This Is America’s Most-Ordered Pasta Sauce, According to Instacart

Jarred pasta sauce is a fantastic pantry staple for good reason. It’s shelf-stable, versatile, and readily available at any grocery store or delivery app. In fact, we’d bet there’s a jar in your kitchen cabinet right now.

Instacart, the massively popular grocery delivery app, has been keeping tabs on America’s love affair with pasta sauce, and the data confirms it: We can’t get enough. The company recently analyzed users’ favorite grocery orders across the United States, and perhaps unsurprisingly, marinara sauce came out on top.

This straightforward, tomato-based sauce accounted for 20% of all Instacart sauce orders, according to 2024 company data. From there, Instacart users slightly switch things up: It’s followed shortly by Alfredo (17%), tomato basil (16%), and tomato garlic (13%) sauces. Vodka sauce, despite its trendiness in recent years, only captured a 3% share of all pasta sauce products ordered. 

“While marinara’s popularity didn’t surprise us, what did catch our attention was how some of the least popular sauces nationally stand out in certain cities. Take Puttanesca in San Francisco, for example — it’s a salty, briny favorite there, even though it ranked lowest overall nationally,” Alex Orellana, Instacart’s trends analyst, tells Food & Wine. “Regional trends tell a fun story, like Alfredo being a hit in the South, where creamy, indulgent dishes like mac and cheese are beloved. We love seeing how food choices reflect tradition, convenience, and the unique identities of different parts of the country.”

Instacart users in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia, and the Carolinas all showed a preference for Alfredo sauce over marinara. Meanwhile, other states indicated a lower interest in pasta overall, including Miami Beach, Florida, which ordered the least sauce out of the top 50 cities on the delivery platform. 

Purchasing patterns, likewise, sway heavily region by region. According to company data, Iowa ordered the most jars, with an order rate 49% higher than the national average (followed by Wisconsin, West Virginia, Delaware, and South Dakota). Folks in Kansas City also ordered 20% more than the U.S. average, securing the top spot for a single city.

Of course, Food & Wine has its own opinions on pasta sauce. In a 2024 taste test of over 100 popular jars, our editors declared Monte’s Original Family Recipe Tomato Sauce as the “best jarred tomato sauce we’ve ever tasted.” (Yes, that includes the New York-based brand’s take on a classic tomato sauce.)

Bottom line? You’re not alone in craving a bowl of Parmesan-topped spaghetti, especially if you’d rather order the ingredients from the convenience of your couch.