McFlurry Vs Dairy Queen Blizzard: What's The Difference?

Step aside, burgers and fries. Today, we're shining the spotlight on fast food desserts – specifically, two giants in the fast food ice cream world. Sweet-toothed foodie fans would never confuse a McDonald's McFlurry with a Dairy Queen Blizzard, or vice versa. So what, specifically, makes these treats unique? Both the McFlurry and the Blizzard follow a shared foundational formula: soft serve ice cream blended with solid candy or cookie pieces, mixed to be thoroughly incorporated. For both, it's all about the textural interplay of plush soft serve studded with crunchy mix-ins. 

Their biggest and most obvious difference is that Blizzards come in many more flavors than McFlurries. At McDonald's, the Oreo McFlurry (vanilla soft serve with crunchy Oreo cookie pieces) and the M&M McFlurry (the same swirled with crunchy mini M&Ms) are the only flavors offered year-round. Still, if it ain't broke, don't fix it (unlike the infamously malfunction-prone McDonald's ice cream machine that has even caused lawsuits ... is it working tonight, by the way?). As we shared in a Tasting Table ranking of 15 McDonald's desserts, the Oreo McFlurry is our second-favorite Mickey D's dessert of all time, beat only by the Hot Fudge Sundae.

By comparison, DQ's year-round Blizzard menu is far larger than McDonald's two permanent McFlurries. At Dairy Queen, fans can order at least 10 different Blizzards any time of year, from candy classics like Butterfinger and Heath to fully-loaded desserts like Turtle Pecan Cluster, Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, and Choco Brownie Extreme. Blizzards are also significantly thicker than McFlurries, and tend to be more thoroughly blended.

The M&M and Oreo flavors comprise McDonalds' permanent McFlurry menu. Beyond this duo, the fast food giant also serves other limited-edition McFlurry flavors, like the Oreo Shamrock McFlurry during the St. Patrick's Day season (occasionally released alongside the legendary vanilla-mint-flavored Shamrock Shake), or the Apple Cake McFlurry, a green-hued promotional offering that graced menus in conjunction with the theatrical release of 2025's "A Minecraft Movie." Other McFlurry flavors, like Butterfinger, Rolo, Twix, and Reese's Peanut Butter Cup, have also appeared over the years.

As a more recent development, McFlurries might also include a ripple of sticky syrup, like the promotional Apple Cake McFlurry, which features sour apple syrup. McDonald's limited-time Grandma's McFlurry was also flavored with sticky butterscotch syrup. Indeed, syrup ripples could potentially become a recurring feature of McDonalds' limited edition McFlurry flavor offerings, even though its signature permanent McFlurry duo (M&M and Oreo) remains sans-syrup. 

It's worth noting that sometimes (often, even) customers receive McFlurries with the crunchy toppings sitting on top of the soft serve rather than mixed in. One apparent employee took to Reddit to explain why this happens: "There is a McFlurry mix machine. It is violent lol. The spoon knocks out the topping, bores a hole through the bottom of the cup, and sprays you with cream (with no mirror near enough to clean up!) so many of them don't bother. Good managers make them brave it." Another ostensible employee chimes in, "U.K. McDonald's has posters that say 'if it's done in a hurry, it's not a McFlurry mix for six to eight seconds.'"

DQ is literally "The Queen of Dairy" — so it's no wonder that the chain has its ice cream game on lock. In addition to its sprawling permanent Blizzard menu, Dairy Queen also offers rotating seasonal Blizzard flavors, from Salted Caramel Truffle in fall, to Cotton Candy and S'mores in summer, to Hot Cocoa in winter. At Tasting Table, Reese's Peanut Butter Cup took the top spot in our ranking of 14 Dairy Queen Blizzard flavors, and happily, it's available year-round.

Unlike McFlurries, which are loosely mixed by comparison, DQ's Blizzards are more involved, with many flavors combining multiple mix-ins. Those ingredients get blended into the ice cream so vigorously that Blizzards can be (and customarily are) flipped upside-down by employees before they are handed off to the customer, showcasing the treat's thickness. If a comparably-thinner McFlurry were to be flipped upside-down, it'd slide out of the cup and loose toppings would fly. 

To assemble a Blizzard, as one DQ employee explained via Reddit, "For Oreo, Heath, Butterfinger, and M&M, we have these massive containers (above the topping table) where one puts the cup underneath, pulls the lever, pushes it back, and the topping comes out. It's way quicker than scooping, and those containers can hold a lot more product." Also, whereas McFlurries are always made from a vanilla soft serve base, Blizzards can be made from vanilla or chocolate ice cream. Some store locations do not stock chocolate ice cream, in which case chocolate sauce or hot fudge is mixed into the vanilla soft serve to create the flavor.