Pre-Rolls Dethrone Flower as America's Top-Selling Cannabis Category

For as long as legal cannabis has existed in America, flower has been king. Jars of bud were the foundation of every dispensary, the default choice for experienced consumers, and the category against which everything else was measured.

That era is over. According to Custom Cones USA's 2026 Market Report, pre-rolls became the most-sold product category in the United States by unit volume in 2025. The category generated $3.6 billion in revenue and moved more than 383 million individual units, capturing 15.9 percent of total market share and posting the strongest growth of any major cannabis category.

The Numbers Behind the Shift

Pre-roll revenue grew 9.8 percent year-over-year in 2025, while unit sales surged 18.6 percent — a growth rate that dwarfed the broader cannabis market's 1.5 percent expansion. The gap between pre-rolls and flower has been narrowing for years, but 2025 was the first year pre-rolls definitively pulled ahead in units sold.

The category's momentum shows no signs of slowing. Custom Cones USA projects 2026 revenue between $3.8 billion and $4 billion, with long-term growth pushing the market past $5.2 billion by 2030.

What makes these numbers more striking is the price compression happening simultaneously. Average pre-roll prices fell throughout 2025 as competition intensified, meaning the unit growth rate actually understates how many more consumers are choosing pre-rolls over other formats.

Who's Winning the Pre-Roll Race

Two companies illustrate the category's breadth. California-based Jeeter leads in total revenue, generating more than $253 million in pre-roll sales through a premium-focused strategy. Jeeter's average price point hovers around $23 per unit, and the company has built a brand identity around quality concentrates and high-end packaging.

At the other end of the spectrum, Michigan-based Dragonfly Cannabis leads the industry in unit sales. Dragonfly moved 22.6 million pre-rolls in 2025 while generating just over $30 million in revenue, anchored by low-priced, single-gram products averaging $1.34 per unit. This volume-driven approach serves a different consumer — one who values convenience and affordability over brand cachet.

The coexistence of these two models reveals that the pre-roll category is not monolithic. It spans from gas-station-priced singles to premium infused joints that rival concentrates in potency and price.

Infused Pre-Rolls: The Category Within the Category

The single biggest driver of pre-roll growth is the infused segment — joints and blunts that combine cannabis flower with concentrates such as kief, wax, hash rosin, or live resin oil. Infused pre-rolls generated $1.68 billion in 2025, accounting for nearly 47 percent of total pre-roll revenue.

Infused products command higher margins than standard pre-rolls, making them attractive to producers squeezed by falling flower prices. They also offer consumers a differentiated experience that plain flower cannot match: higher potency, layered flavor profiles from terpene-rich concentrates, and slower, more even burns from the added oils.

The popularity of infused pre-rolls has created a secondary market for concentrates specifically formulated for infusion rather than dabbing, pushing extractors to develop products optimized for viscosity, burn characteristics, and compatibility with paper and flower.

Why Consumers Are Switching

The shift from flower to pre-rolls reflects several converging consumer preferences.

Convenience is the most obvious factor. Pre-rolls require no grinding, packing, or rolling — a meaningful advantage for casual consumers, new users, and anyone who values simplicity over ritual. In states where cannabis tourism is significant, pre-rolls are often the first product visitors purchase.

Consistency is the second driver. Machine-rolled pre-rolls offer uniform weight, density, and burn characteristics that hand-rolling cannot match. For consumers who want predictable effects, a labeled pre-roll with tested THC content is more reliable than buying flower and estimating their own dose.

The multi-pack format has also been a growth engine. Multi-packs — typically three to seven pre-rolls in a single package — offer per-unit savings and have become the format of choice for regular consumers. They function as the cannabis equivalent of a six-pack: convenient, shareable, and priced for repeat purchase.

Portion control matters too. Many pre-rolls contain 0.5 grams or less, a dose that appeals to the growing microdosing market and to consumers who do not want to commit to rolling or smoking an entire gram at once.

The Impact on Flower

Flower is not disappearing, but its dominance is fading. Flower revenue has been flat or declining in most mature markets, with price compression driving per-gram revenue down even as total consumption holds relatively steady.

What is happening is a value-chain shift. Much of the flower being grown in the United States now ends up inside pre-rolls rather than in jars on dispensary shelves. For cultivators, this changes the economics: flower destined for pre-rolls does not need the bag appeal — the visual attractiveness — that commands premium pricing in the whole-flower market. This has created a tier system where the most photogenic buds go to whole-flower sales, while everything else feeds the pre-roll and extraction supply chains.

For dispensaries, the shift changes shelf allocation, staff training, and inventory management. Pre-rolls have shorter shelf lives than properly stored flower, require different merchandising strategies, and generate different margin profiles.

Automation and the Race to the Bottom

The surge in pre-roll demand has triggered a wave of automation investment. Pre-roll production has historically been labor-intensive — hand-packing cones is slow, inconsistent, and expensive. But new machines from companies like Hefestus, RollPros, and Futurola can fill thousands of cones per hour with minimal human intervention.

Capital-squeezed producers are turning to sub-$30,000 automation systems that can transform their pre-roll economics overnight. At the high end, fully integrated production lines costing $100,000 or more can weigh, fill, tamp, twist, and package pre-rolls at industrial scale.

This automation is accelerating price compression. As production costs fall, retail prices follow, which drives further unit growth but squeezes margins for companies that cannot achieve volume. The result is a category that increasingly rewards scale and penalizes artisanal, small-batch producers.

What Comes Next

The pre-roll category's trajectory points toward continued growth and further segmentation. Expect more format innovation — half-gram minis, king-size blunts, glass-tipped premium singles, and strain-specific multi-packs are all expanding.

Infused pre-rolls will likely continue to outpace standard offerings, and the definition of "infused" will broaden to include hash rosin, live resin, THCa diamonds, and even minor cannabinoid additions like CBN for sleep or CBG for focus.

Branding will intensify. As the category matures, consumer choice will increasingly be driven by brand loyalty and product identity rather than price alone — the same evolution that transformed craft beer and specialty coffee.

For now, the headline is simple: Americans buy more pre-rolls than any other cannabis product. The joint, it turns out, is not a relic of cannabis culture. It is the future of it.