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If you buy fresh juice regularly, a juicer might be a worthy investment. The best ones can pulverize an entire farmer's market haul into smooth, flavorful juice with little foam; easily fit on the counter; won't wake up the whole house; are simple to clean, and come with a decent warranty (10 years is the industry standard).
To arrive at our top picks, we juiced everything from hardy root vegetables to leafy greens and considered the resulting juices' taste, texture, foam levels, and oxidation rates. We also measured the volume of liquid each machine produced and the amount of pulp left behind, as well as the juicers' speeds and noise levels. Lastly, with the help of a mechanical engineer, we pulled apart several juicers to see if they were made with identical parts (despite differences in size and price). For this guide, we specifically focused on masticating (or "slow") juicers. You can read more about why in our FAQ section.
Learn more about how Insider Reviews tests and researches kitchen products.
Best juicer overall: Omega VSJ843, $479.95 on Amazon The Omega VSJ843 juicer does only one thing, but it does it as well as any we tested. It also happens to come with the best warranty of any juicer we came across.
Best compact juicer: Hurom HP Slow Juicer, $379 on Hurom Not only was the Hurom HP Slow Juicer one of the most powerful models we tested, it was also the most compact and user-friendly.
Best multi-use juicer: Kuvings Whole Slow Juicer, $399.95 on Amazon The Kuvings Whole Slow Juicer produces rich, velvety juice, and goes beyond the usual call of duty to act as a citrus juicer and ice cream maker with the help of attachments.
Best self-feeding juicer: H200 Easy Clean Slow Juicer, $699 on Hurom Hurom's H200 handles whole fruits and forgoes stainless steel strainers for easier-to-clean plastic ones.
The Omega VSJ843 juicer does only one thing, but it does it as well as any we tested. It also happens to come with the best warranty of any juicer we came across.
Pros: Powerful, efficient, great warranty, exceptional juice quality
Omega is one of the brands synonymous with juice making, and for good reason. Over the course of two years with the VSJ843, we've experienced not even the slightest hiccup with this machine. It also produced some of the best juice throughout both our methodical testing and our day-to-day use.
This is a juicer's juicer. There are no wonky parts, nothing to confuse you or fuss over, and no heap of attachments and alternate fittings to make nut butter or sorbet. While those might be nice prospects for some (we have a recommendation for you below), it's stuff most will never use.
A regular strainer and a fine strainer are the only interchangeable parts, and this is one machine you can pretty much toss the instructions for as it's intuitive as can be.
We have repeatedly made velvety, consistent juice out of this machine for about two years. Still, it pulverizes without a creak or a groan.
The biggest downside of the VSJ843 is its size. Our recommendation for a compact juicer is essentially the same machine from the same manufacturer, but built for Hurom and considerably smaller.
The reason we recommend this one overall is due to its 15-year warranty (whereas Hurom's includes 10 years of coverage on the motor and only two years on parts).
Not only was the Hurom HP Slow Juicer one of the most powerful models we tested, it was also the most compact and user-friendly.
Pros: Small size, intuitive design, 100% BPA-free plastic, 10-year motor warranty, easy to clean, high juice yield
Cons: 2-year parts warranty, somewhat slow (even by slow juicer standards), juice is slightly less concentrated than its more expensive competitors'
While Hurom's HP Slow Juicer is the smallest machine we tested, it uses the same powerful motor as models that take up nearly twice the space (like our top pick, the Omega VSJ843, for example). We discovered this after disassembling and examining several highly-rated juicers with the help of a mechanical engineer — a process that we describe in greater detail under "Our Methodology," below.
The HP comes with a fine strainer, a larger strainer to allow some pulp to pass through — always a good idea, nutritionally — and two cleaning brushes. In other words, it has exactly all you need and nothing you don't.
It regularly had among the driest discarded pulp of every juicer we tested, and the resulting juice was clean, bright, and refreshing, and contained little foam. To be fair, it wasn't quite as rich and intense as its pricier competitors' output.
A cleaning brush does an excellent job of removing pulp from hard-to-reach spots thanks to a convenient pick built into its handle.
The HP's ease of use, simple clean-up, and compact size make it a clear winner for us. After all, if your juicer is compact enough to live on your countertop instead of a cabinet, you'll notice — and therefore use — it all the more often.
The Kuvings Whole Slow Juicer produces rich, velvety juice, and goes beyond the usual call of duty to act as a citrus juicer and ice cream maker.
Pros: Versatile, 10-year warranty on all parts, BPA-free plastic, extra-wide feeding spout
Cons: Heavy, some attachments sold separately, cleanup can be time-consuming
The Kuvings Whole Slow Juicer is a sound investment if you like the idea of an appliance that can do quadruple duty: on top of juice strainers, it comes with smoothie and frozen dessert strainers (both included), and a citrus juicer is sold separately.
The Whole Slow Juicer's 3.2-inch-wide feeding spout can accommodate larger pieces of fruit than our top pick, and at 60 RPM it's a bit faster, but at a cost: the Kuvings squeezed less liquid out of our fruits and vegetables, and its wetter pulp suggested that there was some good stuff left behind in the discard pile. Still, it was the richest and most consistent juice we made.
The citrus attachment is simple and gets the job done, and while it's pricier than it needs to be, it's still far more affordable than purchasing a separate appliance.
We made a berry and banana smoothie that was texturally consistent, foam-free, and silkier than anything we've pulled from a blender. The blank strainer for frozen desserts was more difficult to master: we were successful with banana gelato, but not much else. A particular level of frozenness (and practice) is required to churn out sorbets, gelatos, and ice creams as effortlessly as this YouTuber.
Our main bone to pick: the chute makes an awkward turn towards the auger, which leads to hang-ups, and a tough time when it comes to cleaning.
Hurom's H200 handles whole fruits and forgoes stainless steel strainers for easier-to-clean plastic ones.
Pros: Large hopper capacity, vertically integrated for relatively small footprint
Cons: No fine strainer (you can use an external strainer), heavy and large (but narrow footprint)
Self-feeding juicers, like Hurom's H200 Easy Clean Slow Juicer, make juicing a lot easier. It can handle whole fruits — about three medium-sized apples, and larger chunks of ones that don't fit — which shortens prep time, and it's vertically integrated with a small footprint.
There are two schools of thought on self-feeding juicers. Some people find that they get overloaded, overwhelmed, and clogged too easily. The other is that they're big time-savers: over the course of the three years we've spent with them and only had problems when trying to juice mealy, overripe fruits, including pears, plums, and peaches, which turned into a mushy mess that wouldn't feed.
This machine offers the highest yield with the least amount of foam out of all the juicers we've tested, and at 50 RPM, is 10 RPM slower than the H-AI, our previous pick for a slow juicer, as well as the Kuvings Whole Slow Juicer above.
While the H200 impressed us with its effortless production of perfect, rich, foam-free juice out of whole fruits, our favorite thing about it is how easy it is to clean. It comes with a small brush for removing fine pulp, although we're not sure you'll ever need it. As advertised, cleaning is as simple as running each part underwater.
The H200 is a powerful, easy-to-use, easy-to-clean, cabinet-friendly juicer that makes outstanding juice with little fuss, but know that it's heavy and pricey.
Breville Juice Fountain Plus: If you do want a centrifugal juicer, this is one of the best in its category. We've used it many times in the past, we've seen it hold up at several small juice stands, and the price is right. Still, it produces a lot of foam, and it's a good deal larger than the vertical slow juicers we recommend.
Omega VSJ843: This juicer, down to almost every single part, turned out to be identical to the Hurom HP. The big difference is that it comes with a 15-year warranty on "parts and performance" versus a 10-year warranty on the Hurom juicers' motors and a two-year warranty on other parts. In the end, the motor warranty is a bigger consideration, because if you break a part (and it's not due to a defect), it's still on you to replace. We're going to work on comparing customer service between the two companies for further consideration.
Pure Juicer 2-Stage Hydraulic Juice Press: We recommend this juicer with two caveats. A) You have to be an extremely fanatical juicer, and B) Be very, very careful using it as there's no safety guard. Further, most of us don't have the money ($2,400) or the space (15" w x 18" h) to accommodate this machine. But it juices with 2.5 tons of hydraulic pressure, extracting more juice than any we've tested, and leaving behind pulp so well packed it can be used to make veggie pasta. It can also make baby food and grind pretty much everything.
Breville Bluicer: This could be a handy machine if you happen to need a juicer and a blender at once, but it's large and comes with a lot of parts you might not want to use (let alone store). We found the juice yield so low and the amount of foam so high, though, that on top of other detrimental factors such as size and noise, and in spite of its high-quality build, there are better options.
Hamilton Beach Big Mouth: This centrifugal high-speed juicer is more affordable than the Breville Juice Fountain Plus, but while it worked, it produced a ton of foam.
Oster's Self-Cleaning Professional Juice Extractor: This high-speed (centrifugal) juicer is another case of an appliance that is just too large and complex for most people's use. It works, though you'll still have to do a good bit of cleaning up afterward. Still, if you do want a high-speed juicer, it's a good choice for a budget option, and we like that it's dishwasher-safe.
Smeg Slow Juicer: Smeg's Slow Juicer had a lot of the same qualities as the Omega VSJ843 or the Hurom HP, but at about $500, you're mostly paying for its '50s-vintage appeal. If that's worth it to you, go for it. It's a perfectly capable machine, and our tester's unit is still going strong more than two years into weekly-plus use.
We test each juicer's ability based on its performance in juicing a variety of fruits and vegetables. In each case, the size of the cuts we place into each juicer varies depending on the size of the juicer's shoot or hopper.
Regardless of the fruit tested, we weigh fruits ahead of time, measure extraction in fluid ounces, and compare volumes of discarded pulp.
Apples: We generally quarter apples, but in the case of self-feeding juicers, we core most apples, and in the first round of testing self-feeders, we plopped entire apples in (though that's more for stress-testing). Brands advise against putting entire apples into machines as seeds can cause problems.
Beets: Among the denser and harder options, beets made for a good test. Some juicers grovel and groan their way through beets, but the ones we recommend had no trouble.
Carrots: Similar to beets, carrots will show a juicer's weak points easily. Carrots tend to be highly indicative of extraction quality based upon the pulp, as the drier the pulp, the more a juicer has extracted. (This is the case with just about everything, but we find carrots show the best range of variation.)
Grapes: Grapes are another great way of telling extraction, and some juicers don't manage to extract very well. We can tell this by looking in the pulp container and finding juice there. In the case of self-feeding juicers, grapes can get messy and not processed, too.
Kale: Leafy greens are another reason to specifically purchase a masticating (slow) juicer. Centrifugal juicers won't generally do a great job of extracting, while the slow-whirring auger of masticating juicers efficiently extracts as much as possible.
Oranges: Some juicers come with citrus attachments, and while they work best to keep foam levels low, we also peel navel oranges and drop them into the hoppers (sliced or whole, depending), seeds and all. Again, seeds aren't a great idea, but for the sake of testing, we make sure machines can handle seeds, and orange seeds don't seem to do the damage apple seeds do. Across the board, oranges juice well, and they didn't turn out to be terribly indicative of quality in the end. Still, know that a high-speed juicer will produce a ton of foam with oranges.
We weighed the produce beforehand to make sure we were putting the exact same amount in each juicer, then measured the volume (fluid ounces) of the resulting juice.
We noted the amount of foam that settled at the top of each cup of juice, the rate of oxidation (some juices browned faster than others), and the amount of pulp left behind.
And, of course, we measured taste, however subjectively, and found that some juices were more watery than others (we used a fine strainer throughout testing) while others were incredibly rich.
We also pulled apart four juicers after speaking with Duncan Freake, a mechanical engineer at Epam Continuum, who posited that certain parts, including the augers, strainers, and receptacles were the same between Omega and HP.
Sure enough, while the parts inside each of the juicers we disassembled weren't exactly identical, it was clear that they came from the same factory, or used the same components, from Korea. And while both brands advertise that their juicers are made in Korea, they don't divulge that many of their parts come from the same set of factories as their competitors, Zhejiang Linix Motor Co., Ltd. Granted, this is a common case with many household appliances, and something we found to be true when researching for our guide to the best countertop ice makers, too.
There are two basic juicer types on the market: centrifugal and masticating (or slow). The larger, noisier, and more affordable of the two, centrifugal juicers use a high-speed blade and tend to yield less juice and more foam than their slow-juicing counterparts.
Masticating juicers steadily turn an auger that pulverizes fruits and veggies, leaving more nutrients and enzymes intact and producing smoother, silkier, and better-tasting juice overall. For these reasons, our guide focuses solely on slow juicers.
While some people claim green juice can help you lose weight and clear the body of "toxins," these ideas are not medically supported.
"Even if you're making it yourself, juice is still more processed than a whole fruit or veggie, and studies consistently show that it's more beneficial to eat foods in their more natural state," Samantha Cassetty, MS, RD, author of "Sugar Shock" told us. "Our bodies don't register the calories we drink in the same way they register calories from food, so you don't get the same level of fullness from juice as you would from eating an apple or veggie."
However, Cassetty said fresh juice is still an excellent way to add more nutrients to your diet, and based on our testing, the juicers above all perform at the top level.
A juice extractor is another name for a centrifugal juicer, which uses blades and rotation to separate juice from skins, seeds, and pulp, as opposed to a masticating juicer, or slow juicer, which pulverizes in order to extract.
Neither juice nor smoothies are necessarily "healthy," depending on the ingredients used and the amount consumed.
It is always more beneficial to consume fruits and vegetables in their whole state, as opposed to a liquid concentrated with their sugars. A large serving of juice or smoothie is likely to contain exceptionally high levels of sugar.
Avocado: You simply won't get much juice out of an avocado, and it'll make a mess. They fare better in blenders for smoothies.
Coconut: Coconut flesh does not make juice, water, or milk as it's too dry. To reduce coconut, the blender is a better option.
Cruciferous vegetables: Broccoli, cauliflower, and others might have high levels of vitamin C, but they're difficult to digest. The amount you'd consume by making juice would likely leave you with indigestion pains.
Whole stone fruits and pome fruits: The pits of stone fruits (peaches, cherries, plums) and, to a lesser degree, the seeds of pome fruits (apples, pears) will likely destroy your juicer.
How you'll clean a juicer depends on the design of the juicer. Generally, you don't want to put juicer parts in your dishwasher as the plastic isn't built for it. Warm soapy water, a toothbrush-like implement, and a sponge will do the trick, but be sure to let everything properly dry before putting it away as there are working metal parts that are likely to rust.
The best juicers are unequivocally slow, or masticating juicers. Their slow-churning augers make for a better yield and keep nutrients intact better than the high-speed, bladed juicers that obliterate and oxidize foods.
Secondarily, consider what you want your juicer to do. Are you exclusively making juice? A unitasker (like the Omega and Hurom models above) is ideal in that case.
You'll also want to decide how much you value a good warranty. Omega's 15-year warranty on all parts is hard to beat.
Lastly, consider size. Depending on your views and your available space, a compact machine may supersede a better warranty, especially if you are looking for something you can easily move between the cabinet and the countertop.
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