Best Under Counter Ice Makers of 2026

Most under-counter ice makers assume a drain below the machine, which is reasonable in a restaurant and wrong in a finished basement. The COTLIN is built for the second case: no drain line, no pump, no plumber. It goes into the opening, and it makes crescent ice into a 22-pound bin that stays cold enough to keep the cubes instead of letting them melt into a wet tray.

We like the shape of the compromise. Forty-two pounds a day is the lowest output here, and there's no point pretending otherwise. But because the bin holds onto what it makes, the ice you have on Saturday is ice you started on Thursday — a machine whose bin only insulates hands you a slushy scoop after a quiet week, whatever its daily rating says.

The build is brushed stainless with a one-touch start and nothing to program, it's ETL listed, and at 14.8 inches wide it drops into a standard 15-inch cabinet opening at 33.8 inches tall. For a wet bar, a garage kitchen, or a basement where the slab is already poured, that combination is worth more than another 50 pounds of daily capacity you'd never use.

The bin lifts out. That sounds like a small thing until the machine is at one end of a bar and the cooler is at the other; 24 pounds of ice you can carry beats a scoop and five trips. Behind it, this Euhomy makes 90 pounds a day in 40-cube batches every 11 to 20 minutes, enough to keep the bin full without running flat out.

Three cube sizes are the other reason it's here. Thin cubes for shaved ice and blended drinks, medium for soda and iced coffee, thick for something you're sipping slowly — you set it on the panel and it holds, so one machine serves a frozen margarita and a whiskey without either being wrong.

The catch is the drain. This is gravity drainage only, so the hose has to fall to an outlet lower than the machine, which rules out a cabinet where the drain runs uphill. Given a 15-inch opening, 20.39 inches of depth and 33.58 inches of height, plus a drain it can fall into, it's the only narrow machine here that lets you choose the cube. The self-clean cycle, the 24-hour timer, and the hoses, bin and hardware in the box round it out.

Two hundred sixty-five pounds a day isn't close to anything else on this list; the next machine down makes 110. That number decides it. If your bin empties during service and you're buying bagged ice to get through the weekend, this is the machine that ends that, with 90 cubes every 8 to 10 minutes and 80 pounds of storage to absorb the gaps between rushes.

The panel is set up for that kind of work: ambient temperature on the display, adjustable thickness on 22 mm cubes, one-touch self-cleaning, a timer, and alerts for full ice, low water and faults. It's ETL certified, runs freestanding or built in, and the stainless body is wrapped around cyclopentane foam insulation that holds the cold between cycles.

Plan the space before you plan the party. At 96.3 pounds it's a two-person lift, 24.53 inches of width wants a 25-inch opening or a freestanding spot, and 25.59 inches of depth is deeper than a standard 24-inch base cabinet, so it sits proud of the counter unless the run is deeper. If you're building the bar around the machine, none of that reaches you.

Durability is the soft spot. Some units have quit inside the first few months, which is why a hard week of use before you rely on it is worth the trouble — better to find a fault while the machine is new and the warranty is fresh. Buy it for the volume, and give it that shakeout before the first busy Saturday.

The Icyglee and the ICEVIVAL solve the same problem, and it's the problem that kills a lot of installations: no drain low enough to fall into. Both use an electric pump to lift waste water to an existing drain, which frees you to put the machine where the bar actually needs it. The Icyglee is the stronger of the two on output — 100 pounds a day against 84, in batches every 8 to 16 minutes.

We take it over the ICEVIVAL for that extra capacity, and the rest of the package holds up: a 24-pound bin, self-clean, a 24-hour timer, an LCD that flags low water and a full bin, and a 14.96-inch width that fits the same opening as the other narrow machines here.

Two things to weigh. A 24-pound bin behind a 100-pound daily rating means the machine runs most of the day to keep up, so give it a spot where the compressor hum and the ice drop aren't someone's headboard. And the pump is one more part in the chain — worth knowing before you box it into a cabinet with no access.

Nugget ice is the whole reason to buy this one, and nothing else on this list makes it. Soft, chewable pellets that soak into soda instead of stacking at the bottom of the glass — the ice you get at a drive-through, made at home at 70 pounds a day, with a fresh batch every 10 to 15 minutes.

Storage is where it earns some of its keep. Two drawers hold 20 pounds between them, and three layers of insulation keep about 80 percent of that frozen for up to eight hours, so the machine can sit idle overnight without handing you a drawer of meltwater in the morning. A 15-minute self-clean cycle, low-water warnings and a 24-hour timer round out the panel.

What you pay for is the ice, not the volume. Seventy pounds a day trails every cube machine here, and it's the most expensive unit on this page. If you want pellet ice for cocktails and iced coffee, no amount of cube capacity substitutes and this is the only way to get it built in. If the goal is filling a cooler on Saturday, it isn't.

The door hangs either way. On a machine going into a tight cabinet run beside a wall, that single detail decides whether you can open it fully, and it's the sort of thing most listings don't bother with. Behind it sits a 25-pound bin — a pound more than the Icyglee's — and 84 pounds a day arriving in batches every 8 to 16 minutes.

We point a tight budget here rather than at a gravity-drain unit that won't fit the space. The external pump handles the waste water, the panel covers self-cleaning and a 24-hour timer, low-water and bin-full indicators are on the display, and the body is 14.98 inches wide, so it slides into the same opening as the other 15-inch machines.

The trade against the Icyglee is simple: 16 pounds a day of output for a lower price and a slightly larger bin. If your bar tops out at a few rounds an evening, you won't notice the difference. If the bin empties every service, spend the extra on the bigger machine.

At 42.3 pounds, the Mojgar is light enough for one person to carry down a flight of stairs and slide into the opening, which is more than the 96-pound VEVOR or the 62-pound COTLIN can claim. It makes 100 pounds a day, with the first batch in 10 to 18 minutes and an adjustable thickness setting once it's running.

The rest of the package is deliberately plain: an R290 compressor, one-touch self-clean, an LED light inside, stainless outside, and the inlet hose, drain hose and scoop in the box. It stands 29.88 inches tall, so it slides under a low bar top the way the Mountman does, and at 15.16 inches deep it won't crowd the back of a shallow cabinet.

The compromises come with the price. The opening has to be wider than 15 inches, since the body is 15.75 across, and the bin's 33-pound rating is generous in the way all of these are — cube sheets stack with air between them, so plan on something closer to 20 pounds of scoopable ice. For a household that isn't stocking for a party, that's fine.

Where it makes sense: a first machine for a garage bar or a basement kitchen where the bagged-ice bill is the real problem and the cabinet run is already framed. Where it doesn't: the household that wants a brimming bin at seven in the evening — the Mountman carries the same bin rating and adds a water filter for a little more money, and that's the better buy when both will fit.