↳ Methodology
How we build the data behind every report
The definitions, sources, survey design, and quality controls behind The State of Alcohol Alternatives. If you’re going to make a decision on a number, you should know where it came from.
The category
What counts as an alcohol alternative
The throughline is the occasion, not the ingredient: beverages made for the moments where alcohol has been the default.
DefinitionNon-alcoholic spirits, wine, beer (including hop water), and ready-to-drink cocktails below 0.5% ABV that mimic the production process, flavor profile, or occasion of their alcoholic counterparts, together with THC-infused beverages at or below 10 milligrams per serving.
SegmentsFive, used across every report and survey: non-alc spirits, non-alc wine, non-alc beer, non-alc ready-to-drink cocktails, and THC-infused beverages.
Out of scopeDaytime wellness drinks, soft drinks and mixers, and high-dose, mass-market THC.
The consumer surveys
Two surveys, reported separately
Each edition pairs a nationally representative survey, which tells you how many adults are in the category, with a survey of the people who buy it, which tells you who they are and how they behave. Their figures are never combined or averaged.
National surveyFielded by YouGov on its U.S. omnibus. October 2026 Edition: 1,149 U.S. adults 21+, Oct. 14–15, 2026, weighted to be representative of U.S. adults 21+.
Buyer surveyFielded by Prodege Insights. October 2026 Edition: 1,003 U.S. adults 21+ who drank an alcohol alternative in the past six months and make or share household purchase decisions, Oct. 8–16, 2026. Unweighted by design, so it describes buyers as they are.
Quality controlsAttention checks, speed and straightlining flags, open-end review, and consistency checks, on a removal rule agreed with the fielding firm before fielding. In the October 2026 buyer survey, 689 of 1,692 completes were removed before analysis.
Reporting rulesEvery figure states its firm, sample, and dates. Minimum bases are 50 for the national survey and 100 for the buyer survey; smaller cuts are marked directional or not shown.
The product data
A hand-maintained record of what’s actually on the shelf
Consumer data tells you what buyers say. Product data tells you what they can buy. Every edition reads the two together.
How a product gets inOnly once we’ve located it and verified it against a named source, such as the brand’s own site or a retailer listing, and it meets the category definition above. Limited editions aren’t counted.
What we recordFor each product: one of 12 taxonomies, an ABV class, a format, and its functional ingredients.
When a product leavesIt stays in the record, marked discontinued, with a date where a source supplies one. Report counts include only products on the market at the snapshot date.
October 2026 snapshot3,812 products on the market from 1,093 brands, as of Sept. 30, 2026.
Standards
What we hold ourselves to
No paid coverageNo company pays to appear in our reports or data, and a license never buys a say in what we publish.
Sourced and attributedThird-party figures, such as NIQ’s category dollar sales, are checked and attributed to their source and period.
Predictions on the recordEach edition makes dated predictions with a confidence level and the figure that resolves them, and a later edition scores them.