Store-Bought Pancake Mixes Ranked From Worst To Best

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Hotcakes. Flapjacks. Griddlecakes. Fluffy crepes. Whatever you call them, pancakes have earned a spot atop the Mount Rushmore of breakfast foods. For nearly as long as humans have been cooking their food, pancakes in one form or another have been a staple.

Of course, pancakes have evolved over time, from soaked grains mashed into a patty and cooked over an open fire, to the syrup vessels adorning dinner tables the world over. Pancake recipes range from overnight buttermilk to more unique takes with a chocolatey twist, but regardless of the flavor, the basic features remain the same: hot, flat, fluffy, and delicious.

While homemade pancakes are hardly the most challenging dish to prepare, there are tons of boxed mix options on grocery store shelves ready to make your morning a little easier. To find out which brand offers the best flapjack, I put 10 different boxed buttermilk pancake mixes to the test. Prices are dependent on location and accurate as of July 2025. Read on to find out which mix is worthy of your next pancake breakfast and which ones fall flat.

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Number 10 on the list comes with an asterisk. Kodiak makes a high-protein pancake mix that is really quite tasty. My family routinely buys the giant boxes from Costco, and we use the mix to make microwavable pancake cups filled with berries, nuts, and chocolate chips. It's a good way to start the morning with a sweet treat that will actually keep you full until lunchtime. The downside is that although the Kodiak cakes are good, they have a difficult time competing with traditional buttermilk pancakes.

To start, Kodiak is the most expensive option on this list at $6.99 for a 20-ounce box. I say the price is definitely worth it if you're looking to prepare a filling breakfast, but if your heart is set on sweet, fluffy, buttery hotcakes, Kodiak isn't what you're looking for. Like every other entry on this list, you only need to add water, producing a thick, almost goopy batter. The final result is dense and hardly fluffy. The pancakes taste like whole grain — because they are — and lack the buttery flavors or sweetness found in traditional mixes. Still, I like Kodiak Power Cakes for what they are: a high-protein pancake with 15 grams of protein and just 4 grams of sugar per serving. And if you're looking for a different high-protein option, the brand makes a tasty frozen waffle, too. 

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I'm not sure we needed a more convenient way to make pancakes after the "just add water" craze began, but Betty Crocker dared to ask if a pancake could be made without dirtying a bowl or spoon. Enter the Bisquick Shake 'n Pour mix. It's a yellow bottle that contains a pre-measured serving of pancake mix (10.6 ounces for the smaller size) and a whole lot of air for $4.50. The instructions are right there in the name: add water, shake it all up, pour out your pancakes.

I'll give the Shake 'n Pour a solid 10/10 for efficiency, but mixing pancake batter really isn't all that difficult, so taste is still the main factor here, and these flapjacks were a letdown. Using the recommended amount of water, I ended up with a very thin batter, though it did puff up decently on a hot skillet. The result was a pancake that looked just fine but was underwhelming in the flavor department. It wasn't sweet, it wasn't buttery, and honestly, it kind of tasted like flour. If you're fundamentally against doing dishes, Bisquick Shake 'n Pour might be your best bet, but there are tastier pancake options out there, I promise.

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My wife, a food scientist, is quick to remind me that many store brands are produced in the same facility as the name brand option, so the taste and quality should hardly differ. For the most part, she's right, but unfortunately, I found the Kroger brand pancake mix to be a lesser version of numerous others on the list.

Pricewise, it's hard to beat at $2.29 for a 32-ounce box. Tastewise, it's a dud. A serving contains 9 grams of sugar, and it still tastes like plain flour. The cakes themselves are on the denser side and lack any structural integrity. That may sound like a strange thing to say about a pancake, but these things kind of fall apart as you eat them. I tried all the hotcakes, both plain and with syrup, and found that the Kroger pancake more or less disintegrated in the syrup within a short period of time. Kroger doesn't make a bad pancake, and the price is enough to slot it in over the Shake 'n Pour on the list, but there are better store brand products on the shelf, and plenty of better pancakes on this list.

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I didn't have "crumbly pancake" on my bingo card going into this ranking, but here we are with a second straight entry that couldn't hold itself together very well. JIFFY makes a mean cornbread mix, but the brand comes up short on the pancakes.

First, though, let's walk through the positives. At $2.99 for a 32-ounce box, this is a cheap mix. The 9 grams of sugar per portion are right in line with most other options, and the pancakes cook up with a nice uniform golden brown color. That color might be attributed to the fact that this mix is "naturally and artificially maple flavored," a first and only across the ranking. The maple flavor is subtle and not bad, but it simply can't overcome the texture of these flapjacks.

In my initial tasting notes I wrote that you don't need to chew these pancakes; you can just mush them apart with your tongue. Not exactly a ringing endorsement. They're not fluffy or chewy, they're just sort of mildly moist and crumbly. I'll take the next brand now, please.

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I'll be honest, the middle part of this list is fairly interchangeable; there's only so much variation that can be found among buttermilk pancake mixes. Sometimes the flaws are easy to spot — see the last two entries and their inability to stay together — but other times, it comes down to the little things.

Enter Pearl Milling Company. With only 5 grams of sugar, these pancakes have a hint of sweetness, though they lack much in the buttery department. The batter is right in the middle with regards to viscosity, as is the price ($4.50 for 32 ounces). So, on the whole, this is a solid mid-tier pancake.

The unusual part of Pearl Milling Company's mix is that it comes in a box with no bag. From a food safety standpoint, I can't find anything online that would indicate that having the mix in just a box is a problem, and I highly doubt a company as respected as Pearl Milling (formerly Aunt Jemima) would intentionally do anything to compromise the safety of its product. Still, it's mildly inconvenient. The "easy open" tab on the side of the box is anything but easy; I couldn't actually get it to work. Instead, I had to open the box from the top and gently pour out my portion without making a mess. Yes, it's a minor inconvenience, but in a head-to-head pancake-off, I'll take the bag every time.

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Mrs. Butterworth's is as close to icons like Kleenex and Chapstick as you can get: a brand name that becomes synonymous with the product it creates. (Those are called generic trademarks, by the way, or when a company name gets used as a blanket term for the item it produces.) With such a recognizable name, I expected a bit more from this mix.

Both the price, $2.99 for 32 ounces, and the sugar content, 5 grams per serving, are on the lower end. The batter came out a bit thinner, but I prefer a thin batter because it allows me to control my pancake size more effectively. These took a bit longer than others to cook, but still never formed much of a crust to add to the texture. The final product was pleasantly fluffy, slightly chewy — in contrast to crumbly ones — and featured a light sweetness. The only thing missing? Ironically, any hint of buttery flavor.

If Mrs. Butterworth's conjures images of pancakes and syrup, I won't blame you for not thinking the same of the name that adorns this bubblegum pink box. That's right, the one and only Dolly Parton makes a pancake mix. Her brand also includes cake, cookie, and brownie mixes, to name a few, along with frozen meals and sides. Clearly, Dolly is working more than 9 to 5 with that many irons in the fire, but today, we're only focused on her pancake mix, and it's good.

The 26-ounce box is a little smaller than some of the others on this list, putting the $3.99 price tag right in line with most other brands. The batter is easy to mix and not clumpy, resulting in a slightly thinner consistency. The pancakes themselves cook to a lovely golden brown with a slight crisp around the edges, paired with an airy interior. In pretty much every way you can hope for, this is a good, standard pancake, even if it's not overly sweet or buttery. I'm still going to choose one of the top three on this list if I'm buying pancake mix, but this does make me want to try out more Dolly Parton food products in the future.

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Cards on the table: I'm more of a waffle guy. In fact, my syrup-covered-carbs hierarchy places French toast at the top, followed by waffles, with pancakes as the anchor. Don't get me wrong, I love pancakes, but seeing as all of these mixes can also be used to make waffles — usually done by adding some vegetable oil and an egg — I may need to give those a try for a proper ranking.

Regardless, Hungry Jack knows its way around a flapjack. The batter is relatively thick and airy, causing it to spread unevenly on a hot griddle. If you're a stickler for perfectly circular pancakes, this might not be for you, but the taste more than makes up for the lack of uniformity. These pancakes are so tender; if some of the earlier entries crumble apart in your mouth, this pancake melts. The lack of sweetness is more than accounted for by a lovely buttery taste in every bite. At $3.50 for a 32-ounce box, Hungry Jack should be on your next shopping list.

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In a blind taste test, I'm not sure I'd be able to tell Hungry Jack and Krusteaz apart. Even when cooking, these pancakes are similar. The batter is bubbly and airy, which translates to the final product. I'm a big fan of syrup, but I was content to eat Krusteaz pancakes with little to none of the sugary stuff, because they have a rich buttery flavor of their own and a nice crust around the edges. Ultimately, these cakes held their shape while cooking a bit better than Hungry Jack, but like number three on this list, they practically melted in my mouth.

At $3.50 for 32 ounces, Kursteaz comes in with the best taste-to-value ratio on the list. Taste is obviously important — it's why my number one was a clear, no-doubt winner — but value is important because pancakes are not that difficult to make, so if you're purchasing a box of mix to make breakfast time simpler, it should be at a low cost. 

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King Arthur wears the crown when it comes to pancake mixes. First, the negative: A 16-ounce bag is $4.50, making it the most expensive non-protein pancake on the list. Thankfully, it's worth the price.

I docked Pearl Milling Company for packing its mix in a box without a bag. King Arthur has gone the opposite route, saving the cardboard and using the only resealable bag on this list. Like cereal bags, pancake mixes are usually not resealable, which is crazy because who eats an entire box of pancakes in a single sitting? King Arthur's bag is easy to use and perfect for storage, as it also takes up less space. Plus, the company is always around to help if you have a baking question. 

Efficiency aside, this is a great pancake. The batter is a bit thicker but still easy to pour, and each flapjack browned up evenly. I found this mix to be slightly sweeter, despite containing only 4 grams of sugar per serving. Fluffy and airy yet tender, King Arthur is the rightful ruler of the pancake kingdom, a place I would very much like to visit someday at breakfast time.

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Ranking pancakes was not easy. There's not a ton of variation from brand to brand, so finding minute differences was key. With the help of my wife, we mixed up a half portion of each brand according to the directions on the box. All of the pancakes were cooked one by one, two of each, on an electric griddle that is excellent at maintaining a consistent temperature. As each brand finished up, I photographed the pancakes next to their packaging and then dug in.

My evaluation was based largely on taste and texture, with factors like the viscosity of the batter and the efficiency of the packaging playing a role as well. Ultimately, I have no doubt that the best pancake came out on top, but from there, personal preference will play a huge role should anyone try a full ranking themselves. If you do, be sure to really like pancakes, because you're going to be eating them for a while.