Comparison
Cider vs apple juice
What is the difference between cider and apple juice?
In short
Apple juice is pressed fruit. Cider is that juice after fermentation, in which yeast converts the sugars to ethanol and carbon dioxide. Left unprotected, juice becomes cider on its own, because the yeast is already on the fruit.
To sell juice as juice, a producer therefore has to stop that happening — by pasteurising, chilling, freezing or filtering out the organisms. Preserving juice is an active process; making cider is largely a matter of letting it proceed under control.
The confusion is worst in North America, where unfermented juice has historically been sold as "sweet cider" or simply "cider". Outside that usage, cider is alcoholic by definition.
The two things being compared
Each side described in its own terms first, so the table below has something to hang on.
Cider
Apple juice that has been fermented. Contains alcohol, and little or no fermentable sugar unless sweetness was restored deliberately.
Apple juice
Pressed apple juice held in its unfermented state by pasteurisation, chilling, freezing or sterile filtration. Contains its original sugar and no alcohol.
Where they differ
Dimension by dimension. Where a row needs a qualification, it carries one rather than being simplified until it fits.
| Dimension | Cider | Apple juice |
|---|---|---|
| Alcohol | Present. Legal definitions generally set a floor below which the drink is not cider. | Effectively none, and a juice that has begun to ferment is no longer saleable as juice. |
| Sugar | Largely consumed by yeast; residual sweetness in a finished cider is usually the result of arrested fermentation or back-sweetening. | Retains the full sugar of the fruit. |
| What has to be donePreservation is the intervention here, not fermentation. Untreated juice ferments whether anyone intends it to or not. | Allow fermentation, then manage it — temperature, nutrition, racking. | Prevent fermentation, by heat, cold or the removal of organisms. |
| Shelf stability | Alcohol, low pH and low residual sugar together make a finished dry cider comparatively stable. | Unstable unless treated; a full sugar load and no alcohol is an ideal substrate for yeast and mould. |
| Acid | Malic acid may be partly converted to the softer lactic acid by malolactic bacteria. | Malic acid intact, so the acidity tastes sharper at the same measured level. |
| Aroma | Fermentation esters, higher alcohols and, in some ciders, phenolic character overlay the fruit. | Fresh fruit aroma, cooked if the juice has been heat-treated. |
| Regulation | An alcoholic drink: duty, age restrictions and strength labelling apply. | A soft drink, governed by juice composition and labelling rules. |
Notes under a dimension name qualify the whole row, not one column.
What fermentation changes, and what it leaves alone
Follow one litre of an ordinary 1.051 apple juice — the middle of the juices measured on this site — through a ferment to dryness, and most of the change is in four numbers. The sugar goes almost entirely. In its place come about 55 g of ethanol and roughly as much carbon dioxide, nearly all of which leaves through the airlock. The gravity falls below that of water, because alcohol is lighter. And a few grams of glycerol appear, which is part of why a dry cider does not taste as thin as its sugar figure suggests.
What does not change is as telling. The malic acid comes through the yeast largely intact, so the pH barely moves unless malolactic bacteria later convert some of it. The tannin is reduced a little by fining and time, not by the ferment itself. Cider is the same acid, the same phenolics and the same fruit, with the sugar exchanged for alcohol — which is why the fruit a cider-maker chooses matters more than anything done to it afterwards.
| Juice | Cider, fermented dry | |
|---|---|---|
| Specific gravity | 1.051 | About 0.998 |
| Sugar | About 110–120 g | A few grams or less |
| Ethanol | None | About 55 g — about 7% by volume |
| Carbon dioxide | None | About as much again by mass, nearly all of it escaped |
| Glycerol | None | A few grams; 3.6–4.8 g/L in the Asturian ciders measured |
| Malic acid and pH | As pressed | Little changed, unless malolactic bacteria have worked |
Where the law draws the line
From the juice side, the European definition makes the boundary explicit: fruit juice is the fermentable but unfermented product of the fruit. A juice that has fermented is outside that definition — the one exception, since 2024, being the separate category of reduced-sugar fruit juice, where yeast fermentation is an authorised way of removing sugar — and from the cider side most definitions set an alcohol floor below which a drink is not yet cider.
The American sense of sweet cider — fresh, unfermented, often unpasteurised juice sold under the name cider — carries a rule of its own. Since 1998, packaged juice in the United States that has not been processed to reduce pathogens a hundred-thousand-fold must carry a warning that it has not been pasteurised and may contain harmful bacteria. The rule followed outbreaks of serious illness traced to unpasteurised apple juice, and it applies to sweet cider because sweet cider is juice. Fermented cider is a different case: its alcohol and low pH are hostile to the pathogens the warning is about.
When Cider is the relevant one
The circumstances in which this is the thing being described, rather than a reason to prefer it.
- The liquid has fermented and carries alcohol.
- You are describing anything from the vessel onwards — racking, maturation, carbonation, bottling.
When Apple juice is the relevant one
The circumstances in which this is the thing being described, rather than a reason to prefer it.
- The liquid is unfermented, whether cloudy or clear, fresh or pasteurised.
- You are describing pressing yield, juice treatment or patulin control, which happen before fermentation.
- The American sense of "sweet cider" is what is meant.
A misconception worth clearing up
This comparison exists partly because of the claim below, which is repeated often enough that most readers arrive holding it.
Cider is apple juice with alcohol added to it.
What is actually the case: Nothing is added. The alcohol is made in place from the fruit’s own sugar, which is why a dry cider is not sweet — the sugar that would have made it sweet is what became the alcohol.
Related comparisons
Distinctions that turn on the same thing, or that this one is routinely confused with.
Hard cider vs sweet cider
An American terminology problem: "cider" there has historically meant unfermented juice, so the fermented drink acquired the qualifier "hard". Elsewhere, cider is alcoholic by definition and neither term is needed.
Cider vs cider vinegar
Cider vinegar is made from cider by a second, bacterial fermentation that oxidises ethanol to acetic acid — a deliberate industrial process, not simply what cider turns into if left alone.
Whole juice vs concentrate
Whole juice ferments the liquid as it came off the press; concentrate is juice with most of its water evaporated off, stored, and reconstituted before fermentation.
Dry vs sweet
Dryness is about residual sugar, but perceived sweetness also depends on acid, tannin, alcohol, carbonation and, in perry, on sorbitol — so the label and the palate can disagree.
What people ask next
Questions readers ask about the things this page mentions. Each one goes to the section that answers it rather than to a page written to receive the question.
- What does hard cider mean, and why is plain cider not alcoholic in america — In the United States, cider usually means unfiltered apple juice, so the fermented drink is distinguished as hard cider. Everywhere else the unqualified word already means the alcoholic drink.
- What is the difference between cider from whole juice and cider from concentrate — Concentrating juice removes water and most of the volatile aroma with it, so a cider made from reconstituted concentrate depends more on what is added back than on the fruit. Whole juice cider is fermented from the liquid as it left the press.
- What is the difference between cider and cider vinegar
- Why does a dry cider sometimes taste sweet — Because dryness is a measure of residual sugar and sweetness is a perception. Acid, tannin, alcohol, carbonation and — in perry — sorbitol all shift where a given sugar level lands on the palate, so a label and a mouthful can honestly disagree.
Where to go next
- All comparisons — The rest of the pairs, grouped by what kind of difference is at stake.
- Glossary — Either term on its own, defined without a second thing to hold it against.
- Learn about cider — The background these pages assume, written from the beginning.
Sources
What this page rests on. Where a source is marked as registered rather than read, CiderHQ is recording that the body is authoritative on the subject without claiming to have worked through the document itself. See our evidence policy for what each state means.
Alcoholic Products Technical Guide, section 2 — alcoholic products (formerly Excise Notice 162)
HM Revenue & Customs · regulator · passage verified 2026-08-24
What may be called cider or perry for UK duty purposes. The substantive text now lives in section 2 of the Alcoholic Products Technical Guide rather than in the notice itself, and the passages below were read there. The widely repeated "35% juice" figure checks out — but note two things the figure alone hides: it is a tax threshold rather than a quality standard, and concentrate and dilution both count towards it.
The Science of Cidermaking and associated technical writing
Andrew Lea · reference work · passage verified 2026-08-24
Written by a food chemist who worked at Long Ashton on apple phenolics. Unusual among specialist cider writing in that it is primary-research-adjacent: the author is describing work he did, and cites the literature. This is why it is registered at tier 1 for chemistry while a general cider book is not.
Cider, Hard and Sweet: History, Traditions, and Making Your Own
Ben Watson, The Countryman Press, first edition 1999; third edition 2013 · reference work · bibliographic record verified, not opened 2026-08-25
Bibliographic record verified on 2026-08-25 against Open Library: first published 1999 by The Countryman Press, with five editions recorded and a 2008 printing scanned by the Internet Archive as ciderhardsweethi0000benw. The scan is access-restricted to the print-disabled collection. The site had registered this without a year; it now carries one, and the first-edition date matters because a general trade book on cider written in 1999 predates almost the whole of the North American cider revival it is sometimes cited about.
Council Directive 2001/112/EC relating to fruit juices and certain similar products, Annex I
European Union · legislation · passage verified 2026-10-08
Cited for the definition of fruit juice — the legal line between juice and cider drawn on the juice side. Read on 2026-10-08 in the consolidated text of 14 June 2026 at the Publications Office repository, which incorporates Directive 2012/12/EU and Directive (EU) 2024/1438. The 2024 amendment created a separate category of reduced-sugar fruit juice for which yeast fermentation is an authorised way of removing sugar, so “fermented means not juice” is no longer true without that exception.
21 CFR 101.17(g) — warning statement on juice not processed to reduce pathogens
US Food and Drug Administration · legislation · passage verified 2026-10-08
Read on 2026-10-08 in the eCFR text current to 6 October 2026, with the final rule as published in the Federal Register on 8 July 1998 (63 FR 37030), effective 8 September 1998. The rule followed outbreaks from 1991 to 1996 traced to juices including apple juice and apple cider. Juice not for retail sale that goes on to further processing is exempt under paragraph (g)(3).
Yeast species associated with the spontaneous fermentation of cider
Suárez Valles, Pando Bedriñana, Fernández Tascón, Querol Simón and Rodríguez Madrera, Food Microbiology 24(1):25–31 · peer-reviewed literature · passage verified 2026-08-24 · covers 2001–2002
SERIDA’s survey of what is actually growing in an Asturian cellar during a spontaneous ferment, across two harvests and two pressing technologies. Read in full from the author institution’s open repository (ria.asturias.es, handle 123456789/925) on 2026-08-24. Two things make it worth citing rather than summarising: it identifies its isolates molecularly rather than by colony appearance, and it publishes the analytical composition of the finished ciders alongside the microbiology, so a reader can see the organisms and the numbers they produced in the same paper. It also contradicts the textbook account of apiculate yeasts dying out early, which is why CiderHQ cites it on that point specifically.