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Cues that have been paired with food evoke dopamine in nucleus accumbens (NAc) and drive approach behavior. This cue‐evoked dopamine signaling could contribute to overconsumption of food. One manner in which individuals try to restrict caloric intake is through the consumption of foods containing artificial (non‐nutritive) sweeteners. We were interested in whether cues paired with a non‐nutritive sweetener (saccharin) would evoke similar dopamine release as cues paired with a nutritive sweetener (sucrose). We trained food‐restricted rats to associate distinct cues with sucrose or saccharin pellets. In the first group of rats, training sessions with each pellet took place on different days, maximizing the opportunity for rats to detect nutritional differences. After training, voltammetry recordings in NAc core revealed that sucrose cues evoked greater phasic dopamine release than saccharin cues. In a second …