40 Sweetest Apples – Sweet Apple Varieties to Grow

The sweetest apples you can buy come from a select group, including Gala, Fuji, Golden Delicious, and Honeycrisp. These sweetest apples have a much higher sugar content than others, and it’s best to eat them when they’re in season. The sweetness level of the apple is also affected by the climate in the orchard, tree fruit sete, autumn weather, how ripe it is when you pick it, and the overall climate of the growing region.

So, what are the sweetest apples? Since there are seemingly dozens of apple varieties available, it’s not surprising that you’ll be confused. In this short post, we’ll list 40 of the sweetest apples available, and you can easily find many of them in your local grocery store.

1. Ambrosia Apple

You’ll get a sweet, rich, full-bodied taste with this sweetest apple. This particular variety has a reputation for having complex floral scents with a sweet juiciness. It also has a lower acid content, and the natural sugars take center stage when it comes to the flavor of this apple. This is one of the more rare modern apple types that wasn’t  bred for sweetness, but it was discovered purely by luck.

It’s not as widely available as the Fuji apples, but you can find them showing up at more and more supermarkets as the popularity grows. It’s one of the sweetest apples around, and you can usually get them from October to March in Canada and the United States. Imported ambrosia apples from Chile or New Zealand are available in early spring until mid-summer.

1 Ambrosia Apple
Ambrosia Apple by navarrd / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

2. Autumn Glory Apple

This is a sweet, large type of apple that is from Washington State. This sweetest apple is a cross between the Golden Delicious apple and the Fuji apple. As such, this is quickly becoming one of the premier autumn apples. It has a lot of similarities to the Honeycrisp apple, including bigger fruits, yellow and red peels, and a cinnamon spice taste with a full-bodied flavor.

2 Autumn Glory Apple
Eden in a Wisconsin Garden by Lori Laurent Smith / CC BY-NC 2.0

3. Cameo Apple

This is a newer sweetest apple variety that was recently discovered in Washington. The parentage of this apple is a mystery, but they’re thought to be descendants from Golden Delicious and Red Delicious apples. These are actually two of the sweetest American-bred apples there are.

3 Cameo Apple
Cameo Apples… by Jackie / CC BY-NC 2.0

4. Choupette or Dalinette Apple

Dalinette apples are marketed as Choupette, and this is a newer tart-sweet apple that was recently discovered in the French countryside. Thai variety was specifically bred for excellent flavor and disease resistance. In turn, this makes it an optimal choice to have in organic orchards. This well-balanced, fresh apple is very likely to catch on outside of Europe, especially as more people turn to chemical-free gardening methods and need hardy specimens to combat diseases.

4 Choupette Apple
Apples by Gordon Joly / CC BY-SA 2.0

5. Cosmic Crisp Apple

This sweet-tart but well balanced fruit comes with a deep red peeling on it. This sweetest apple flawlessly combines the flavor of the Honeycrisp parent and namesake with the easy-growing traits and natural disease resistance of the Enterprise Apple. Bred by scientists at Washington State University, these apples are just starting to come out the market at a commercial scale.

5 Cosmic Crisp Apple
Apples by Tom Gill / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

6. Cox’s Orange Pippin Apple

This is a British Heirloom sweetest apple variety that has a very fruity, sweet and complex flavor to it. The apple is very tasty in its own right, but it is also a popular parent apple for dozens of modern and popular varieties. It was difficult to find in North America at one point, but it’s now becoming more and more common, especially if you look for it on the East Coast.

6 Coxs Orange Pippin Apple
Cox’s Orange Pippin by Simon G. Bradley Roberts / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

7. Crispin or Mutsu Apple

Crispin apples are also called mutsu apples, and they were originally from Japan and bred to be a hybrid of the relatively unknown but sweet Indo apple and the Golden Delicious apple. You’ll get a very honey-like and delicate flavor that is very well balanced with a crispness and light tartness. Sun-ripened apples in this category tend to be some of the sweetest apples you can get with this cultivar.
7 Mutsu Apple
Mutsu apples… by Jackie / CC BY-NC 2.0

8. Dazzle Apple

Dazzle apples are shiny-red, large, and very sweet apples with a fruity flesh. It’s another newer variety, and they are a direct result of a New Zealand specialized breeding program. They’re a cross between the Pacific Queen and Sweetie, and they are direct descendants of a few of New Zealand’s favorite sweetest apples, including Braeburn, Royal Gala, and Spendor. They have fantastic genes that really come through in the flavor profile.
8 Dazzle Apple
[appleade] by RHiNO NEAL / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

9. Envy Apple

This modern variety of apple was specifically bred to offer the perfect balance between refreshing tartness and sweet flavors. You get this apple by crossing the Braeburn apple for spicy and refreshing notes with the sweet Gala apple. As a result, you get a sweet apple with a slightly spicy undertone.
9 Envy Apple
Envy by ☼☼Jo Zimny Photos☼☼ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

10. Evercrisp Apple

Evercrisp apples are a nicely sweet specialty apple variety that is a crossbreed of the Fuji and Honeycrisp parent apples. With such sweet parent apples, it makes sense that the Evercrisp is one of the sweetest apples on the current market. It combines the Fuji apple’s sweetness with the nice crunch of the Honeycrisp apple. This new variety is worth trying to spot in the market.
10 Evercrisp Apple
Apples by skepticalview / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

11. Fameuse Apple or Snow Apple

Fameuse apples are also called Snow apples, and this is a heirloom speciality cultivare that has brilliant white flesh with a fantastic sweetness. This is a very cold-hardy apple that grows on trees, and many people attribute the colder growing conditions as the reason for the apple’s sweetness. This sweetest apple hails from the Quebec, French-speaking region of Canada.
11 Fameuse Apple or Snow Apple
Apple on a Mirror by Leo Vaha / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

12. Fuji Apples

Developed in the 1930s in Japan, this sweetest apple is one of the most widely available and well-known ones on the market. This apple comes with a slightly thicker but waxy skin that can be green, yellow, or red in color. The high acidity levels and sugar content on these apples offer a very strong sweet taste with citrus notes that reminds a lot of people of honey’s taste. They also have a crispy, dense texture with juicy bites that it is hard to stop eating.

Another great benefit of this apple is that you can get them all year-round without sacrificing sweetness. They also keep for a longer amount of time, and you can eat them fresh, mixed into a salad, or have them stewed, roasted, or baked. If you like juice, you can use this sweetest apple to make a refreshing apple juice.
12 Fuji Apple
Fuji Apples by Gordon Joly / CC BY-SA 2.0

13. Gala Apple

This apple is very sugary-sweet, but it also balances with a light tart hint. They have a honey, pear-like flavor to them that makes them very popular throughout the world. Along with being some of the sweetest apples by themselves, they also act like the parent apple to a lot of other sweet apples on the list.

Along with the natural sweetness, they have a very striking red color with yellow stripes that makes them instantly recognizable. Unlike some other sweet apples, the gala apple will hold up the shape very well when you cook it. You can use it in a host of recipes that require sweet apples. They’re available in virtually every market, and it’s possible to plant and grow your own apple tree in your garden.
13 Gala Apple
Gala Apples by lactulli / CC BY-ND 2.0

14. Ginger Gold Apple

This is a very sweet green apple on the smaller side that is some of the sweetest apples when you look at the early-ripening category. It’s not the sweetest one overall, but it’s one of the best options if you want fresh apples at the end of August. It was originally discovered in Virginia, and it’s believed to be a descendant of the Golden Delicious apples.
14 Ginget Gold Apple
Ginger Gold Apples by rda / CC BY-NC 2.0

15. Golden Delicious Apple

Golden Delicious Apples, as the name suggests, is a very sugary and sweet apple when you let it ripen on the tree. They are some of the sweetest green-yellow apples since many apples with green peels are tart. This chance seedling apple is one of the most popular in America and throughout the world. It’s very common to use this apple with the gala apple as parent varieties for hybrids when you breed for sweetness.

You do want to buy this apple in season, preferable from someone local who picked it when it was the perfect time. The under-ripe green types of apples can be tart, but a tree-ripened Golden Delicious is very sweet and sugary. You should try to pass over the shelf-ripened and stored supermarket apples and find one at your local farmer’s market. The taste difference is well-worth the work. As a bonus, they’re easy to plant, self-pollinating, and cold-tolerant. They work well in a backyard orchard with fig trees.
15 Golden Delicious Apple
Golden Delicious Apple by Jackson’s Orchard / CC BY 2.0

16. Honeycrisp Apple

This sweetest apple has higher levels of acidity and natural sugars, and this gives them a very sweet, unique, and balanced taste profile. This full-bodied but complex flavor you get has made it a very popular option for fall farmers’ markets. There’s a very good reason why people drive miles to get the freshly-picked Honeycrisp varieties.

This is one of the few apple varieties that have both sugar and acid, and this makes them perfect to bake with in apple crisps and pies. They’re also one of the largest apples on the market, and this makes seeing a whole apple quite impressive. The flavor profile also gets enhanced by the spicy, effervescent, honey-like scent with the crispy texture. You can get this apple in virtually any grocery store in the autumn months, and you can even plant your own tree at home.
16 Honeycrisp Apples
Honeycrisp Apples by Indabelle / CC BY-NC 2.0

17. Hudson’s Golden Gem Apple

This apple is a juicy and sweet russet-style heritage apple. It was originally discovered in Oregon, and it’s a chance seedling variety that has a pear-like taste to it with a nutty aroma. It’s not the winner for the sweetest apple on our list, but it’s one of the most unique and interesting. You’ll have to go to speciality markets to find them in October through December.
17 Hudsons Golden Gem Apple
Hudson’s Golden Gem by Spiced Coffee / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

18. Jazz Apple

This is a sweet, sugary hybrid that comes from the Land of the Long White Cloud in New Zealand. They have a reputation for having a crispy, dense, and juicy pulp to them with a tart-sweet flavor that has pear and honey traces. One big benefit of these apples is that you can find them in grocery stores very easily. If you want to try them, go to the store and look for apples with a rosy red coloring and splotches of yellow, red, or green on the skins.

With this apple, you’re going to get a very tasty treat no matter if you choose to eat them raw or cook with them. They can fit into a huge range of recipes. However, if you’re someone who has weaker teeth, you’ll want to slice them before you try to eat them as they can be very firm.
18 Jazz Apple
“Jazz” Apples by Gordon Joly / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

19. Jonagold Apple

This sweetest apple was originally bred to be a cross between the complex Jonathan heirloom apple and the extremely sweet Golden Delicious apple. This apple is very sweet, but it also has a nice tart balance to give you a very fresh-tasting apple. Many people believe that it’s the parent apple of the sweet, surgery Ambrosia apple that is one of North America’s favorite varieties of apple. The sweetness will go up as the apple ripens. You should always go for apples that are ripe instead of ones that were harvested before they were ripe to apple time for transport and storage.
19 Jonagold Apple
Apples by Liz West / CC BY 2.0

20. Kanzi Apple

This European-bred apple is very sweet, and it comes from crossing the Braeburn apple with the Gala apple. It’s very similar to the Jazz apple, and it’s a very attractive option with a tart and sweet flavor profile.
20 Kanzi Apples
Kanzi® apples by Apple and Pear Australia Ltd / CC BY 2.0

21. Kiku Apple

This apple is exceptionally juicy and sweet, and you get a very crunchy and firm flesh. Apples like this that are a natural modern apple variety came about from a mutation of the very sweet Fuji apple. Just like it, you can eat this apple fresh as a very quick snack or slice it up and pop it into a salad. The “Bud Sport” Kiki comes with a brighter red striped coloring than the traditional Fuji apple, and it can be more attractive to the eye. You can think of this sweetest apple as a Red Fuji apple.
21 Kiku Apple
Camera Test Apple by Kirinohana / CC BY 2.0

22. Modi Apple

This European apple has a sweet taste and it’s naturally resistant to many diseases. It was originally developed in Italy, and it’s a great all-purpose pick that can be grown in an organic orchard for commercial production. Just like with the Choupette, this apple is expected to get much more popular outside of Europe, especially for anyone who wants organically-grown produce.
22 Modi Apple
Modi apples at HortCon2015 20150626_124100 by Apple and Pear Australia Ltd / CC BY 2.0

23. Opal Apple

This is a yellow, sweet apple that has a slight crispy crunch to it. They are extremely sugary and they are very slow to brown. This makes them excellent for preserving. This apple is a descendant of the Golden Delicious apple, and it keeps the sweet flavor the parent is known for. These apples work very well for apple butter, apple pie, and fresh sliced by themselves or in sandwiches.
23 Opal Apple
Opal Apple by Forest Starr and Kim Starr / CC BY 2.0

24. Pacific Rose Apple

This is a very pretty sweetest apple with a rose-pink coloring and a very delicate sweet flavor. It was originally bred in New Zealand, and it’s a Spendor and Gala cross. To date, it’s getting much more popular in North American and in New Zealand.
24 Pacific Rose Apple
Pacific Rose Apples by Open Grid Scheduler / Grid Engine / CC0 1.0

25. Piñata Apple

This apple is sharp-sweet, vibrant, and offers an almost tropical taste to it. They were originally bred in Europe, and they come from the Golden Delicious parent. It has a very snappy texture to it, and it can be hard to find when you look at the sweetest apple cultivars. The non-browning qualities combined with the sweet taste make it worth seeking out. You can find it sold exclusively by Stemilt in the United States, but you can find it listed under the European names of Sonata or Pinova too.
25 Pinata Apple
Sliced Pinata Apple 4 by Jessica and Lon Binder / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

26. Pink Lady Apple

This is a premium club apple cultivar that has an attractive pinkish-red peeling and a nicely balanced tart-sweet taste. You can consider it to be the pick of the crop when it comes to the Cripps Pink variety, and it was originally bred in Australia as a hybrid of the Lady Williams apple and the Golden Delicious apple. It has a very pretty look that matches the natural sweetness. You can eat them fresh, but they shine when you use them to make applesauce or apple pies and leave the skin on to give it a pink tone.
26 Pink Lady Apple
Pink Lady Apples by Apple and Pear Australia Ltd / CC BY 2.0

27. Pixie Crunch Apple

This caramel-sweet, modern apple variety was bred in Indiana in the United States originally. It’s a descendant of the pretty Rome apple and the classic Golden Delicious apple, and it’s just as pretty as it is good tasting. As you may have guessed from the name, these apples are much smaller in stature, and this makes them the perfect sweetest apple for your kids to enjoy.
27 Pixie Crunch Apple
Fresh Apple Mix! By Kara Angele / CC BY-SA 2.0

28. Pomme Gris Apple

This heritage apple hails from Canada in the French-speaking Quebec region. This apple is very similar in terms of looks and taste to the Hudson’s Golden Gem, and they both offer a unique nutty sweetness with a pear-like tartness. There is a very limited availability with this sweetest apple, and you can usually only get them during the fall months. Also, you’ll only find them on the East Coast in the United States.
28 Pomme Gris Apple
Apples by Slice of Chic / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

29. Red Delicious Apple

Red Delicious apples are common in cheap meals because they’re sweet and slightly tart. It has a very mild flavor too. If you purchase shelf-stored apples from the supermarket, you may be disappointed with how it tastes. However, a tree-ripened Red Delicious apple straight from the tree is much sweeter and crunchier.

You’ll recognize this apple as one of the important partner apples to the popular Fuji apple, and that is the sweetest apple currently in commercial production. Despite what many people think, these apples aren’t closely related to the Golden Delicious apple, but many marketing companies would have you believe so.
29 Red Delicious Apple
Red Delicious by Guy Dickinson / CC BY-SA 2.0

30. Rosalee Apple

This is another relatively new cross between the Fuji apple and the Honeycrisp apple, but it has a more mild flavor. This is a larger apple, but they mature on the tree relatively quickly. You can start harvesting them within several weeks , and they get harvested in October. They’re expected to become commercially available in the United States by 2023 at the latest.
30 Rosalee Apple
Apples by LeeW95 / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

31. Ruby Darling Apple

This is a newer apple from Stark Brothers, and it’s a cross between the Honeycrisp and Gala apples. You’ll get larger, red, shiny apples with an extra-sweet taste. These apples aren’t currently available on a commercial basis, but you can buy your own trees directly from the Stark Brothers and grow them in your backyard.
31 Ruby Darling Apple
Ruby Frost Apples by Mike Mozart / CC BY 2.0

32. Scarlet Crush Apple

The Stark Brothers offer the Scarlet Crush apple cultivar and market it as a citrusy, sweet taste with a pinkish-red peel. It’s a cross of the Honeycrisp apple and the Cripps or Pink Lady apple, and it’s supposed to be much easier to grow and maintain than either parent variety. For anyone who has an orchard in their garden, you can add this one to the lineup easily.
32 Scarlet Crush Apple
Apple by Gaby Altenberger / CC BY-SA 2.0

33. SnowSweet Apple

The University of Minnesota created this sweetest apple a few years ago. You can grow it in colder climates, and this actually brings out the apple’s sweet flavors. It has a velvety but very rich taste that is a result of crossing the tender Sharon apple with the sweet, large Connel Red or Fireside apple. It’s a sweet, beautiful apple that has a slower browning process after you slice it.
33 SnowSweet Apple
Apples by Sean T Evans / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

34. Spencer Apple

This is one of the sweetest apple offspring of the Canadian McIntosh Apple variety as a cross with the Golden Delicious apple. It offers the McIntosh’s deep red blush with the Golden Delicious’s honey-sweet flavor. This apple can have a surprising tart bite when they’re not 100% ripe, but a tree-ripened fruit offers a much better tart-sweet balance when you eat it fresh.
34 Spencer Apple
Bowl of Apples by mikkashar / CC BY-NC 2.0

35. Story or InoRed Apple

InoRed or Story apples come from France as a relatively new cultivar, and they’re very pretty, sweet, and have a natural disease-resistance. They work well if you live in a warmer climate zone, the European variety was specifically bred to encourage fruit production without chemicals.
35 Story or InoRed Apple
Organic Apples by Jack Kennard / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

36. SugarBee Apple

SugarBee apples come from crossing Honeycrisp apples, and you get a very sweet but delicate flavor. The original tree came from a grower in Minnesota from seed. You won’t have the tartness that you get with many apples, and they’re worth searching out. However, since they’re new, you may have a tough time locating them, especially out of season.
36 SugarBee Apple
DSC_1243 by egrodziak / CC BY-NC 2.0

37. Sweet Cheeks Apple

This sweetest apple variety offers a very juicy and sweet taste when you bite into it. It’s very similar to the Scarlet Crush apple, and it’s a cross between the Cripps Pink or Pink Lady apple and the Honeycrisp apple. So, you get a much more crisp texture with a honey-sweet taste. It’s not widely available in most grocery stores, but it’s quickly gaining popularity throughout the United States.
37 Sweet Cheeks Apple
Apples by Michele Dorsey Walfred / CC BY 2.0

38. SweeTango Apple

You’ll get a very juicy but complex taste when you bite into this sweetest apple. It’s a very well-balanced fruit with a tart undertone, and it has a small spice hint that makes it perfect to enjoy during the later autumn harvesting season. The name even reflects the tart but sweet taste.

A lot of people consider these complex apples to be slightly sweeter than the parent apple, Honeycrisp. It also has a higher acidity to it with more sugars, and this adds complexity and depth. It’s also known for having a very crisp texture.
38 SweeTango Apple
Apples by Michaela Shipman / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

39. Sweetie Apple

Sweetie apples are a very popular cross between the Braeburn and Royal Gala apple cultivars. This apple got chosen for production since it’s one of the sweetest apples on the market. They’ve also very pretty to look at and put in a bowl on your kitchen island, and they’re a better variety of Gala apple that’s worth trying.
39 Sweetie Apple
Sweetie by Rusty Gillespie / CC BY-NC 2.0

40. Winter Banana Apple

The final apple to round out the sweetest apple cultivar list is the Winter Banana. This apple has a sweet, mild, banana-like flavor to it. It also has a very nice scent that can be very similar to bananas when the apples are ripe on the trees during a strong growing year. They were discovered by chance rather than being a hybrid, and they’re best straight from the orchard if you can get them.
40 Winter Banana Apple
Winter Banana Intrigues Mimi by Josh Graciano / CC BY-SA 2.0

Bottom Line

We’ve outlined 40 of the sweetest apples on the market, and you can try and see which ones are available in your local area as some are region specific. Once you find them, you can decide which ones will become your new favorite and be a staple in your home.

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