (Almonds)
That means all 10 of them (bonus one included) had some form of allergen inside.
Who was the winner?
Okay. I put you through all that just to make you wait until here until I announce the winner. You know, wait with baited breath, type of thing! HA!
Again, we were pleasantly surprised with all the brands we were able to find and what that means for the future of those of us that are vegan or living a dairy free lifestyle.
Now, without further ado!
Our top 3 brands would be:
- Wayfare
- Follow Your Heart
- Tofutti
The Wayfare and Follow Your Heart technically would be tied for us. We really couldn’t pick a winner even after tasting over and over again.
The rest in order were:
Kite Hill (Andrew put next) and Good Karma (Larisha put next) would be the next and then finally Forager’s.
Do you agree with us? Have you tried any of these ? Tell us below!
Try your favorite on one of these recipes:
Also see our:
- vegan grilled cheese sandwiches taste test and our
- vegan egg substitutes post!
I tried the Kite Hill and thought it was nasty. I will try the Follow your heart and tofutti next
hope you enjoy one of them!
Your recioe for vegan cream cheese that is free of top allergens is similar in ingredients to the Wayfare sour cream. Do you think you will be creating a vegan sour cream based on the ingredients in your cream cheese (plus a few more)? I like your cream cheese recipe.
We have it on our list to recreate this year 🙂
You should have stirred them all up! When they combine smoothly (specifically foragers and kitehill) they get a spreadable texture and the flavor changes as well! Loved the video but cringed when you didn’t stir them