The Best Apple Pie at the Grocery Store (with a New #1!)

The best apple pie at the grocery store—whether it’s the best frozen apple pie or apple pie from your local grocery store’s bakery—may not hold a candle to a pie someone slaved over and made totally from scratch. But here’s the thing: It’s still pie, my guy. When it has all the right elements—firm apples, flaky crust with just the right amount of salt to offset the sweetness of the filling, or sweet, crumbly streusel if we’re talking about the best Dutch apple pie—you kind of can’t go wrong. In fact, the best store bought apple pie can save you a lot of time and effort if baking isn’t your forte. 

In two separate apple pie taste tests, we stocked up on both ready-to-eat premade apple pies and frozen apple pies that require a good hour or so in the oven, tasting and retasting Walmart apple pie, Sara Lee apple pie, and Marie Callender apple pie. We were looking for discernible pieces of apple—we want more than just apple-y goop—that are sweet and tart in equal measure. We were looking for balance, too—I’ll admit that our new #1 pick for the best apple pie leans sweet, but it still has a bottom crust with some savory flavor to complement the apples, cinnamon, and streusel. Four store bought apple pies were better than the rest. Here’s the best apple pie for your next zero-effort dessert. (Oh, and if you want to “make your own apple pie” but do it the easy way, we’ve ranked the best canned apple pie filling and the best premade pie crusts, too.)

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Best Apple Pie for One

Banquet Apple Pie

Walmart

Banquet makes some questionable frozen meals (steer clear of their crustless pizza, fr fr), but we consistently appreciate anything they put in a pie crust, from their turkey pot pie (one of our favorite pot pies) to their breakfast pot pie, which is literally just a tasty crust with sausage gravy inside (don’t knock it till you try it). Their single-serve apple pie is another delight. Could the filling use more apples? Sure, but the sweet, gooey filling tastes great, especially with the nicely salted crust. I cooked this pie in the oven (heating pie in the microwave is a recipe for disappointment) and took it out of the paper tray it comes in, which caused the whole thing to collapse. After the taste test, I called their customer support line and was assured that you actually can keep the pie in the paper tray to cook it in the oven, even if the instructions on the box don’t make that clear. I can’t help but think it would have tasted even better if it didn’t look like slop.

Credit: Liv Averett / Walmart

Rating:

7.5/10

Sporks

Best Crust

Sara Lee Dutch Apple Pie

Albertsons

This Sara Lee apple pie, which is topped with streusel instead of more crust, was a surprising hit. It doesn’t look like much (especially next to Marie Callender’s Dutch apple pie, which we’ll get to in a sec), but if you can get past the slightly sad appearance, this is some of the best store bought apple pie. The bottom crust is flaky and has a distinct hit of salt that offsets the sweetness of the filling. I love that bottom crust for all the hard work it’s doing! The filling is good—a little bit tart and very cinnamony—but the streusel top just can’t hang with Marie. Still, this frozen apple pie made my colleague Justine Sterling, an apple pie skeptic say, “Maybe I do like apple pie…”

Credit: Liv Averett / Albertsons

Rating:

9/10

Sporks

Best with Ice Cream

Sprouts Double Crust Apple Pie

Sprouts

We tried several apple pies from grocery store bakery sections, and Sprouts makes the best store bought apple pie by far if you want something that’s ready to roll rather than ready to bake. The crust is flaky and almost savory. The filling isn’t overly sweet, either. It’s so deeply flavorful and it seems to absorb some of the salt from the pie crust, which is amazing. I think a lot of apple pie is too sugary to eat a la mode, but this pie would be perfect with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. I’m telling ya, if you want a really good, ready-to-eat apple pie, it’s worth it to make a stop at Sprouts. I also love that you can buy this as a full or a half pie, so even if you’re having a cozy Thanksgiving for two, you can have a really good dessert without being left with a daunting amount of leftovers. Although, I will say that the full-size pie is only $1 more expensive, so you might as well splurge. This was our #1 last year, but this year the sweet, gooey goodness of Marie Callender beat it out. 

Credit: Liv Averett / Sprouts

Rating:

10/10

Sporks

Best of the Best

Marie Callender’s Dutch Apple Pie

Instacart

If you prefer Dutch apple pie over double crust apple pie because you’re a streusel guy, this Marie Callender apple pie is the best frozen apple pie for you to buy. It comes with a separate baggie of streusel topping that you add once the pie is mostly baked, and there is a lot of it. Once the streusel has been applied and baked, this is a breathtakingly beautiful store bought apple pie. But honestly, that’s not even this pie’s biggest selling point. That would be the filling, which contains way more apple than a lot of other store bought apple pies. Even better, the apples in the filling are wonderfully crisp. It’s kind of a feat. I don’t know any apple lover (or streusel lover, I guess) who would turn down a second slice of this excellent grocery store apple pie. The streusel is so good and they give you so much of it! When we sat down to taste and retaste pies in our second apple pie taste test, this is the one we couldn’t stop eating. All in all, it’s the best apple pie at the grocery store.

Credit: Liv Averett / Instacart

Rating:

9.5/10

Sporks

Other apple pies we tried: Private Selection Toffee Apple Pie, Marketside Caramel Apple Pie, Sara Lee Apple Pie, Walmart Freshness Guaranteed Apple Pie, Walmart Freshness Guaranteed No Sugar Added Apple Pie, Jessie Lord Apple Pie