Starbucks Caramel Macchiato Copycat Recipe
Vanilla syrup, milk, espresso poured last so it marks the foam, and a caramel drizzle. Two minutes once the syrup is made.
Cooking Starbucks at home, and what its menu costs
Syrups, sauces and cold foams - the three things that turn coffee into a five-pound habit.
AI-generated editorial illustration created for food.fast; not a product photograph from Starbucks.
The Starbucks recipes on this site
Not every menu item has a recipe here, and that is deliberate - We write a page when there is something genuinely worth saying about how to make the thing.
Starbucks Java Chip Frappuccino Copycat Recipe
Coffee ice cubes, mocha sauce and a pinch of xanthan gum - the ingredient that stops it splitting. Three minutes.
Starbucks Mocha Sauce Copycat Recipe
Cocoa, sugar and condensed milk cooked into something that clings. Eight minutes, and the reason home mochas taste thin.
Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte Copycat Recipe
A pumpkin spice sauce made in fifteen minutes that keeps two weeks, and the drink built from it in ninety seconds.
Starbucks Vanilla Sweet Cream Cold Brew Copycat Recipe
Coffee steeped in cold water for sixteen hours, and a frothed vanilla cream that cascades through it. Five minutes of work.
Starbucks Vanilla Syrup Copycat Recipe
Sugar, water, vanilla. Four minutes on the hob for a bottle that costs about forty pence and replaces a shelf of them.
What Starbucks food actually tastes of
Starbucks espresso is roasted dark on purpose. If your copy tastes brighter and more acidic than the shop's, your coffee is too light, not your syrup too weak. A dark or Italian roast is the match.
Sauces and syrups are different things. A syrup is sugar and water and pours thin. A sauce - mocha, white mocha, pumpkin spice, caramel brulee - has condensed milk or cream in it and clings. Substituting one for the other is the most common reason a home version tastes thin.
Cold foam is not whipped cream. It is non-fat milk aerated cold with a handheld frother and a little vanilla syrup, and it must be non-fat or it will not hold its structure sitting on cold coffee.
About Starbucks
The reason a Starbucks habit costs what it does is that you are buying an espresso and a shot of syrup for the price of a small meal, and the syrup costs about eleven pence to make.
That makes Starbucks the single highest-return chain on this entire site for a home cook. A vanilla syrup is sugar, water and vanilla, simmered for four minutes. A caramel drizzle is sugar taken to amber and let down with cream. A pumpkin spice sauce is a purée, a spice blend and condensed milk. Make one bottle of each and the drinks you buy twice a week become drinks you make in ninety seconds while the kettle boils.
You do not need an espresso machine for most of them. A moka pot, an AeroPress or even a very strong filter brew is close enough that the syrup does the heavy lifting, which it was always doing anyway.
What Starbucks charges, from the menu we hold
10 priced options across 115 menu sections, as last recorded in United States. Prices move and vary by outlet, so treat these as a reference point rather than a quote.
Half the menu sits between $3.99 and $6.80. Here is the whole spread:
| Position | Item | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Cheapest priced item | $2.45 | |
| Middle of the menu | $5.93 | |
| Dearest priced item | $7.75 |
Starbucks changes its prices without telling you. We read this menu once a month and keep the reading – have the changes emailed to you, free, one click to stop.
Every reading we hold is on the Starbucks price history. The full list is on the Starbucks menu page, and the 6 items we have rebuilt at home are listed here.
What Starbucks charges in 11 countries
The same item, priced from each country’s own menu and converted to one currency so the columns can be read against each other. Starbucks sets prices per market, so a gap here is the chain’s pricing rather than an exchange rate artefact – and the widest gap on this list is White Chocolate Mocha, which costs $7.21 in the dearest market and $2.62 in the cheapest.
| Item | 🇺🇸 USD | 🇬🇧 GBP | 🇦🇺 AUD | 🇨🇦 CAD | 🇮🇪 EUR | 🇳🇿 NZD | 🇸🇬 SGD | 🇵🇭 PHP | 🇭🇰 HKD | 🇲🇾 MYR | 🇹🇭 THB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | $6.75 | $4.68 | $4.32 | $5.21 | $3.37 | $6.17 | $2.62 | $6.12 | — | $4.47 | |
| — | $5.29 | — | $3.33 | $3.64 | — | — | $2.07 | $5.73 | $2.57 | $4.02 | |
| — | $7.21 | $4.26 | $4.53 | $5.10 | $3.37 | $6.09 | $2.62 | — | — | — | |
| — | $5.56 | — | $3.47 | $4.31 | — | — | $2.23 | — | $3.89 | $4.17 | |
| — | — | $5.41 | $3.96 | $6.16 | — | — | $2.47 | — | $4.28 | $5.06 | |
| — | $4.37 | $3.84 | $3.96 | — | $2.81 | $6.17 | $2.62 | — | — | — | |
| — | — | $5.41 | $3.96 | $6.16 | — | — | $2.70 | — | $4.28 | $5.06 | |
| — | — | $4.68 | $4.04 | — | $3.37 | — | $2.70 | $5.73 | $3.89 | — | |
| — | $6.48 | — | $4.32 | $4.76 | — | — | $2.47 | — | $4.28 | — | |
| — | $5.56 | $3.84 | $3.47 | $4.31 | — | — | $2.23 | — | — | — | |
| $5.72 | $5.56 | — | $3.47 | — | — | — | — | — | $3.89 | $4.47 | |
| — | $6.75 | $4.68 | $3.33 | $6.11 | — | $6.17 | — | — | — | — |
Only items Starbucks prices in at least 5 of the markets we hold are listed, because a row with three figures in it is a gap rather than a comparison.
What Starbucks sells nearly everywhere
Ranked by how many of the markets in our price data carry the item with a published price. This is computed from the menu tables, so it reflects what the chain actually sells rather than what it advertises.
| Menu item | Markets priced | Recipe |
|---|---|---|
| Caramel Macchiato | 9 | Starbucks Caramel Macchiato Copycat Recipe |
| White Chocolate Mocha | 7 | - |
| Caffè Americano | 7 | - |
| Vanilla Sweet Cream Cold Brew | 6 | Starbucks Vanilla Sweet Cream Cold Brew Copycat Recipe |
| Flat White | 6 | - |
| Caffè Latte | 6 | - |
| Caffè Mocha | 5 | - |
| Iced Caffè Latte | 5 | - |
| Iced White Chocolate Mocha | 5 | - |
| Cappuccino | 5 | - |
| Iced Caramel Macchiato | 5 | Starbucks Caramel Macchiato Copycat Recipe |
| Blueberry Muffin | 4 | - |
Build your Starbucks order, see what it costs
Tick what you would actually order. The total runs as you go, and where we have built the item at home you will see both figures side by side.
Other coffee chains
What else people compare Starbucks against, and what we hold for each.
Dunkin'
2 copycat recipes
Pret A Manger
1 copycat recipe
Costa Coffee
1 copycat recipe
Black Canyon Coffee
1 copycat recipe
Coffee World
1 copycat recipe
Starbucks is a trademark of its owner. food.fast is independent and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Starbucks. Recipes on this page are our own interpretations, not the company’s formulas.