Dehydrator vs Keg: Which Uses Your Fruit Better?

By Ali Ahmad · Updated October 10, 2026 · Verified for Stardew Valley 1.6.15

How each machine works

The two machines take the same fruit and give very different results:

• Keg: one fruit makes one wine, worth three times the fruit's price, and takes 6.25 days (10,000 game minutes).
• Dehydrator: five fruit of the same type and quality make one Dried Fruit worth 7.5 times the fruit's price plus 25g, ready the next morning. The output is always normal quality. It cannot take Grapes, which give Raisins, or a Red Mushroom or Truffle.

With the Artisan profession both products get a 40% bonus, and the figures on this page all include it. All prices here use normal-quality fruit.

The wiki gives the Dehydrator's time as one day, ready the next morning, while the Dried Fruit item page lists 1750 game minutes, a little over one day. The two pages don't agree, so the per-day numbers here use one day. If the true time is the longer one, the Dehydrator's per-day figures are about 9% lower, and the conclusion does not change.

Gold per fruit: the Keg wins

The first limit most farms hit is fruit, not machines. If every fruit you grow already has a machine waiting for it, you want the most gold from each one. Here is what five fruit become in each machine:

Wine column is five bottles. Dried Fruit is one item from five fruit.

Wine is worth about 2 times as much as Dried Fruit for the same Starfruit. The pattern is the same for every fruit, because wine pays 15 times the fruit price for five fruit and dried pays 10.5 times plus 35. So if you ever have to choose where a fruit goes and a Keg is free, the Keg is right.

The Dehydrator is not worse than selling raw, though. Starfruit sold raw bring in 3,750g for five, so Dried Fruit at 7,910g is more than double. Even Strawberry, a cheap fruit, goes from 600g raw to 1,295g dried.

Gold per machine per day: the Dehydrator wins

The second limit is machines. A Keg is busy for 6.25 days with one fruit, so a farm that harvests 100 fruit at once needs 100 Kegs to keep up (see How many kegs do I need?). A Dehydrator handles five fruit in a day. Measured as sale price per machine per day:

For Starfruit a Dehydrator takes in 7,910g a day against 504g for a Keg, about 15.7 times as much. These are gross sale prices, not extra gold over selling raw, but the comparison is the same either way, since the gap is far bigger than the raw price.

In practice one Dehydrator out-earns about 16 Kegs a day when fruit is plentiful, though each fruit is worth less. The Dehydrator recipe is 30 Wood, 2 Clay, 1 Fire Quartz, and Pierre sells it for 10,000g. See the Crafting Calculator for the cost of several.

A worked harvest: 100 Starfruit

Numbers per machine are easy to misread, so here is one concrete harvest. You have 100 Starfruit to deal with and one Keg cycle of 6.25 days to do it in. Each Keg takes one fruit. Each Dehydrator takes five fruit a day, so it finishes up to six batches in the window. Fruit nobody has time for is sold raw at 750g. All prices use Artisan.

Four Dehydrators on their own earn more than twenty Kegs on their own, because they can process every fruit in the window while the Kegs can only take one fruit each and the rest is sold raw. Adding Dehydrators to an existing Keg setup lifts the total further, and the last row, where nothing is sold raw, shows what the best mix looks like. Each Dehydrator you add earns the most when there is still fruit waiting. Once every fruit has a machine, extra Dehydrators add nothing, and your best fruit is better off in Kegs.

The rule of thumb

Put your fruit through this order:

1. Fruit left over after your Kegs are all busy goes in the Dehydrator, not in a chest. Dried Fruit is worth a little over twice the raw price for every fruit in the table, and it needs only a day of machine time.
2. Your most valuable fruit goes in Kegs first, for example Starfruit and Ancient Fruit, where each fruit is worth the most as wine.
3. Cheap fruit such as Strawberry, Cranberries or Blueberry can skip the Keg, because a Keg held 6.25 days for a 210g Blueberry wine is a poor use of a Keg.
4. Keep casks in mind. Wine can be aged to iridium, which doubles its price, and dried fruit cannot. Are casks worth it? has the numbers.

Raisins and Dried Mushrooms

Grapes are the exception. In a Dehydrator, five Grapes make Raisins, a fixed 600g, or 840g with Artisan. Five Grapes made into wine in Kegs sell for 1,680g and raw for 400g. So Raisins are worth about half of the wine and about 2.1 times the raw price, and again the Dehydrator wins on machine time.

Mushrooms (not Red Mushrooms or Truffles) also go in the Dehydrator, five at a time, and the result is Dried Mushrooms, worth 7.5 times the mushroom price plus 25g, or 10.5 times plus 35 with Artisan. The wiki gives the formula but no worked example, so this guide does not print mushroom prices. A free Dehydrator also comes with the mushroom option in the Farm Cave.

The Fish Smoker

The Fish Smoker is a close relative. It takes one fish and one Coal and makes Smoked Fish in 50 minutes. Smoked Fish sells for twice the fish's price, or 2.8 times with Artisan, and keeps the fish's quality. For a fish worth:

Each fish uses one Coal, so smoke only fish that sell for clearly more than the Coal you spend. The Fish Smoker recipe is 10 Hardwood, 1 Sea Jelly, 1 River Jelly, 1 Cave Jelly, and the Fish Shop sells it for 10,000g. Fish ponds make roe rather than fish, so for those see Best fish for fish ponds.

Related

For the Keg's own numbers, see Keg vs Preserves Jar. For a greenhouse that makes this much fruit, see Best Greenhouse Setup for Money.

Work it out for your farm

• Keg vs Preserves JarWhich machine earns more for your crop, and how to split your harvest between the kegs and jars you own.
• Crafting CalculatorPick recipes and get one shopping list of ore, wood and stone, with shop prices.

Where these numbers come from

Every number on this page is calculated by the same engine as our calculators, from game data taken from the Stardew Valley Wiki and cross-checked between at least two of its pages (last checked 2026-10-09). See the methodology, and tell us if something looks wrong in your game.

More guides

All tools and guides on this topic: Artisan Goods.

• How Many Kegs Do I Need?Kegs per plant for Hops, Ancient Fruit, Starfruit and more, so no fruit waits in a chest.
• Are Casks Worth It?Gold per cask per day for wine, cheese and ale, and what a full cellar costs.
• Speed-Gro vs FertilizerCrop by crop: when Speed-Gro adds a harvest, and when fertilizer just costs you gold.
• Are Pigs Worth It?How fast a 16,000g pig pays for itself, and when Truffle Oil beats selling truffles.