The best pastry subscription options ranked by someone who takes croissants too seriously

If you’ve ever wanted good pastries at home without needing to do a full bakery run, the subscription options are kind of surprisingly limited. We started looking into them because one of our testers has in-laws who show up unannounced pretty often, and there are only so many times you can offer cereal before it starts to feel a little grim.

The goal was straightforward: find something that could live in the freezer and turn into a decent breakfast spread without a lot of planning or work. We found that there really aren’t that many options that focus on pastries. There are, however, plenty of food subscriptions, a lot of bread-focused ones, and then a handful of things that don’t quite make the cut if pastries are the priority.

Our tester ordered some pastries through Goldbelly, which is great if you want pastries from specific bakeries. But it still requires planning ahead, and that doesn’t really solve the “people are already here” situation.

Crumble Crate and similar options look fun, but those are more baking kits. So again, not ideal, if you want something ready like now. Pastreez is nice if you want macarons specifically, and Wolferman’s felt more like something you send as a gift than something you keep stocked yourself. But if that’s your thing… our tester did say that those were delicious.

We also looked at the Williams Sonoma Les Marais croissant subscription because it came up constantly in our search. And it lives up to the hype. The croissants are very buttery, very flaky, the kind that you slow down for. But our testers agreed that it feels like short-term splurge. The price and three-month lock in makes it feel less practical, unless you really have the budget for it.

Atr that, we gave Wildgrain a try. Our testers picked a mix of breads and pastries, thinking worse case, a fancy cranberry sourdough with eggs and bacon would carry breakfast if the pastries didn’t work out. But the croissants ended up being the thing that everyone at Sunday’s brunch raved about. They bake from frozen and come out with that light, layered texture (typical for croissants) instead of feeling dense.

At this point, it feels like you’re choosing between occasional, high-end pastry boxes or something that’s consistently there when you need it. There’s not a lot in between yet.

If you’ve found a pastry subscription box that’s worth it, please let us know! We’d love to know what other options are out there so we can test some more and share with you.