It wasn’t all that long ago when you had to go out to a restaurant if you wanted a properly-cooked pizza. But times have changed. These days, there seems to be a new at-home pizza oven everywhere you look, and they offer the same insanely high temperatures and rolling flames as the pizzeria ovens to give you perfect leoparded, bubbly pies every time.
But given just how many tempting backyard pizza ovens have hit the market in recent years, it can be difficult to nail down which one is the best for your situation. That’s why we did the (tasty) work for you and went hands-on with the best pizza ovens on the market to see how each of them performed. So whether you’re shopping for yourself or you’re looking to pick up that perfect holiday gift, you’ll find all the best pizza ovens below.
Best Overall Pizza Oven: Ooni Karu 16
- Fuel: Wood and charcoal, with the option for gas with the Ooni Gas Burner add-on
- Dimensions: 33 x 32 x 19.6 inches
- Weight: 62.6lbs
- Preheat Time: 15-20 minutes
Ooni is perhaps the company most responsible for the outstanding current state of at-home pizza ovens, with seven crowd-pleasing ovens currently offered in its catalog. We’ve tested almost every single one of them, and the Karu 16 is the best pizza oven Ooni offers. Full stop. It’s also the only home pizza oven to have the distinction of being "Recommended for Domestic Use" by the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana, the world’s foremost authority on Neapolitan pies. So if you’re looking to make Neapolitan-style pizza specifically, the Karu 16 is pretty tough to beat. But even if you have no interest in producing specific genres of pizza, the Karu 16 is still an excellent choice for beginners, according to our tester, thanks to how easy it is to use. Many home pizza ovens have a steep learning curve, but Ooni’s priciest oven provides helpful features like an exterior digital thermometer that monitors the ambient temperature of the oven along with the “ViewFlame” hinged glass door that allows you to safely view your pizza as it cooks to make sure it doesn’t burn.
Despite its beginner-friendly features, the Karu 16 isn’t without its faults. While the oven cooks with wood or charcoal out of the box, an adaptor is required for gas cooking — and it costs an extra 100 bucks. But perhaps the biggest knock against Ooni’s Karu 16, according to our tester, is its size. The Karu 16 is big and heavy, weighing around 20lb more than the next heaviest Ooni model. Not only that but it’s awkwardly sized, with our tester noting that he hasn’t been able to find a better (or more affordable) option for storing it than the wheeled cart that Ooni offers for it. If you spring for the $330 cart and the $100 adaptor, you’re looking at $1,230 all-in for your Karu 16 setup, which may be too steep for many prospective pizza oven buyers. But even with that being the case, the Karu 16 churned out some of the most consistently good pizzas of any oven we tested, and its beginner-friendliness shouldn’t be discounted.
Read our full Ooni Karu 16 review.
Best Upgrade Pizza Oven: Gozney Dome
- Fuel: Wood, Dual-fuel Propane or Dual-fuel Natural Gas
- Dimensions: 26 x 24.8 x 28.8 inches
- Weight: 128lbs
- Preheat Time: 30-40 minutes
Simply put, Gozney’s recently-released Dome makes the best pizza of any at-home oven we’ve ever tested. And frankly, for the price, that had better be the case. Clocking in at double the MSRP of our next most expensive competitor, the Dome certainly isn’t cheap, but it’s about as close as you can get to truly replicating a pizzeria-cooked pie at home, as our tester notes that it bridges the gap between commercial and portable pizza ovens. The UFO-shaped Dome is built to the same ratios as Gozney's restaurant ovens and can reach internal temperatures of 950°F with an open door. But despite those super-high temps, our tester found that the Dome’s ceramic-coated steel exterior stayed cool to the touch no matter how hot things got inside.
Available in three variants — wood-only, wood & propane and wood & natural gas — all cooking methods offer some level of control, whether that’s precise temperature control in the gas and propane versions or controlling the airflow when using wood heat. On the downside, the Dome is by far the least portable of the ovens we tested, and our reviewer found that the nearly 130-lb oven is really meant to live permanently as the centerpiece of a patio and not be carted around. So if portability is crucial to your pizza oven experience, you'll need to look elsewhere. But in exchange for the high price and lack of portability, you’re getting the best home-cooked pizzas anywhere, along with surprising versatility. Our tester tried out the Dome’s built-in digital probe thermometer when cooking a steak, and found that the steam injector and rope-sealed door add-ons made the Dome the perfect environment for baking bread.
Read our full Gozney Dome review.
Best Budget Pizza Oven: Ooni Fyra 12
- Fuel: Wood Pellets
- Dimensions: 26.7 x 18.9 x 9.8 inches
- Weight: 22lbs
- Preheat Time: 15 minutes
The Fyra is Ooni's fire-only pizza oven, and it helps to bring that wood-fired taste to your pizzas. At $349, it's also the brand's cheapest offering, but buying rounds of pellets definitely adds up. Plus, burnt pellets make for messy post-pizza party cleanup sessions, so you may end up wishing you spent just a bit more for a cleaner and more efficient gas-powered oven. But despite its quirks, the Fyra does excel at its primary function: to make excellent pizza after excellent pizza.
Our tester found that the Fyra gets extremely hot in a limited amount of time. However, it doesn't stay hot for long, as it burns through fuel pellets rather quickly, requiring users to refuel more often than many of the other ovens on our list. Still, its portability and easy-to-store format make it a great budget option for most, and it's one of the cheapest ways to get that wood-fired taste at home.
Read our full Ooni Fyra review.
Best Beginner Pizza Oven: Ooni Koda 12
- Fuel: Gas
- Dimensions: 18.1 x 11.1 x 28.3 inches
- Weight: 20lbs
- Preheat Time: 15 minutes
Ooni has become the standout brand when it comes to pizza ovens, and its Koda 12 is probably the best one for most people looking to casually cook a couple of mini pizzas for a small group. Powered by gas, the Koda 12 is easy to use and heats up quickly — our tester found that the oven hit 600 degrees Fahrenheit in just 15 minutes, blasting the oven on medium-high. (Koda 12 actually has the ability to hit 950 degrees in 15 minutes, but that's on full blast.)
Our tester loves using the Koda 12 to make pizzas on a weeknight, mainly because he can churn out about four pies in an hour, making light work out of what one might assume is a long and tedious job (no shade to actually pizza makers). But keep in mind that those are small, personal pizzas, so if you're looking to feed a crowd you may want to look at a larger option like the Koda 16. On the plus side, the smaller Koda 12 weighs just 20 pounds, so it's easy to bring in and out of the house, plus, you can take it to any of your outdoor adventures.
Read our full Ooni Koda 12 review.
Best Pizza Oven for Pizza Parties: Ooni Koda 16
- Fuel: Gas/Propane
- Dimensions: 27 x 29 x 16.3 inches
- Weight: 39.2lbs
- Preheat Time: 15-20 minutes
While Ooni’s Koda 12 is a great fit for many people, it isn’t ideal for everyone. As our tester put it: if you routinely cook for more than three people, you're going to want the Koda 16. The big brother of the Koda 12 churns out 16” pizzas rather than 12-inchers, and while that may not seem like a huge difference, in real-life use it makes a world of difference. Our tester found that he could feed four people with just two 16” pies, which he could cook in the Koda 16 in half the time it would take him to feed the same amount of people four mini pizzas from his Koda 12.
The other main difference between the two Ooni Kodas is their burner design. While the Koda 12 has a single burner in the rear, the Koda 16 has a unique L-shaped burner that theoretically allows you to cook a perfectly even pie with just a single 90-degree turn of the crust (though our tester noted that he didn’t actually have much luck with this method). That L-Shaped burner does naturally lead to some uneven temperatures in the oven, since it just heats one side at a time, so cooking with the Koda 16 does have a bit of a learning curve.
Read our full Ooni Koda 16 review.
Best Gas Pizza Oven: Gozney Roccbox
- Fuel: Gas
- Dimensions: 16.3 x 21 x 18.6 inches
- Weight: 44lbs
- Preheat Time: 15 minutes
Gozney's Roccbox comes in at $100 more than the Koda 12, and we feel that the extra Benjamin is worth it. The Roccbox might not be the pizza oven you buy if you're still trying to figure your way around a pizza oven, but it will deliver some excellent pies. The Roccbox heats up incredibly quickly, delivering heat up to 950 degrees Fahrenheit — and it'll stay that hot for a long time. It'll stay so hot, in fact, that you can churn out pie after pie without worrying about it losing heat, even without a door in front. With the Roccbox, you get both direct and indirect heat, which means you're left with Instagram-worthy charred crusts and perfectly cooked toppings.
True to form, our tester found that this pizza oven gets very hot and, thanks to its insulation, stays very hot. However, while it can cook some really excellent pies, it does have a fairly small cooking surface area, so you're limited to one small 10" pie at a time. Plus, despite being sometimes marketed as a travel/caping pizza oven, it's pretty unwieldy and is probably best suited to stationary backyard usage, considering that your propane tank, pizza peel and other accessories will always have to make the trip with you.
Read our full Gozney Roccbox review.
Best Indoor Pizza Oven: Ooni Volt 12
- Fuel: Electric
- Dimensions: 24.2 x 20.8 x 10.9 inches
- Weight: 39.2lbs
- Preheat Time: 20 minutes
Historically, when shopping for a home pizza oven, buyers have had one of two options. If you have access to an outdoor space like a backyard or patio, then you can choose from any one of the excellent outdoor pizza ovens that populate this guide. But if you're an apartment-dweller, your only options for indoor pizza ovens have been glorified toaster ovens that live on your countertop. That changed in 2023 when Ooni unveiled the Volt. It's the brand's first electric pizza oven, its first oven that can be used indoors and it is — by far — the best indoor home pizza oven in existence.
Our tester set up the Ooni Volt on the countertop in his kitchen and has been using it to crank out pizzas that blow away any other home option — whether that's delivery, a frozen pizza or a homemade pie cooked in his kitchen oven. The Volt cooks pizzas lightning quick — under two minutes at max temperature if you fancy Ooni's trademark Neapolitan or about five minutes at a lower setting for our tester's preferred New York style. The Volt preheats quickly, never taking more than 20 minutes, and can reach up to 850 degrees Fahrenheit — which is bonkers hot for something on your kitchen counter. Those high temps mean you can get bubbly cheese and a leoparded crust that just isn't replicable using other indoor cooking appliances. Despite the intense heat involved, though, our tester says the Volt stays relatively cool to the touch. It does feel a bit hot at the highest setting — not hot enough to burn you, with the exception of the steel rim around the door — so you will want to make sure there's plenty of space around the oven with nothing flammable.
Our reviewer's favorite feature of the Volt is the amount of control offered by the oven. There are three dials on the front: one for setting a timer, one for setting your temperature and a third one for balancing your heat sources. The latter is especially fun to geek out on, as it allows you to adjust the amount of heat between the oven's top and bottom heat sources. Did your cheese burn before your crust crisped up? Make a note, and next time, adjust your balance dial accordingly. Our tester found the oven loads of fun to use, even when just using it to reheat old pizza to level it up.
Still, the Volt isn't without its flaws. You need a decent amount of counter space to accommodate it — it's maybe twice as big as a toaster oven. It also could be easier to clean. While Ooni recommends simply turning the pizza stone over after each cook and letting the residue burn off, the inside of the oven gets pretty dirty, and with all of the electric coils and whatnot on the interior, it seems too delicate to really clean intensely. There's also the risk of smoking out your kitchen given the high temperatures involved — our tester experienced this firsthand when some particularly sticky dough didn't want to leave the peel, causing some stray cheese and pepperonis to fall onto the rear of the stone and turn into cinders. And, at a cool $999, it's the priciest oven Ooni makes. Still, if you're looking to set up a pizza oven indoors, nothing else comes close to this.
Read our full Ooni Volt 12 review.
Best Dual-Fuel Pizza Oven: Solo Stove Pi Pizza Oven
- Fuel: Wood (Gas burner sold separately or with bundle)
- Dimensions: 21 x 15 inches
- Weight: 31lbs
- Preheat Time: 18 minutes
Solo Stove didn't start by making a pizza oven, but its ever-popular fire pit definitely gave the brand the jumpstart on making an excellent pizza oven out of the gate. The standard Pi is a wood-powered pizza oven, but our tester found that it's worth it to buy the optional gas burner to let you cook with a propane tank. This is because it's a bit cumbersome to load pellets, but they did appreciate the wood-fired flavor they provide — gas just makes everything easier, so the fact that you can cook with both is a huge plus, especially on such an affordable oven.
The Pi is shaped like a cylinder, and its "Demi Dome" construction creates an evenly heated 360-degree cooking surface for perfectly cooked pizzas. Like Solo Stove's fire pit, Pi has the same airflow system that minimizes smoke — without completely eliminating it, as our tester noted that cooking with wood still brought out plenty of smoke — and creates a convection effect for better cooking. On the downside, the Pi's open door is extremely narrow, and our tester found sliding pizzas in and out to be a bit tricky because of it.
Read our full Solo Stove Pi review.
Best Personal Pizza Oven: Ooni Karu 12
- Fuel: Wood and charcoal, with the option for gas with the optional Ooni Gas Burner
- Dimensions: 19.8 x 13.7 x 29.1 inches
- Weight: 44lbs
- Preheat Time: 15 minutes
After the gas-powered Kodas, the budget-minded Fyra, the indoor Volt and the top-of-the-line Karu 16, the Karu 12 is the Ooni pizza oven that probably ticks the most boxes for the most people. Like the Karu 16, it can cook with wood, charcoal or gas (with a sold-separately adaptor). Like the Kodas and the Fyra, it’s lightweight and easily portable (that chimney is removable), with a price that won’t send you running for the hills. Our tester found that it was extremely easy to use and churned out consistently great-tasting pies quickly — even if they were of the small, 10”, personal pizza variety. Basically, the Karu 12 a great compromise pizza oven if you want some of the ability of the larger Karu 16 while paying half as much to get it.
But as much as our tester enjoyed using the Karu 12, it isn’t quite up to the Karu 16’s standards. While that larger oven boasts a hinged glass door for observing your pies, the Karu 12’s door has no window and no hinges — you have to take it off entirely to check on your pie mid-cook. Our tester found it a bit awkward trying to find a spot for the door when it wasn’t on the oven, and she also noted that the oven’s temperature drops rapidly when the door is detached. Another minor quibble our tester found with the Karu 12 was its appetite for fuel, as the wood/charcoal tray is small and needs to be refilled fairly often.
Read our full Ooni Karu 12 review.
Best Portable Pizza Oven: Stoke Wood-Powered Pizza Oven
- Fuel: Wood Pellets
- Dimensions: 23.5 x 19.5 x 13.5 inches
- Weight: 37lbs
- Preheat Time: 20 minutes
For the constant traveler who wants to make pizza on the road, get the Stoke Wood-Powered Pizza Oven. Because it's not powered by gas — though Stoke also makes one of those — there's no need to schlep around a huge propane tank. While pellet-powered pizza ovens are notoriously messy to clean, Stoke's keeps the mess contained so that transportation won't yield ash-laden car trunks. The oven produces excellent pizzas that have that signature wood-fired taste, though make sure you remember to rotate your pie or else you'll end up with a half-burnt pizza.
Our tester found that the Stoke is one of the best all-around pie-makers, offering superb ease of use, simple adjustments (even on the fly) and a format that's easily constructed and taken back apart for storage. However, since this oven heats from the rear, it's pretty easy to burn a pizza before you realize it. Just remember that this oven requires constant attention when baking and you should be fine.
Read our full Stoke Pizza Oven review.
Best Fire Pit Pizza Oven: Solo Stove Pi Fire Pizza Oven
- Fuel: Wood
- Dimensions: 19.3 x 19.3 x 16.9 inches
- Weight: 19.6lbs
- Preheat Time: ~30 minutes
If you've already bought into Solo Stove's fire pit ecosystem and are looking to add pizza-cooking to your backyard party repertoire, then the Pi Fire is your solution. Released in 2023 and designed as an add-on for Solo Stove's line of fire pits (sizes are available for the Bonfire, Ranger and Yukon fire pits), the Pi Fire sits atop your Solo Stove and uses the flames from the fire pit to cook your pizza. As a result, you've got a non-traditional pizza-cooking experience as far as preheating and temperature control goes, but you're still getting wood-fired taste in a pretty affordable package.
Our tester concurred with Solo Stove that this is a leisurely pizza-cooking experience. The temperature tops out around 600 degrees Fahrenheit and takes about a half-hour to get there. As a result, you're looking at cooking times that are longer than dedicated pizza ovens, but still fairly short at around six to eight minutes per pie. Overall, our tester found the Pi Fire easy to set up (comparing it to a basic Ikea build) and easy to use when following the included instructions, even though she had no prior pizza-making experience. Cleanup was also a breeze, with our tester noting that it was no different from cleaning out her fire pit: just let the ashes cool and dump them out.
Perhaps the most essential piece of advice from our reviewer was this: buy the necessary accessories. This oven sits directly over roaring flames, and you can burn yourself if you're not careful. She recommends heat-resistant gloves, a peel, perhaps a turner and a thermometer to take the guesswork out of when your oven reaches temperature (especially important when adding new logs). Our tester also knocks the Pi Fire a bit for its awkward size and shape, since it needs to be stored indoors.
Read our full Solo Stove Pi Fire review.
What to Look for in a Pizza Oven
Heat
The reason why the pizzas you make in your standard home oven don't compare to pizzas you buy at a pizzeria is simple: Your oven just can't achieve a high enough temperature. The pizza ovens on this list can achieve temperatures up to 950 degrees, while the lowest temperature any one of these ovens can hit is 750 degrees, and that's because it's a unit meant for indoor use. It usually takes about 15 minutes to get up to temperature, which isn't that long to wait for an oven to preheat, and these ovens usually have some sort of insulation to ensure heat doesn't escape over time.
Portability
If you're looking to bring your pizza oven on the go, you can, especially when most of the ones available can be broken down and reassembled with ease. However, no one type of pizza oven is perfect for portability. Gas-powered pizza ovens require you to carry around a propane tank, while wood- or charcoal-powered pizza ovens will be messy and can leave your car looking a little crumby and ashy. Keep in mind the size and weight of these pizza ovens too, because portability can be subjective.
Fuel Type
Gas: Gas-powered pizza ovens are probably the easiest to use. You can either use a propane tank to power your grill or hire a professional to hook up your pizza oven to your home's natural gas line. Some people choose gas-powered pizza ovens because they're easy to use, and it's easier to adjust your oven's heat. Gas-powered pizza ovens are cleaner than those powered by wood and charcoal, but you also miss out on that wood-fired or smokey flavor.
Wood: We won't say one fuel type is the best for a pizza oven, but there's a reason why "wood-fired taste" is a positive tasting note and why "gas-flavored pizza" is not. Wood will usually come in the form of pellets, which you'll manually load into the pizza oven to get a fire going. You'll have to constantly work on reloading pellets, and maintaining the fire takes some work, but you'll get that signature wood-fired flavor you desire, as the higher flame of a wood fire will bring more puff to your dough.
Charcoal: Like wood, some pizza ovens run on charcoal. It imparts a smokey flavor into your pizza, but like wood it requires maintenance, and you'll be left with a bit of a mess to clean up once you're done cooking.
Electric: For indoor pizza ovens, go for an electric. Electric-powered pizza ovens may not get as hot as ones powered by gas, wood or charcoal (in most cases), but they're excellent alternatives for people who don't have access to an outdoor space.
How We Tested
Most of our pizza oven testers weren't well-versed in using a pizza oven — and yet each was able to make excellent pies in no time. Each tester evaluated how easy it was to unbox and assemble their pizza oven, as well as how easy it would be to take the pizza oven on the road. The purpose of a pizza oven is to get to the high temperatures that you can't achieve in a typical home oven. Our testers made note of how hot their pizza ovens could get — getting as high as almost 1,000 degrees — and then they got to actually making pizzas. Testers made note of how easy it was to make a pizza, as well as how well those pizzas turned out. And in pretty much every case, every single one of these pizza ovens pumped out some pretty enviable pies.
New and Upcoming Releases
Our recommendations are based on real-world testing. Here's a look at some new pizza oven models our testers are considering for future updates to this guide.
Ooni Karu 12G: The latest addition to Ooni's acclaimed Karu family is described by the brand as the world's most advanced portable pizza oven. Compared to the original Karu, the 12G — which is also a muli-fuel oven — uses 36 percent less propane while reaching its ideal baking temperature up to 29 percent faster. It also adds a borosilicate glass door for better insulation.
Nexgrill Ora: While the design of the Ora is, let's say, familiar (Ooni called...), this new $299 oven is bringing some unique innovations to the home pizza oven space. It's a gas-powered oven, giving you control and temperatures up to 900 degrees, but it also features a smoker box where you can add wood chips or pellets for some added woodfired flavor. There's also a knob that rotates the pizza stone, eliminating the often precarious chore of having to rotate your pie mid-cook with your peel.
