7 DiGiorno Frozen Pizzas, Ranked From Worst To Best

A lot goes into choosing the right pizza during a trip down the freezer aisle. As big brands increasingly cater to broader customer preferences — Mashed ranked a whopping 25 different Oreo flavors from worst to best, for example — there's likely more variety in the average grocery store's selection of frozen pizza now than at any prior time in human history. Even after narrowing the range of choices down to just pizzas by DiGiorno, various combinations of toppings and crust styles still result in a pretty staggering number of choices.

For anyone lost when it comes to choosing the right DiGiorno frozen pizza, or even fans of the brand simply looking for the best it has to offer, I tried and ranked seven options. My selection consisted of five different crust types and two promotional offerings, representing both the brand's year-round product lineup and its more experimental side. Also among those seven pizzas were a wide variety of toppings, ranging from plain cheese to pepperoni and sausage. After tasting and analyzing each of my seven DiGiorno frozen pizzas, here's how I ranked them from worst to best.

Recommendations are based on firsthand impressions of promotional materials and products provided by DiGiorno.

The worst performer of the seven frozen pizzas I tried was DiGiorno's Croissant Crust topped with pepperoni. I think it's worth mentioning here that I've bought and enjoyed the Four Cheese Croissant Crust on multiple occasions in the past. So, I had high expectations for the Pepperoni Croissant Crust, and almost couldn't believe how severely it failed to meet them. It's entirely possible that I ended up with a faulty product, but it's also possible DiGiorno somehow altered its Croissant Crust or that it just doesn't taste as good with pepperoni. Everyone was talking about the new DiGiorno's Croissant Crust pizzas when they first hit store shelves, so either they fell off or something was uniquely wrong with my pizza.

Whatever the case may be, the crust itself ended up excessively tough. I cooked the pizza per the listed cooking instructions, resulting in a crust that was crispy and browned, so I don't think the issue was due to user error. Compounding my bad experience with this pizza was a slight off note that I believe came from the sauce, which tasted like a poor-quality tomato. The combination of overly chewy dough and bad tomato resulted in an unfortunately off-putting frozen pizza experience.

While DiGiorno's frozen pizza selection features plenty of extravagant options like, say, the Loaded Ultra Thin Crust Carnivore Pizza, purists can rest assured that a plain cheese pizza utilizing DiGiorno's Classic Crust remains a staple on store shelves. After trying a plain Classic Crust pizza myself, I found it to be of a perfectly acceptable level of quality, committing no food crimes but also failing to justify itself over most of the comparatively fancier alternatives.

The one quality of DiGiorno's Cheese Classic Crust pizza that diverges just a little bit from the norm — consider a plain cheese pizza from the innovative Little Caesars chain as a baseline — is its crust. The standard DiGiorno crust is a little thinner and crispier than a typical pizza crust, masking some of the deficiencies inherent to preparing a pizza in a home oven rather than an industrial pizza oven. To be clear, DiGiorno's crust philosophy helps the brand stand out in a good way.

Beyond that, however, the cheese was mild, the sauce was almost negligible, and the flavor of the crust was nothing special. For what it's worth, I can see how the Cheese Classic Crust pizza is a necessary product to maintain on store shelves for the picky eaters of the world. But I'm not in that category, so whatever strengths those picky eaters might theoretically perceive within its purity is lost on me, especially when each of the following DiGiorno products are superior.

DiGiorno's Rising Crust is effectively a standard pizza crust, similar in heft to the baseline options at major, influential pizza chains like Domino's and Pizza Hut. The Rising Crust label is necessary, of course, because the DiGiorno Classic Crust is more of a thin crust. With that said, even though I like the Classic Crust, I thought the ratios of ingredients on my Four Cheese Rising Crust pizza tasted better together than my Cheese Classic Crust pizza.

First of all, the Rising Crust itself is soft and pillowy. It's not better than the Classic Crust but there's nothing wrong with it either. What makes the Four Cheese Rising Crust stand out relative to competing DiGiorno products is a larger quantity of sauce — most likely necessary because there's more crust to counterbalance. Whereas the Cheese Classic Crust pizza mostly just tastes like mild cheese, a sweet and savory tomato sauce flavor adds just a bit of depth to the Four Cheese Rising Crust pizza experience. I still wouldn't buy this myself, but for anyone committed to picking out a plain cheese pizza in the frozen pizza aisle, this may well be the best offering from DiGiorno.

Starting with what makes the DiGiorno Thin & Crispy Stuffed Crust pizza unique, I thought that the titular crust was super solid. It wasn't just the stuffed outer crust that stood out but the crust at the center too. Despite cooking at a higher temperature and for longer than most of the other frozen pizzas I tried, its thin stuffed crust ended up a little firmer and less cracker-like than the DiGiorno Classic Crust. It was still crispy as advertised, but just not quite as brittle, substituting a bit of crunch for some added heft. The stuffed part of the crust was good too, really just tasting like mild cheese and bread — but cheesy bread is a classic combination for a reason. Accordingly, the Mashed review of DiGiorno Thin & Crispy Stuffed Crust pizzas found this crust style to be pretty enjoyable.

I also liked the pepperoni and sausage topping combination on my Thin & Crispy Stuffed Crust pizza quite a bit. Together, the ample spices in DiGiorno's sausage nicely complement the oiliness of the pepperoni. They're also generously apportioned, so that pretty much every bite is satisfyingly meaty. Overall, the Thin & Crispy Stuffed Crust style and the pepperoni and sausage topping combo are each good on their own, and even better together.

The DiGiorno Supreme Stuffed Crust Pizza is pretty darn similar to the Pepperoni & Sausage Thin & Crispy Stuffed Crust pizza, but — contrary to its shorter name — it has more to offer. Comparing the two crusts, I didn't perceive much of a difference between the Thin & Crispy Stuffed Crust and the standard Stuffed Crust. The former isn't super thin whereas the latter isn't super thick, and the cheese-stuffed outer portions tasted identical. Since I enjoyed the former, it worked well for the latter too.

Meanwhile, the Supreme topping blend consists of sausage, pepperoni, bell peppers, onion, and sliced olives. Both DiGiorno's sauce and cheese are pretty mild, so this busy combination of toppings did a lot of heavy lifting. With that said, I did find that this was the saltiest, oiliest pizza of the batch I tried, so part of what makes this one taste good is its pure excess. But when eating virtually any DiGiorno pizza already means veering into excess, there's surely nothing wrong with opting for one of the tastiest options possible, even if it's just a little worse for you. Altogether, the surprisingly solid DiGiorno Stuffed Crust loaded up with toppings is a simple, winning formula.

The Chicken Bacon Ranch Bacon and Cheese Stuffed Crust — referring to chicken, bacon, and ranch dressing on top of a crust stuffed with both cheese and bacon — was one of two limited-time promotional items from an official collaboration between DiGiorno and Hidden Valley I received. Those two ranch pizzas ended up being my two favorites of the seven frozen pizzas I tasted.

While the sauce on the Chicken Bacon Ranch pizza is indeed a take on Hidden Valley Ranch, the ranch seasoning is pretty mild, making it closer to a tangy white sauce rather than full-on ranch dressing. To be clear, I thought that was a good thing, delivering on the promise of a ranch-flavored pizza without overdoing it. Chicken and bacon, meanwhile, pretty much always taste good together. And while I didn't find the bacon inside of the stuffed crust to make much of a difference, I really like the DiGiorno Stuffed Crust regardless of how much bacon is inside it. Overall, I would describe this as a just slightly left-field white pizza, and that was enough for it to earn the number two spot on this list.

When I reviewed the DiGiorno "Deadpool & Wolverine" pizzas for Mashed, I preferred the weirder offerings to the subtler twists on classic pizza formulas. Trying the DiGiorno Spicy Rancheroni Thin Crust pizza really drove home the fact that when DiGiorno gets a little experimental, the results are special. The Spicy Rancheroni Thin Crust is weird, and it was my single favorite frozen pizza of the bunch.

Whereas the ranch flavor on the DiGiorno Chicken Bacon Ranch pizza is subtle, the Spicy Rancheroni pizza tastes strongly of ranch. It's tang is so powerful, in fact, that it ends up a little pickle-y. That's paired with a significant level of spice, courtesy of buffalo seasoning in the ranch and ample diced jalapeño. The former is a little vinegary, upping an already considerable tang from the ranch component. The latter just adds straight up hotness. I'm a spicy food aficionado, so the spice was to my liking, but those averse might want to take caution with this pizza, because it's no joke. 

Finally, the crust is pretty much just the classic, cracker-like DiGiorno crust, and some pepperoni on top fails to make much of an impact beneath the spicy ranch flavor. This is far and away DiGiorno's biggest swing of the seven pizzas I tasted, and it pays off in spades. The Spicy Rancheroni pizza is so good that if I caught sight of it in the freezer aisle, I'd be tempted to change my dinner plans.

For the sake of this piece, DiGiorno provided me with all seven frozen pizzas. The two Hidden Valley collab products were shipped from DiGiorno, whereas the other five were delivered from local grocery stores. My opinions of each pizza are entirely my own — DiGiorno sent these pizzas to me with no expectations beyond the fact that I would try them and share my honest thoughts in this ranking format.

Logistically, in order to try seven distinct frozen pizzas, I tackled them on two consecutive days. On day one I prepared four of the seven pizzas, making two in the oven at a time. The following day I prepared two of the final three pizzas in the oven at once, followed by the remaining pizza on its own. After letting each pizza sit for at least five minutes per the box instructions, I cut it into four pieces. 

I ate one of the four pieces from each of those pizzas fresh. I also cut off a little sliver from the remainder of each pizza to try about 30 minutes later, because I find that sometimes pizzas reveal new characteristics at room temperature. My rankings are based on the opinions I formulated after trying these seven pizzas over two days.