Best Soda Makers of 2026

Juice, iced tea, lemonade, cocktails: the OmniFizz carbonates drinks a water-only soda maker can't touch. The fizz infuser cap manages the pressure instead of letting a sugared drink erupt, and the machine needs no cord, no battery and no outlet. In the box you get a 60L CO2 cylinder, a 1-liter bottle and a half-liter bottle.

That flexibility is worth real money in a household where someone drinks fizzy lemonade or a sparkling cocktail, and the OmniFizz charges less for it than the other machine here that pulls the same trick. The two-bottle setup turned out to matter more than we expected: a liter for the fridge, a half-liter when one person wants a glass, so you aren't carbonating more than you'll drink. Short bursts give a gentle fizz, and a longer press builds something sharper.

The compromises are ordinary ones. The housing is plastic and feels light, there's a single cylinder in the box, and at 8 inches deep by 16 inches tall it takes more counter depth than the slim SodaStreams. None of that changes the reason to buy it: it's one of two machines here that will carbonate whatever is already in your fridge.

Set the Carbonator 3 next to the plastic machines and it stops reading as an appliance. The enclosure is stainless steel, the lever is damped so it moves with a slow weighted pull, and the whole thing is cordless — the cylinder inside is the only power source. It's the one machine here that looks like it came from a design shop rather than a small-appliance aisle.

The lever is what sold us, and not for the look of it. Pull and hold, and you can feel the carbonation building instead of counting button presses; release and the pressure settles. It takes the standard screw-in 60L cylinder, so refills aren't tied to a single brand's exchange program. The footprint is 10.16 inches deep by 6.02 inches wide and 16.3 inches tall, the deepest of the machines we measured, and the included bottle holds 800 milliliters.

Two things to know before you pay for the finish. The cylinder isn't in the box, so the machine sits idle until you buy one. And at 800 milliliters the bottle is the smallest in this group, which means a second round at dinner for two people who like bubbles with the meal. The premium is worth it exactly when the machine stays on display; if it lives in a cabinet, put the difference into cylinders and bottles instead.

There's no cylinder in the box, so budget for a standard screw-in 60L canister before the first pour — the Ruby 2 can't fizz without one, and that's the one real annoyance in an otherwise calm machine. Once it's in, the quick-lock collar grabs the bottle on the first try, the aluminum body is light enough to shift with one hand, and the carbonation arrives with a quiet hiss rather than the gas rush the other machines let out. We stopped noticing it while it worked, which is the highest compliment we can pay a countertop appliance in a room where people talk.

It also accepts any maker's screw-in cylinder, which keeps refill costs in your own hands — Mysoda is explicit that Quick Connect canisters won't fit, so don't buy one by mistake. You get a single 1-liter bottle, and a second is the first accessory to add. At 9.45 inches deep and 16.14 inches tall it wants a little more counter depth than a SodaStream, and the coated finish wipes down without scratching.

At the bottom of the price range sits the one machine here that hands you everything you need to fizz on day one: the Gaia, a 60L cylinder, one dishwasher-safe bottle, and Pepsi Zero and Mtn Dew Zero drops. For a first machine, a gift, or a kitchen where nobody agrees on flavors, that's a low-stakes way in.

We think of it as a trial run rather than a long-term machine. One cylinder and one bottle mean a refill and a second bottle are in your near future if you fizz daily, and the TERRA bundle covers both from the start. What the Gaia does well is stay out of the way: a single button press carbonates, the body weighs 6.1 pounds, and the included drops are a shortcut to a familiar soda taste without syrup shopping.

Two things to keep in mind. Gaia machines take only SodaStream Quick Connect cylinders, so refills go through one channel. And the bottle has to be seated all the way — if it isn't, water can seep out around the top, which is a nuisance you solve once by pressing down until it clicks and then never think about again.

This is the same idea as the OmniFizz — carbonate the drink, not just the water — executed in brushed stainless and sold without a CO2 cylinder. The InFizz Fusion costs more than the DrinkMate and arrives less ready to use; what you pay for is the body, the ring-pull locking collar, and a FusionCap that lets you fizz juice, tea, cocktails, wine or flat soda and then cap the bottle for later.

The cap is the part worth understanding. It holds pressure and releases it in a controlled way, so a drink that would foam over in a water-only machine can be carbonated and stored in the 1-liter bottle rather than drunk on the spot. That's what makes a sparkling-wine spritzer or a batch of fizzy cider practical at home — pour half now, keep the rest for tomorrow.

It's a solid piece of kit at 3.57 kilograms, with enough heft to stay put while you twist the collar, and the stainless finish shows every fingerprint. Only the 1-liter bottle comes in the box; the 0.6-liter bottle is sold separately, and the cylinder, again, is not included.

We think it justifies the premium in one specific kitchen: one where sparkling cocktails, wine spritzers or fizzy cider are the point, and a bottle that keeps its bubbles until the second glass is worth paying for. For plain seltzer it's more machine than you need — the OmniFizz does the same trick for less with a cylinder included, and the SodaStreams are simpler and cheaper again for water alone.

Seventeen pounds of die-cast metal: the lever on this KitchenAid moves with a weight you can feel, and the machine sits still while you pull it instead of skidding across the counter. It's assembled in Greenville, Ohio, and it's the only soda maker here that reads as furniture rather than a gadget — metal housing, wide base, and the kind of presence people ask about.

It takes SodaStream bottles and the 60-plus SodaStream flavors, and it ships with a 60L CO2 tank and a 1-liter BPA-free bottle. The lever gives press-by-press control, so you decide how hard the bubbles hit, and the wide base means no hand on top to steady it. That combination is why it costs what it costs.

What the money doesn't buy is convenience. It's the most expensive machine in this group, it comes with one bottle, and it's tall enough that a run of upper cabinets can get in the way — measure the gap before you claim counter space for it. What we kept coming back to is how little it moves while you work it, which is exactly the quality you're paying for. For everyone else, the same money buys a bundle with three cylinders and three bottles.