5 Must-Have RTIC Cooler Accessories You’ll Be Surprised You Didn’t Know About

If you’re in search of a top-notch cooler that’s both feature-rich and relatively affordable, one of the first brands you might come across is RTIC. This cooler brand has established itself as a budget-friendly alternative to Yeti coolers, rivaling them in longevity, ice retention, and built-in perks, like bottle openers and tie-down slots.

Like Yeti, RTIC was founded in Texas and makes its coolers overseas, which helps them retain a reasonable price despite high-quality construction. If American-made is a must, these cooler brands may be more your speed. Each RTIC cooler series comes with its own unique attributes by default, but you can improve upon an RTIC cooler simply by adding a few accessories.

All the cooler accessories we’ve rounded up here are made by RTIC, which means they’re designed specifically for the brand’s Ultra-Tough and Ultra-Light coolers and constructed with the same attention to detail RTIC gives its products. Some accessories offer better organization, while others focus on adding comfort, but all these accessories ultimately increase the cooler’s overall usefulness for consumers. 

Each item on the list was either new (more recent release date than other accessories) or had very few reviews (indicating it wasn’t a particularly hot seller) AND showed overwhelmingly positive reviews (regardless the amount of reviews posted thus far) — see our Methodology section for more details.

When packing a cooler before a trip, the most obvious thing you need to add is ice, followed closely by ice packs if you have a few on hand. However, instead of a traditional ice pack taking up precious space in your cooler, a smarter accessory to plan around is this freezable divider for RTIC Ultra-Tough coolers.

It’s exactly what it sounds like — a divider that slides into the center of an Ultra-Tough cooler to break up the cooler into two separate areas. It looks like a large, thin ice pack, and you can freeze it ahead of time to extend the amount of time your cooler is able to keep things cold inside.

RTIC makes this freezable divider for four different Ultra-Tough cooler sizes: 20, 45, Wheeled 45, and 65. There is also a separate freezable divider for Ultra-Light cooler sizes 22, Wheeled 22, 32, and 52/72.

There are multiple important differences between hard- and soft-sided coolers, but no matter which option you end up going with, it’s going to be pretty heavy once it’s loaded up with ice, drinks, and food. If you have an ultralight cooler, it might be easy enough to throw it over your shoulder and call it a day. But if you need to transport multiple things to a campsite or are accessorizing for a beach day, and a comfy shoulder strap isn’t an option, consider splurging on a wagon to help you out.

This wagon from RTIC is designed for Ultra-Tough coolers up to 65-quart capacities, but it can be used to carry other coolers from RTIC or other brands that are similar in size. It’s durable build includes large rubber wheels, a steel frame, and water-resistant 60 Denier Nylon fabric, and it can hold up to 250 pounds worth of cargo. There’s a fold-down tailgate and a large pocket on the outside to make it easier to load and organize all your things.

When you get home from a hike or you’re ready to unpack the wagon at your campsite, it’s easy to break down and store away. It has a quad-collapsible frame that helps it fold down relatively flat and makes it easy to pop back open within seconds.

Most people are aware of the best tips and tricks to keep food and drinks colder in an insulated cooler, like choosing a good color for your cooler and layering ice with food and drinks rather than pouring it on top. One lesser-known tip for optimal cooler usage is to use a basket inside to keep your dry goods — like chip bags, trail mix, or sandwich bread — away from melting ice.

RTIC sells a dry goods basket for its Ultra-Light coolers, with options designed to fit cooler sizes 22, 32, and 52/72. There are small handles on each short side of the basket that help it hang over the cooler’s inside edge, suspended over any ice and drinks below it. There’s also a dry goods basket for RTIC Ultra-Tough coolers, with options designed to fit sizes 45, 65, and Wheeled 45.

Although these dry goods baskets from RTIC are made specifically to fit its own coolers, you can certainly use them in any cooler big enough to fit them inside. They might not be able to hang over an inside edge, but you could rest them on ice while still keeping your dry goods from getting wet.

You can sit on RTIC’s Ultra-Light 52-quart cooler as is — you can even stand on it, depending on your weight — but the cooler’s hard lid doesn’t make the most comfortable seat. That’s why RTIC created a plush cushion designed to fit perfectly on the company’s 52-quart cooler.

The cushion is tri-fold, so it’s easy to store away when you’re not actively using your cooler. To fasten it in place on the cooler, there are two adjustable straps with buckle latches positioned on the lid’s underside. You could definitely leave the cushion fastened in place when storing the cooler between uses, but it’ll accumulate dust and dirt, depending on where you choose to store it.

RTIC sells other Ultra-Light cooler sizes, but this cushion is only available for the 52-quart size. Alternatively, there’s a cushion for multiple Ultra-Tough cooler sizes, including 45, 65, 110, and 145 models.

Like RTIC’s dry good baskets, this wire basket for Ultra-Tough coolers can help separate melting ice and condensating drinks from food items that need to stay completely dry, like bags of sandwich bread, snack crackers, or chips. However, there are two main differences to note between wire baskets and dry goods baskets designed for coolers.

Food items stored in a wire basket inside a cooler are able to stay colder than items stored in a dry goods basket because there’s more open surface area. The trade-off here is that, depending on how well you organize your cooler or how much ice you fill it with, a wire basket can’t keep your food items as dry as a basket with a solid bottom can.

These wire baskets from RTIC are only designed to fit Ultra-Tough cooler models 110 and 145. You can also take the idea and find a wire basket with handles from another brand that’ll fit nicely with your cooler’s interior dimensions, though it won’t be a seamless fit like RTIC’s wire basket with 110 and 145 Ultra-Tough coolers.

We scoured RTIC’s available product catalogue to check all current cooler accessories to begin our research. We considered the number of reviews each product received, the release date of each product, and the percentage of positive reviews each product received in calculating our overall ranked list of products. The list above shows 5 of the products most likely to be new to the average person at the same time as they were overwhelmingly positively reviewed by users that already owned each product.