Top 3 Best Vegan Mince Pies in UK Supermarkets (2023)

Want to know where to buy the best vegan mince pies in the UK in 2023?  You’ve come to the right place!  We’ve tried them all and we’re revealing our top 3.  Read on to find out which supermarket has the flakiest pastry and the juiciest fruit filling.

In the battle for the best vegan mince pies, the competition this year is strong!  In this blog, I’m reviewing the plant-based mince pies on offer in UK supermarkets in 2023 (including some of the glorious vegan gluten free mince pies available this year).

Let’s get straight to it!  Click the quick links below to jump straight to the top 3, or to find out what the vegan mince pies are like from your local supermarket.

Quick Links:

• The Top 3 Best Vegan Mince Pies 2023
• The Full Leaderboard
• How do the fillings compare?
• Asda
• Co-op
• Sainsbury’s
• Tesco
• Waitrose
• Other Vegan Mince Pies (UK shops)

Top 3 Best Vegan Mince Pies 2023

Here are the mince pies that came out top (and bottom) in my reviews, (including some wonderful gluten free vegan mince pies!).

Click on the names to take you to that specific review!

The Top 3 To Buy

1. Tesco Free From Mince Pies
2. Waitrose Free From Mince Pies 
3. Sainsbury’s Free From Mini Mince Pies, Taste the Difference

Special mentions also go to these delicious two:

• Costa Free From Mince Tart
• Asda Free From Iced Mince Pies

The Bottom 3 To Avoid

Sadly, these three weren’t for us this year:

• Riverford Organic Vegan Mince Pies
• Asda Plant Based OMV! Mince Pies
• Waitrose Essential Shortcrust Mince Pies

Let’s get into the full reviews!

Asda Vegan Mince Pies

Asda Free From Iced Mince Pies x 4 (225g)

Rating:  7/10

Price:  £2 (50p each)

Gluten-free?  Yes*

Calories per mince pie:  226 calories

The best bits:

• Well filled
• Juicy fruit filling
• Icing is a nice addition, especially if you have a sweet tooth.  These are wonderful vegan gluten-free mince pies, a real treat and something a bit different!
• Neat and uniform design with a crimped edge

What could be better?

• These are a little plain in terms of their design.  There are prettier mince pies out there to adorn your party table.
• These are definitely for someone with a sweet tooth.  If you prefer your mince pies less sweet, these probably won’t be for you.

Asda Free From Mini Mince Pies x 9 (275g)

Rating:  6/10

Price:  £2.50 (28p each)

Gluten-free?  Yes*

Calories per mince pie:  119 calories

The best bits:

• Pretty star design and pretty packaging, perfect for a party table
• Great treat size, rather than full size
• Well filled

What could be better?

• The filling was a little drier than some of the others tested
• Flavour-wise, they’re pleasant and on the first try I really liked these (the husband gave them 8/10). However, when directly comparing them to the other mince pies in this test, the filling fell down a bit.  The fruit wasn’t tangy but instead quite sweet and with a hint of brandy.  If it wasn’t for the brandy I think these may have been a little bland so a tangier filling would have been welcome.

Asda Plant Based OMV! Mince Pies x 6

Rating:  3/10

Price:  £1.45 (24p each)

Gluten-free?  No

Calories per mince pie:  229 calories

The best bits:

• The star design was pleasant and I liked the bold packaging design.

What could be better?

• These mince pies had the least amount of filling out of pies tested, with several fruitless gaps.
• The pastry was delicate and crumbly which made it messy to eat and easy to damage.
• The filling had a slightly odd flavour, with a slight bitterness to it… possibly orange peel if I had to guess?  The flavour was sweet with no tang, which I missed.

(Whilst I didn’t rate the OMV mince pies, can we take a minute to appreciate the new OMV range at Asda? They’ve got so many lovely-sounding treats that I can’t wait to try.  Well done Asda!)

Co-op Vegan Mince Pies

Co-op Free From Mince Pies x 4 (220g)

Rating:  5.5/10

Price:  £2.25 (56p each)

Gluten-free?  Yes*

Calories per mince pie: 218 calories

The best bits:

• Chunky, rustic design that was dusted liberally with icing sugar
• Nice crisp texture to the pastry
• Juicy filling with a hint of fruity tang

What could be better?

• The pastry had a slightly stale taste to it and it was a bit grainy
• The filling was lacking slightly with several gaps
• The fruit filling was quite sweet and didn’t have a lot of flavour

Sainsbury’s Vegan Mince Pies

Sainsbury’s Free From Mini Mince Pies, Taste the Difference x 9 (275g)

Rating:  8/10

Price:  £3.25 (36p per mini mince pie)

Gluten-free?  Yes*

Calories per mince pie:  117 calories

The best bits:

• The pastry is lovely and crisp
• The design is pretty with stars on top
• Very nice festive packaging
• I quite liked the smaller size of the mince pie, they’d be good for Christmas Day
• The flavour of the mincemeat was good – the spices were balanced and it had a bit of a tang to it which I liked – perhaps that was the brandy they say the pies are finished with?

What could be better?

• Not a lot really, I thought they were one of the best vegan mince pies I’ve tried! The only thing I would say is to make them deeper so you can have more filling because they weren’t overly ‘juicy’.

Sainsbury’s Free From Mince Pies x 4 (230g)

Rating:  6.5/10

Price:  £2 (50p each)

Gluten-free?  Yes*

Calories per mince pie:  216 calories

The best bits:

• Neat design and finish
• Good pastry balancing crisp and flaky with the traditional softer shortcrust
• Deep, well-filled pie
• Juicy mincemeat
• Whilst these don’t have a lot of flavour, the flavour they do have is pleasant – a hint of fruity tang with a citrus undertone without any bitterness.

What could be better?

• They were not amazing but perfectly pleasant
• The pastry had some grittiness to it
• The filling was a bit too sweet and the flavour was lacking in intensity

Tesco Vegan Mince Pies

Tesco Free From Mince Pies x 4 (220g)

Rating:  8.5/10

Price:  £1.80 (45p each)

Gluten-free?  Yes*

Calories per mince pie:  218 calories

The best bits:

• The pastry was a nice level of flaky (not too crisp, not too soft)
• Well filled with a juicy and moist fruit-filling
• Pretty design with a snowflake pattern and a dusting of icing sugar
• The filling had a lovely fruity tang to it
• You wouldn’t know that these fantastic gluten free vegan mince pies were gluten free (or even vegan!)

What could be better?

• They were quite sweet, perhaps a touch less sugar
• They looked a bit wonky but I personally don’t mind that

Waitrose Vegan Mince Pies

Waitrose Free From Mince Pies x 4 (220g)

Rating:  8.5/10  

Price:  £2.75 (69p each)

Gluten-free?  Yes*

Calories per mince pie:  216 calories

The best bits:

• These were absolutely lovely! Full of delicious tangy flavour with a harmonious blend of spices. Delicious!
• The pastry was sweet and crisp, I suspect partly due to the addition of ground almonds which gave it a bit of bite.

What could be better?

• The design was rather lacklustre which was a shame – nothing special or Christmassy about it.
• The pastry was very crumbly – crumbs on your Christmas jumper guaranteed!

Waitrose Essential Shortcrust Mince Pies x 6 (285g)

Rating:  2/10

Price:  £1.70 (28p each)

Gluten-free?  No

Calories per mince pie:  208 calories

The best bits:

• They’re cheap
• Can be used to get rid of guests you don’t like

What could be better?

• Soft and crumbly pastry… but not in a good way.  They were messy to eat and hard to keep neat, the pastry flakes off at the slightest knock.
• The pastry was soggy underneath
• It was lacking in filling, barely 1/2 full
• The filling had a slightly unpleasant flavour and a bitterness to it
• Watch out – apparently, some years these are vegan and some years they are not, Waitrose has been known to change the recipe.  This year (2023) at my local Waitrose they are vegan.

Other Vegan Mince Pies (from UK Shops)

Costa Mince Tart 85g

Rating:  8/10

Price:  £2.45 each

Gluten-free?  Yes*

Calories per mince pie:  342 calories

The best bits:

• Whenever I see these in Costa, I find them hard to resist!  The pastry is crisp and buttery, but doesn’t fall apart when you bite into it.
• The filling is fruity, thick and citrussy with a hint of caramel (unusual, but not unpleasant!).

What could be better?

• Gosh, they’re expensive!  Whilst they are bigger than all of the other mince pies in this review, I’m not about to share it so that makes it an expensive ‘serves one’.
• They’re 342 calories each.  Yikes!
• They’re very sweet, they taste almost like a cross between a treacle tart and a mince pie.  Not a problem if you’ve got a sweet tooth but they’d be too sweet for some.

Riverford Organic Vegan Mince Pies x 6 (350g)

Rating:  3.5/10

Price:  £6.25 (£1.04 each)

Gluten-free?  No

Calories per mince pie:  264 calories

The best bits:

• They look fantastic – chunky, rustic and homemade.
• They were filled to the brim!  The lid of the pies was actually domed because they’d jammed so much filling in.  By far the best-filled pie in our test and it looked so juicy and delicious too.
• The soft, classic pastry looked and tasted pleasant.

What could be better?

• I wanted to love these… but sadly the flavour was not for me.  The flavour was different to any of the others that I tested.  These mince pies have cognac and cider in the ingredients and I think it was the flavour of the cognac coming through that I wasn’t keen on.  If you like a boozy mince pie, perhaps you’ll like these but sadly they weren’t for me.
• The pastry felt quite dry to eat.
• Expensive at over £1 each

How do the mince pie fillings compare?

The Leaderboard

1st Place – Tesco Free From Mince Pies 8.5/10

2nd Place – Waitrose Free From Mince Pies 8.5/10

3rd Place – Sainsbury’s Free From Mini Mince Pies, Taste the Difference 8/10

4th Place – Costa Free From Mince Tart 8/10

5th Place – Asda Free From Iced Mince Pies 7/10

6th Place – Sainsbury’s Free From Mince Pies 6.5/10

7th Place – Asda Free From Mini Mince Pies 6/10

8th Place – Co-op Free From Mince Pies 5.5/10

9th Place – Riverford Organic Vegan Mince Pies 3.5/10

10th Place – Asda Plant Based OMV! Mince Pies 3/10

Last Place – Waitrose Essential Shortcrust Mince Pies 2/10

So there you have it!  Pick from the top 3 and you can be safe in the knowledge that your 2023 mince pie selection will be a delicious treat.

I’d love to hear your mince pie recommendations!  Send me a message on social media @aveganvisit or an email at hello@aveganvisit.com to let me know which you think are the best vegan mince pies.

Prices are correct as of 27/11/23.

This is an honest review – all opinions are a result of me personally taste-testing each mince pie, which I purchased myself.  If there are any other vegan mince pies that you’d like me to taste test for you, just send me an email (I don’t need much persuading!).

*Always check the packet of the item you are consuming to confirm whether it is gluten-free or suitable for allergy sufferers because product ingredients and manufacturing methods may have changed since this blog was published, therefore I cannot guarantee the product is still gluten or milk-free.