What's the Best Vegan Cream Cheese?

WHAT'S THE BEST VEGAN CREAM CHEESE? Which one should you spend your money on? Which is the most versatile, sustainable and tastiest? Let us help you make the right choice and not waste your money and time on disappointing cream cheese alternatives.

What’s the best VEGAN CREAM CHEESE?

Wondering what’s the best vegan cream cheese? Let us help you choose.

When starting to move or moving to a vegan or plant-based lifestyle can be overwhelming. There are now an incredible number of vegan products available to buy, but which ones should we be spending our money on?

In our unsponsored series ‘What’s the best…?’ we’ll help you cut through the mass of products to find those that not only taste the best, but we’ll look at the texture, smell, availability, environmental footprint and cost.

In what’s the best vegan cream cheese? We look at shop-bought vegan cream cheese. You can make your own version, but if you are short on time and were a fan of the dairy Philadelphia then this is the list for you.

How we’ve decided on the scoring system

We’ll give each product a mark out of 5.

0 being the lowest score and 5 being the highest. We have used 6 categories to help us explain our decisions these are;

Taste
Texture
Smell
Availability
Environmental Footprint
Price

As with most plant-based alternatives to vegan cream cheese they do cost more than the dairy versions – we’ve taken this into account when scoring the products on price.

As we find and as new products come to the market, we will update the what’s the best vegan cream cheese? post. There are a small number of supermarkets own brands and independent vegan cream cheeses that we haven’t yet been able to get hold of, we’ll include these when we have had a chance to review them.

None of these products are artisan vegan cream cheeses.

Easy uses for vegan cream cheese

Of course, spread the vegan cream cheese on toast, bagels or in sandwiches – but there are many other ways to include a tasty twist in your meals using the spreads.

Why not…

Give your mashed potato a lift by stirring in a good spoonful of vegan cream cheese
Create creamy pan-fried mushrooms
Making pasta creamy with either a tomato or cheesy sauce is easy when you add vegan cream cheese
Stir through a risotto
Vegan desserts – create an amazing cheesecake, try the Easy Vegan Caramel Cheesecake

…all are delicious ways to use your vegan cream cheese.

NOTE: These are our personal opinions. This post was written in February 2022, revised March 2022.

The Products we Reviewed.

Oatly Creamy Oat Spread

Pot Size 150g

Price £1.80

Availability Sainsburys

Our preferred uses Cook, spread, dessert

Made with an oat base and does contain coconut.

Very smooth, creamy with a slightly tangy savoury taste.

The container can be recycled as paper, foil seal and plastic lid can both be recycled.

Oatly works with Carbon Cloud to calculate the climate footprint of their products.

Taste 4
Texture 3
Smell 3
Availability 2/3
Environmental Footprint 4.5
Price 2.5

Violife Original Flavour Creamy

Pot size 250g

Price £2.50

Availability Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Ocado, some Morrison stores.

Our preferred uses Cook, spread, dessert

The main ingredients are water and coconut oil.

Smooth and creamy with a mild coconut after taste.

Fortified with vitamin B12.

Plastic pot and lid with a foil seal can all be recycled.

Taste 3.5
Texture 4
Smell 3
Availability 4
Environmental Footprint 2.5
Price 3

Sainsbury’s Free From Original Coconut Based Alternative To Soft Cheese

Pot Size 170g

Price £1.80

Availability Large Sainsburys Stores

Our preferred uses Don’t use.

We said we’d be honest – we used to use this product but Sainsbury’s have changed the ingredients and simply put – it tastes horrid and has a sour aftertaste.

It has a coconut oil and soya protein base.

It is fortified with calcium.

The plastic pot and lid can be recycled but the plastic seal can’t be.

Taste 0
Texture 2
Smell 1
Availability 2
Environmental Footprint 2
Price 2

Philadelphia Plant-Based

Pot Size 150g

Price £2.50

Availability Exclusive to Tesco

Our preferred uses Cook, spread, dessert

Deliciously creamy and very much as you’d expect an original Philadelphia spread to taste.

Hard for the non-vegans to taste a big difference.

Made of a blend of almonds, oats and coconut oil. Not a long list of ingredients.

Plastic pot and lid with a foil seal can all be recycled.

Taste 4.5
Texture 4
Smell 4
Availability 2
Environmental Footprint 3
Price 2.5

Waitrose PlantLife:

Pot Size 170g

Price £2.25

Availability Larger Waitrose Stores

Our preferred uses Cook

The taste is slightly sour and quite sharp, with a lighter but slightly oily texture, still creamy.

Coconut based spread with more ingredients than we feel is necessary compared to some of the others.

The plastic pot and lid can be recycled but the plastic seal can’t be.

Pot & lid recyclable

Taste 3
Texture 2.5
Smell 2
Availability 2
Environmental Footprint 2
Price 2.5

nush

**Dairy Free Creamy Almond M*lk Spread with live cultures Natural**

Pot size 150g

Price From £1.75 to £2.75

Availability Sainsburys, Ocado, Vegan Kind

Our preferred uses Cook, spread, dessert

The main ingredients are almond milk (95%).

Thick, smooth and creamy.

Also contains live vegan cheese cultures.

A plastic pot with cardboard wrap, a plastic lid can be recycled. Plastic seal not recyclable.

Also available is a chive version.

Taste 4
Texture 4
Smell 5
Availability 2
Environmental Footprint 5
Price 3

Note; for transparency, nush kindly sent us pots of the almond spread as we were not able to locate any in our online or usual supermarkets. We are in the northwest of the UK near Chester.

Other factors to consider…

Fortified with Vitamins

Some of the brands do boost the nutritional benefits of their vegan cream cheese by fortifying them with B12 and calcium. None of the reviewed brands fortifies with both, some don’t add anything. If this is important to you then keep your eyes peeled for these ingredients.

Number of Ingredients

We do feel that some of these products have an unnecessarily long list of ingredients some even contain sugar (Waitrose & Sainsbury’s own brands), so be warned and check the ingredients list.

THE BEST VEGAN CREAM CHEESE

These 2 products came out on top as they both taste, smell good and the texture ( which we think is key with cream cheese) isn’t grainy. The Philadelphia Plant-Based just reaches the top on taste and texture alone and the Oatly comes a close 2nd because of its environmental credentials.

1. Philadelphia Plant-Based

Outright winner purely on texture and taste.

2. Oatly Creamy Oat Spread

If you are looking for taste, texture and a company whose core principles are founded on the environmental impact and sustainable nature of a product then this is the spread for you.

These are the other supermarkets/brands that we know have vegan cream cheese options that we are yet to test:

Tesco Free From Coconut Oil Alternative to Cream Cheese
Sheese Original Spread

Do let us know if you feel we have missed out a vegan cream cheese product in this review post and if there are any other products you’d like to see an honest, unbiased review of. Leave us a comment down below and we’ll get on to it and let us know if you found this post helpful and which is your favourite vegan cream cheese.

If you are unsure of which Vegan Ingredient Alternatives are available then click here and check out this post.

Have you ordered our cookbook?

THE PLANT-BASED FAMILY COOKBOOK

60 Easy & Nutritious Vegan Meals that Kids Will Love.

We really want home cooks to explore and enjoy eating delicious plant-based meals, desserts, baking, batch cooking, making easy weeknight meals and starting the day off with amazing breakfasts. That’s why we created The Plant-Based Family Cookbook. It’s filled with vibrant recipes that we can’t wait for you to try!

Ideal if you are vegan and the recipes are easy to make gluten-free.