The UK non-alcoholic beverage market spans a wide range of categories, from carbonated drinks, dilutables and juices to mixers, waters, iced tea, sports drinks and dairy drinks.
While the UK is widely known as a tea drinking nation, his ranking focuses exclusively on cold non-alcoholic beverages. The breadth of this market is reflected in the diverse mix of brands appearing at the top of the overall ranking.
Drawing on YouGov BrandIndex data collected from 1 August 2025 to 31 July 2026, this article covers: Top 25 beverage brands by Consideration among UK adults.
- Top 10 biggest improvers in beverage brand Consideration year-over-year
- How the top considered beverage brands compare on Value and Quality
- Which brands lead within key beverage-type breakouts
- Where to find deeper beverage brand data and competitor benchmarks
- Methodology behind the rankings
Top 25 beverage brands by Consideration
Robinsons ranks first in YouGov’s UK beverage Consideration ranking, with 31.8% of UK adults saying they would consider purchasing the brand. Ribena follows at 26.6%, narrowly ahead of San Pellegrino at 26.4%. Pepsi Max takes the fourth spot at 26.2% – two places ahead of Coca-Cola following a 1.5 percentage point growth in Consideration year-on-year. Highland Spring completes the top five at 23.8%.
The top five spans several beverage types, including dilutables, carbonated soft drinks, sparkling water and bottled water. Coca-Cola ranks sixth, with a Consideration score of 23.2%, followed by Coca-Cola Zero at 22.3%. Evian ranks eighth at 20.8%, while Diet Coke and innocent complete the top 10 at 20.5% and 20.1%, respectively.
Fever-Tree sits just outside the top 10 at 20.0%, followed by Fanta at 19.6%, Buxton at 19.5%, J2O at 18.8% and Vimto at 17.8%. The rest of the top 25 includes Tropicana, Schweppes, Volvic, Sprite, Lipton Ice Tea, Oasis, 7UP, Pepsi, Dr Pepper and Irn Bru.
Top 10 biggest improvers in beverage brand Consideration year-over-year
The current Consideration ranking shows the brands with the highest scores in the latest period. The biggest-improvers table looks instead at change over time. Rubicon records the largest year-over-year gain in Consideration, rising 1.7 percentage points from 9.7% in 2024–25 to 11.4% in 2025–26.
Following a multi-channel #BetterWithPepsi campaign, Pepsi Max records the second-largest increase, gaining 1.5 points year over year. Irn Bru follows with a 1.4-point gain, while Lucozade Sport rises 1.3 points and Diet Coke gains 1.2 points.
The remaining top improvers are Alpro at +1.1 points, Red Bull at +1.0, Vimto at +1.0, San Pellegrino at +1.0 and Highland Spring at +0.9.
Five brands appear in both the top 25 current Consideration ranking and the top 10 improvers table: Pepsi Max, Diet Coke, Vimto, San Pellegrino and Highland Spring. Rubicon has the largest year-over-year increase but does not appear in the current top 25.
How do the UK’s top considered beverage brands compare on Value and Quality?
Consideration shows which brands people would consider purchasing. Value and Quality provide two further measures of how the top considered brands are perceived.
Among the top 25 considered beverage brands, Robinsons has the strongest net Value score, at 21.6. Ribena follows at 15.3, while Vimto records a net Value score of 10.5. Highland Spring and Pepsi Max also sit above much of the field on Value, with net scores of 8.2 and 6.2, respectively.
On Quality, San Pellegrino records the highest net score among the plotted brands, at 38.2. Fever-Tree follows at 33.2, just ahead of Robinsons at 32.9 and Ribena at 31.1. innocent, Evian and Highland Spring also score highly on Quality, at 30.1, 29.8 and 28.1.
Looking at Value and Quality in combination, Robinson’s and Ribena strike the balance – achieving relatively high scores across both metrics.
Which brands lead within key beverage-type breakouts?
The following breakouts separate the ranking into four subgroups to make those comparisons easier to read.
These groups are carbonated and soft drink brands; juice, iced tea and dairy drink brands; energy, sports and functional drink brands; and water brands.
Carbonated and still soft drink brands
Robinsons leads the carbonated and soft drink ranking, with 31.8% of UK adults saying they would consider purchasing the brand. Ribena ranks second at 26.6%, followed by Pepsi Max at 26.2%.
Cola variants occupy several places in the top 10. Coca-Cola ranks fourth at 23.2%, Coca-Cola Zero fifth at 22.3%, and Diet Coke sixth at 20.5%.
Fever-Tree ranks seventh at 20.0%, ahead of Fanta at 19.6%, J2O at 18.8% and Vimto at 17.8%.
Fruit juice, ice tea and dairy drink brands
In the juice, ice tea and dairy drink group, innocent ranks first, with 20.1% Consideration. Tropicana follows at 17.2%, while Lipton Ice Tea ranks third at 15.5%.
Alpro ranks fourth at 9.7%, followed by Ocean Spray at 8.8%, Copella at 8.4%, and Naked Juice at 7.8%.
The dairy drink brands in the group appear lower in the top 10. Yazoo and Nesquik each record 7.4% Consideration, while FRijj records 6.9%.
Energy and sport drink brands
Lucozade Sport leads the energy, sports and functional drink group, with 10.4% Consideration. Lucozade Energy follows closely at 9.9%, while Red Bull ranks third at 9.1%.
Purdey’s ranks fourth at 3.9%, followed by Powerade at 2.4% to round out the top 5 in this subgroup.
Water brands
San Pellegrino leads the water ranking, with 26.4% Consideration. Highland Spring ranks second at 23.8%, followed by Evian at 20.8%.
Buxton ranks fourth at 19.5%, while Volvic completes the top five at 16.9%. The remaining top 10 water brands are Smartwater at 8.8%, Perrier at 6.5%, Tesco Ashbeck at 5.0%, Sainsbury’s Caledonian at 4.8% and Nestlé Pure Life at 4.4%.
Where to find deeper beverage brand data and competitor benchmarks
YouGov BrandIndex can be used to look at the data across a wider range of measures and audiences. For beverage brands, further analysis can include competitor sets, audience cuts, regional or demographic differences, additional brand-health metrics, and changes over time.
Methodology
This article uses YouGov BrandIndex UK data collected from 1 August 2025 to 31 July 2026 among UK adults. Year-over-year movement compares that period with 1 August 2024 to 31 July 2025.
Consideration is the percentage of respondents who would consider purchasing a brand when next in the market for drinks. Value and Quality are reported as net scores.
The ranking combines brands from BrandIndex’s Carbonated Drinks and Soft Drinks source sectors. Brand variants and product-line brands are shown separately where they are tracked separately in BrandIndex.
For the beverage-type breakout sections, brands are assigned to campaign-approved custom groups: carbonated and soft drink brands; juice, ice tea and dairy drink brands; energy, sports and functional drink brands; and water brands.
Mogu Mogu is excluded from year-over-year improver analysis because it does not meet the previous-period ..
Figures are rounded to one decimal place. Changes are shown in percentage points.
About YouGov BrandIndex
YouGov BrandIndex is an always-on brand tracking solution that measures consumer perceptions of thousands of brands every day. It helps marketers monitor brand health over time, benchmark performance against competitors, identify audience-specific strengths and weaknesses, and understand how consumer perceptions change.
Explore more beverage brand data
This ranking is one view of the broader beverage-sector data available in YouGov BrandIndex. Additional analysis can compare brands across Consideration, Awareness, Value, Quality and other relevant measures, as well as across audiences and time periods.