If you're looking for a speciality coffee subscription in the UK, there's a good chance you've come across Blue Coffee Box and Pact Coffee.
Both deliver freshly roasted speciality coffee to your door. Both let you choose a grind to suit how you brew. Both are flexible, so you can skip a delivery, change your date or cancel when you like.
But there's one big difference between them.
Pact is a coffee roaster. Blue Coffee Box is a coffee discovery service.
That difference is the easiest way to decide which is right for you.
The short version
Choose Pact if you want speciality coffee from one established coffee company, with a choice of ranges and price points.
Choose Blue Coffee Box if you want to keep discovering new coffees from different independent UK roasters, without having to find and order from each roaster yourself.
With Blue Coffee Box, the roaster changes from one delivery to the next. That's the point.
How Pact works
Pact sources its own coffee and roasts it at its own roastery.
Its subscriptions are split into ranges: House, for a consistent everyday coffee; Select, a rotating seasonal selection; and Micro-lot, rarer coffees made in limited quantities.
You choose your brew method, and you can let Pact pick coffees for you or choose from its range. You can manage your subscription online.
Pact is a good choice if you like Pact's approach to sourcing and roasting and want to explore the coffees it selects.
How Blue Coffee Box is different
We don't roast coffee ourselves. Instead, we search the UK's independent speciality roasters for outstanding coffees and ask them to roast for our subscribers, championing different regions and flavours. You might get a coffee roasted in Belfast one month, Liverpool the next and Edinburgh after that.
We choose coffees we think are worth discovering and match them to the roast you like. So far we've featured coffees from 28 coffee-growing countries, including less familiar origins such as Cameroon, Laos, China and East Timor, roasted by more than 70 independent UK roasters.
The Horsham Coffee Roaster team with coffee producers at origin.
So you're not subscribing to one roaster's range. You're using one subscription to explore the coffee itself and the people who roast it.
Blue Coffee Box vs Pact at a glance
| Blue Coffee Box | Pact Coffee | |
|---|---|---|
| Who roasts the coffee | Different independent UK roasters | Pact, at its own roastery |
| Speciality coffee, freshly roasted | Yes | Yes |
| A different coffee each delivery | Yes | Yes, on its rotating ranges |
| Coffee chosen to match your taste | Yes, by roast | Yes, or choose your own |
| Whole beans or ground | Yes | Yes |
| Free UK delivery | Yes | Yes |
| Skip, change your date or cancel anytime | Yes | Yes |
| Replacement if you don't enjoy a coffee | Yes | Yes |
| Best for | Discovering independent roasters | Coffee sourced and roasted by one company |
Pact details checked on Pact's website in October 2026. Plans and prices change, so check their site for the latest.
What about price?
If price per bag is your main concern, Pact is generally the cheaper option. That's down to the two different models.
Pact sources, roasts and sells its own coffee, at scale.
We work with small independent roasters who roast in small batches. We taste the coffees we want to feature, and bring them together in one subscription. Our plans start at £13.99 for a 227g bag, and the Big Box brings it down to £10.50 a bag.
So if your question is simply:
"What's the cheapest way to get good speciality coffee delivered?"
Pact may well be the better choice.
But if your question is:
"How can I discover great coffees from independent roasters without searching for them myself?"
That's where Blue Coffee Box comes in.
What if I don't like a coffee?
Trying new coffees means you'll occasionally find one that isn't quite for you.
That's why we have our Taste Guarantee. Tell us the roast you like and we'll choose coffees to match. If you ever receive one you don't enjoy, tell us and we'll send you a replacement free of charge.
Pact also promises to replace a coffee that isn't to your taste, so both give you peace of mind when trying something new.
Which has more variety?
Both do, in different ways.
Pact's Select range rotates through coffees from different origins, and its Micro-lot range focuses on rarer, limited coffees. Our coffees are closest in spirit to Micro-lot.
With Blue Coffee Box you also explore another side of speciality coffee: the roasters themselves. Every roaster makes its own decisions about sourcing, roast style and the flavours it wants to bring out, so two roasters can make very different cups.
Inside the Newground Coffee roastery in Oxford.
So part of the fun is discovering not just new origins and coffees, but independent roasting businesses all over the UK.
So which should you choose?
Neither is better for everyone.
Choose Pact if you want excellent speciality coffee from one established roaster, especially if price matters most or you find a Pact range you love.
Choose Blue Coffee Box if you enjoy discovering new coffees and new coffee countries, and like the idea of exploring independent UK roasters without researching, ordering from and managing subscriptions with lots of different businesses yourself.
That's what we built Blue Coffee Box to do.
One subscription. Different coffees. Different independent roasters. A new favourite waiting to be discovered.
