This invention relates to magnetocaloric materials comprising ternary alloys useful for magnetic refrigeration applications. The disclosed ternary alloys are Cerium, Neodymium, and/or Gadolinium based compositions that are fairly inexpensive, and in some cases exhibit only 2nd order magnetic phase transitions near their curie temperature, thus there are no thermal and structural hysteresis losses. This makes these compositions attractive candidates for use in magnetic refrigeration applications. The performance of the disclosed materials is similar or better to many of the known expensive rare-earth based magnetocaloric materials.