The main difference between instant coffee and ground coffee is that both are picked straight from the cherries and roasted to a specific degree. After this stage, ground coffee separates and is packed, leaving you with all the effort to use a coffee maker to brew. As the instant coffee moves forward with the ground coffee solution, it is then processed with freeze-drying that ends up in solid crystals of coffee that are instantly soluble in hot and cold water, making it an instant coffee.