- Pepsi’s parent company purchased Poppi last year and is now rolling out its own prebiotic soda.
- Compared to Poppi, Pepsi Prebiotic Cola tastes much more like regular cola.
- After a limited online release last year, Pepsi Prebiotic Cola is officially available nationwide.
Last year, PepsiCo sent shockwaves through the industry when it bought the buzzy better-for-you soda brand Poppi for a whopping $1.95 billion. Fans wondered, with both suspicion and excitement, what the company would do with the acquisition. But instead of overhauling the formula, Pepsi took a surprising left turn by making its own prebiotic soda.
The legacy soda brand announced the release of Pepsi Prebiotic Cola in 2025, calling it “the first significant innovation in the traditional cola category in 20 years.” The soda features the Pepsi flavor we know and love, with added functional benefits, in both classic cola and cherry vanilla.
After a limited online launch last fall, Pepsi Prebiotic Cola is now officially available at retailers nationwide. We got our hands on both flavors for a head-to-head taste test with the Poppi analogues, and the results were… not exactly what we’d expected. Here’s how each of the new sodas stacks up.
What Are The Nutritional Benefits?
Just like Poppi, Pepsi Prebiotic Cola contains just 5 grams of sugar and 3 grams of dietary fiber per can. Both use cane sugar and stevia extract as their main sweeteners, but there are a few notable differences.
For one, Poppi includes apple cider vinegar in its soda. The brand previously claimed that the vinegar promotes weight loss, lowers cholesterol, and improves your skin—but those lofty benefits were quietly scrubbed from their website following a class-action lawsuit. Now, they simply say it adds a “mouthwatering edge.” Pepsi leaves the vinegar out of their recipe altogether (and honestly, that might be for the best).
The two brands also source their fiber differently to make their sodas prebiotic. Poppi uses both cassava root fiber and agave inulin, whereas Pepsi contains only corn fiber. Aside from those distinctions and some minor differences in nutrition labels, the two drinks appear surprisingly similar on paper.
How Do They Taste?
To get the clearest comparison, I tried both Pepsi Prebiotic Cola flavors alongside Poppi’s Classic and Cherry Cola. And, despite their similar compositions, they’re visibly—and flavor-wise—very different. Poppi is lighter in color with a less aggressive carbonation, while Pepsi’s version looks and fizzes just like the OG.
But let’s talk taste: it’s not even close.
Poppi sodas have their distinct flavor—even the ones modeled after classic sodas don’t taste like them. Both Classic and Cherry Cola are a little sharp and, as Culinary Producer Colton Trowbridge put it, “medicinal.” They’re fine on their own, but when directly compared to Pepsi’s version, they don’t stack up. Senior Editor Samantha MacAvoy described Poppi’s vinegar-forward tang as “off-putting.”
Pepsi Prebiotic Cola, on the other hand, tastes much more like its other lower-calorie cola offerings. Digital Culinary Editor Taylor Worden likened the classic cola to Diet Pepsi, and several of us loved the Cherry Vanilla flavor. That one, in particular, helped mask the stevia bitterness—a win for anyone not entirely sold on the prebiotic trend.
Ultimately, Pepsi’s new drink is the closest thing the prebiotic category has to a traditional soda. In fact, its resemblance to conventional cola blows other prebiotic soda brands out of the water. It probably won’t convert hardcore corn syrup lovers, but if you’re into functional beverages or diet drinks, this one’s definitely worth a sip.