These ice cream scoops are a sherbet, no matter what you're serving. (Lisa Schweitzer/Yahoo)(Lisa Schweitzer/Yahoo)
Having just tested the best ice cream makers, I might be a touch obsessed with all things related to ice cream. And I'm not alone in my adoration: According to the International Dairy Foods Association, the average American eats roughly 19 pounds, or about 4 gallons, of the stuff each year. With 63% of Americans consuming homemade or store-bought ice cream at home, it seemed like the right time to test the best ice cream scoops of 2025.
As a culinary school graduate, kitchen gear expert and mom of two, I've seen my fair share of pints — and I've been known to use a spoon or cookie scoop for dishing out frozen desserts. For testing, I tried to cover all my bases, opting for some traditional scoops, some dishers/cookie scoops and one paddle. The prices were all pretty reasonable, starting at $8, with the exception of one $40 scoop. My picks for the best ice cream scoops are easy to use and clean, and will deliver delightful orbs of frozen dessert into bowls and cones.
Related: More cooking must-haves, including Ina Garten's go-to kitchen gadgets, the best grills and the best chef's knives.
Update, July 9, 2025: We checked all product prices and availability. Our No. 1 pick for best ice cream scoop remains unchanged.
This stainless steel ice cream scoop with a rubber handle feels substantial in hand, likely due to its weight, which is about 9 ounces and twice that of the pro-approved Zeroll scoop, below. Despite the Sumo scoop's heft, I really liked using it.
It made easy work of piercing hard-frozen pints of ice cream with its pointier scoop head. This shape also gets into the corners of a round container better than some others we tried.
The Sumo is made of stainless steel and BPA-free rubber and is dishwasher-safe. It's also ... cute, thanks to the colorful handle (which comes in purple, red and turquoise in addition to blue). While not a must, it's always nice to have a single-use tool that sparks joy in the kitchen.
This aluminum ice cream scoop has been around since 1935 and is a favorite among editors and professionals for its ability to scoop near-perfect orbs. The handle is filled with heat-conductive liquid that captures the warmth of your hand and flows down to the scoop to ensure easy ice cream scooping and releasing.
Both Tyler Malek, co-founder of Salt & Straw ice cream, and Christina Seid, owner of Chinatown Ice Cream Factory, consider the Zeroll to be the best on the market. "It's superior in all forms because it gets a good shape and is just warm enough to melt the ice cream," Seid says.
I found it comfortable to hold, and it's effective: The edge of the scoop itself is sharper than some others, which makes digging into a hard-frozen pint much easier.
You must hand-wash it, but it rinses clean quickly, and it's a bit over $20, which is my mental tipping point for most single-use kitchen tools.
The Norpro ice cream spade features a simple and sleek aluminum design that works very well to get ice cream out of a carton and into bowls, as long as the carton is larger than a pint. This tool is built for speed as opposed to creating uniform orbs of ice cream.
It's easy to hold, and the shape makes you feel like you're one of the pros dishing up ice cream behind the counter at Stone Cold Creamery. Like the Zeroll, the Norpro contains defrosting fluid in the handle that helps make scooping hard ice cream easier.
The drawback? It's hand-wash only, but it takes only a few seconds to clean it with soap and water. And at just eight bucks, the price is right.
My time spent testing ice cream scoops yielded these considerations to keep in mind when you're shopping.
Design: We tried three types of scoops, but what you choose will depend on personal preference.
Traditional scoop: This style has a handle with a rounded scoop at the end that releases ice cream with any additional mechanism. Each scoop has a different capacity, somewhere between 1.5 to 3 ounces. Some have metal handles and others have rubberized ones.
Paddle: This style, like the Norpro, is found in ice cream shops and features a larger, wider shovel design that works well, but can feel too large for pints and may be better suited to half-gallons.
Cookie scoop/disher-style: Disher scoops feature a spring-loaded mechanism to release the ice cream. (They're interchangeable with cookie scoops, but ice cream-specific dishers usually have a larger capacity.) This type can be harder for people with arthritis or hand strength concerns to use.
Ease of cleaning: All the ice cream scoops we tried are very easy to clean, though some are not dishwasher-safe. If the ability to toss it in the dishwasher is important to you, note that both the Zeroll and Norpro models are hand-wash only.
After opening each box, I noted if the tool was dishwasher-safe and gave it a quick rinse with warm, soapy water. Then I put the scoops to work, first in the office while we conducted a taste-test of a dozen store-bought vanilla ice creams. My colleagues and I used the scoops to dish out sample after sample, keeping track of how the tools felt in our hands and how easy they were to use.
Then, I took the scoops home, where I made sure to try them in different-size containers and with ice creams that included mix-ins such as cookie dough, brownie bites and fudge or caramel ribbons.
Midnight Scoop ($40): This ergonomic, stainless-steel scoop is pricey, but might be worth it if you have hand-strength issues, as it's designed to be used like a shovel and pushed forward into ice cream, rather than pulled towards you. This motion relies less on weaker wrist muscles and more on larger muscle groups. It was comfortable to hold, with a ridged handle, and is dishwasher-safe.
Oxo Good Grips Stainless Steel Ice Cream Scoop ($12): This traditional-style scooper with a rubber handle did not work quite as well as others with similar designs, like the Sumo. It had a tough time releasing ice cream once scooped. This model is dishwasher-safe.
Homure Cookie Scoop Size #16 ($9): This jumbo-size cookie scoop (it holds 4 tablespoons) is often used for dishing out ice cream, in addition to portioning cookie dough or meatballs, etc. It's stainless steel with a rubber handle and features a spring mechanism that worked well at first, but got stuck after multiple uses. It's dishwasher-safe.
Jenaluca Large Size #12 Ice Cream Scoop Disher ($20): Like the Homure model, this is a very large cookie scoop-style disher (it holds 1/3 cup) with a spring-loaded release. However, this one is made entirely of stainless steel. We found it hard to squeeze and it felt uncomfortable in our hands. It is dishwasher-safe.
Spring Chef Heavy Duty Ice Cream Scoop ($9): This model is similar to the Sumo, but has a flat edge at the top of the scoop, which didn't work as well when digging into hard-frozen pints. It features a comfy rubber handle, is slightly lighter than the Sumo and is dishwasher-safe.
Just like when we asked people about the best scoop for ice cream, everyone had an opinion on the right way to scoop it out. Some advised letting the ice cream soften a bit on the counter; others said to zap the container in the microwave for six seconds. So we asked the pros for definitive advice. "Scoop through the center of the container and do the sides after, as the center is always the hardest part," says Seid. As for softening the ice cream, Malek, who just published America’s Most Iconic Ice Creams: A Salt & Straw Cookbook, suggests, "About 30 minutes to an hour before you're ready to enjoy it, you should transfer your ice cream to the fridge to allow it to soften just slightly for easier scooping."
Tyler Malek, chef and co-founder, Salt & Straw
Christina Seid, owner, Chinatown Ice Cream Factory
We received complimentary samples of some products and purchased others ourselves, but we reviewed all products using the same objective criteria.