When you’re making pizza at home, nothing can improve a good pizza recipe like a pizza oven. For restaurant-level results, you need to bake at higher temperatures than home kitchen ovens reach. Most outdoor pizza ovens exceed 900°F, which has long been the standard for Neapolitan-style pies: Think puffed, blistered edges and bubbling cheese, right out of a big, built-in brick oven. While a few of the best outdoor pizza ovens we’ve tested are wood-fired, we found that gas pizza ovens offer the same high-heat benefits. It all comes down to preference.
We tested 22 leading models, including the most popular Ooni pizza ovens, the $2,000 Gozney Dome, and pizza grill attachments. We baked dozens of pizzas back to back to evaluate preheating time, temperature consistency, and overall convenience. Because this is the most important (and likely most expensive) pizza tool you’ll buy, we’re sharing pros, cons, and other takeaways from our tests to help you find the best pizza oven for your backyard.
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Types of Pizza Ovens
Figuring out which type of fuel you want to work with can narrow down the best outdoor pizza oven for your needs.
- Gas-fired pizza ovens heat the fastest and are the most convenient to ignite and clean up after. Gas is also the most consistent fuel source because you don’t have to think about maintaining the temperature. Gas ovens give pizza crust a nice char, but not the smokiness you might associate with a restaurant’s wood-fired oven. Also, know that gas ovens can run on a propane tank or a natural gas line. Propane is more standard, but some pizza ovens are wired for either option, so double-check that you’re buying the fuel source you want.
- Wood-fired pizza ovens, which often work with charcoal too, can give homemade pizza restaurant-level smokiness with a bit of effort. Wood and charcoal need more time to heat than gas, as well as some attention to maintain. Like learning to adjust the dampers on a charcoal grill, getting a feel for a wood-fired pizza oven’s airflow can take practice. But this heat control lets you do more with a charcoal- or wood-fired oven, like using it as a smoker for low and slow cooks.
- Multi-fuel pizza ovens burn some combination of gas, wood, and charcoal for your most versatile option. With these ovens, you can choose your fuel source based on how much time you want to put into cooking and cleanup on a given day.
- Pellet-fired pizza ovens run on small wood pellets and call for some heat control: Think hoppers to load more pellets or features for airflow, such as a chimney or built-in fan. Pellet-fired pizza ovens are less common than wood- and gas-burning models.
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How We Tested
Since 2022, we have tested 22 outdoor pizza ovens. As new models pop up, including updated versions of pizza ovens we’ve tested, we’re eager to get them to our outdoor lab and compare them to our standing favorites. This list of the best pizza ovens combines our original data from testing 17 outdoor pizza ovens with the results of new releases from Gozney, Ooni, Everdure, Alfa, and Empava. We also retested two previous winners alongside the new ovens for comparison.
We’ve rated each of them for cooking performance and design, as well as how easily we could assemble, use, and clean them. Whereas in our original tests we used regular dough and whole-wheat dough, this time we used store-bought dough and homemade dough, and noticed homemade dough performed best across the seven pizza ovens we tested. Here’s how we divided our testing rounds.
- Assembly and Pre-Burn: First, we assembled the pizza ovens, rating how easy or difficult this was for one person. Moving the pizza ovens was the next test, and we made sure to have help with the two extra-large models. Once we got the pizza ovens outdoors, we followed the manufacturer’s instructions for pre-burning seasoning, or running the pizza ovens at their highest temperatures for about 30 minutes.
- Preheating: We then started a preheating test and general temperature assessment using an infrared thermometer to evaluate how long each oven took to reach the recommended preheat temperature. It also allowed us to test how hot each oven was from front to back and side to side, revealing hot spots, cold spots, and other heating inconsistencies. Some models have built-in temperature gauges, so we compared their readings to the infrared thermometer.
- Neapolitan-Style: Next, we rolled out store-bought dough to make pizzas on high heat. We recorded the time each pizza cooked and whether it had the markers of a Neapolitan-style pizza: leopard browning and crust with a crisp bottom. We also looked at how the cheese melted and the pepperonis cupped. We used pizza peels to load, turn, and unload pizzas, noting whether the design of the ovens made this easy. We assessed consistency by cooking three pizzas back to back in each oven, noting whether anything changed from start to finish.
- Homemade Dough: In this round, we made homemade dough and followed our Sausage and Ricotta Pizza with Castelvetrano Olives recipe to see how the ovens would handle different styles of dough and assortments of toppings. During this test, we also considered how easily we could achieve optimal results after getting familiar with the ovens.
- Cleaning: After turning off and removing the propane tank or extinguishing the burning wood fuel, we let the grills fully cool and then followed each manufacturer’s instructions for cleaning the pizza stones. We rated how easily we could remove blackened pizza stains and, when applicable, how easily we could clean out wood or pellets.
Our returning winner, Ooni Koda 16 came out ahead in our most recent tests for its easy use and consistent results: crisp homemade crust with leopard charring, bubbling cheese, and perfectly cooked toppings. As the original player in the pizza oven game, Ooni has debuted several models over the years, but we consider the Koda 16 the best pizza oven overall for a few reasons. It runs on gas, meaning it heats faster than wood-burning models. It took just under 25 minutes for the pizza stone to reach 750°F in our tests, which we found to be fast for its size; the smaller Koda 12 heated in 15 minutes, for comparison. The Koda 16’s wide base and rubber feet helped to keep it stable as we shoved pizzas in and out. We also liked its wide mouth, as it gave us more room to maneuver a 12-inch peel than the Koda 12. This made rotating pizzas easier and resulted in more even baking.
While it’s not small, the Koda 16 has a streamlined design and is lightweight enough for one person to move. The oven comes almost fully assembled; once you attach the propane tank, you can start using it basically out of the box. It has one dial for igniting and adjusting the flame. The flame burned hot in our tests, but turning down the dial and rotating the pie gave us great results. Also, note that it doesn’t have a built-in thermometer, so we used an infrared thermometer to measure the stone and get the exact temperature we were cooking at. You’ll likely need to get a feel for the oven, as we found, especially if you’re new to pizza ovens. But once you do, you can’t beat the convenience, consistent results, and overall value of this Ooni.
Fuel Source: Gas | Pizza Diameter: 16 inches | Temperature Range: Up to 932°F
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You’re limited to 12-inch pizzas, so feeding groups will take more time, especially if you’re cooking with wood or charcoal.
This pizza oven from Ooni is small enough to be portable and can operate on wood, charcoal, or gas (with a burner attachment), so you can customize your cooking experience. The 12G is an upgraded version of the popular Ooni Karu 12, adding a built-in temperature gauge, rubber grips on the feet, a cool-touch door handle, and a borosilicate glass door. Keeping the door closed and the chimney open lets the oven reach and maintain temperatures up to 950°F, while opening the door allows heat to escape. A redesigned burner tray encourages airflow for wood and charcoal.
Because the stone gets incredibly hot, we rotated pizzas every 20 to 30 seconds to avoid burning. It’s not a hands-off process, but we found it easy for the oven’s small size, as the drop-down door leaves plenty of room for a pizza peel to slide in. Still, we had mixed results with the dough, finding that homemade fared better than store-bought, which needed more heat to fully cook. You’ll probably go through a learning curve with cook time and heat control like we did, but overall, it’s easy to use. Lighting it is similar to lighting a grill. Ooni recommends using firestarters for lump charcoal or wood. For gas, turning a dial adds propane to the line and ignites a spark.
The lightest pizza oven we tested, the Karu 12G weighs just over 34 pounds. Its legs fold down, but the height of the chimney keeps it from being compact, so you may need to detach it for storage or traveling. Compared to the portable Roccbox, we preferred its overall design and chimney damper for heat control. While the propane burner attachment ($99 on Amazon) ups the initial cost, it’s worth buying if you want a quicker option.
Fuel Source: Wood, charcoal, or gas | Pizza Diameter: 12 inches | Temperature Range: Up to 950°F
If you want wood-fired, Neapolitan-style pies at home, consider the Gozney Dome your best bet. This dual-fuel pizza oven lets you cook with gas or wood, while an air vent gives you more heat control than the average pizza oven. We tested the propane version, but you can also buy one that runs on natural gas. Due to its size, the Dome takes a while to heat: about 45 minutes for the stone to reach 750°F. But thanks to a built-in thermometer, you don’t have to point an infrared thermometer at it as you wait. We found the temperatures at the front and back of this oven to be impressively consistent. Because it doesn’t have a flame on the right side, the left gets much hotter, so turning the pizzas is still necessary for even doneness. This 315-square-inch setup allows you to position pizzas closer to or further from the flame.
Like the Ooni Koda 16, the Gozney Dome has a wide mouth that makes it easy to rotate pizzas and remove them as soon as they’re ready for that perfect char on the crust. In back-to-back tests, pizzas made in the Dome were crisp, golden-brown, and bubbling at the two-minute mark. It has great heat retention and insulation with a ceramic-bonded construction. With that said, it’s too large and heavy to be portable. You can buy a wheeled stand, but you’re more or less locked into using it in one spot. If you’re serious about your pizzas and outdoor kitchen, however, the Dome is a true upgrade.
Fuel Source: Wood or gas | Pizza Diameter: 16 inches | Temperature Range: Up to 950°F
With the Arc, Gozney scaled down the design of the Dome and removed its wood burner and flue for a more compact form. Quicker cooking is the main advantage of a gas pizza oven; controls for ignition and gas flames add to the Arc’s convenience. We found it easier to use than the brand’s Roccbox, which we reviewed as a strong contender. A digital thermometer at the front leaves no question about temperature, and an open damper lets out smoke and heat.
The stone reached 750°F in just 24 minutes, and pizzas needed no more than 4 minutes to cook. The flame sits on the left side of the oven, so we turned the pizza every 20 seconds in our tests. A mouth almost as wide as the Dome’s — a 1.3-inch difference — leaves room for this. The Arc’s results were some of the most consistent in our tests. Mozzarella and ricotta both browned evenly, pepperoni crisped without burning, and vegetables roasted nicely. The crust turned golden and developed spots on the top, but the bottom of every pizza looked pale. Homemade dough cooked better than store-bought.
While it’s compact, the Arc’s weight of 48 pounds (heavier than the average portable grill, for comparison) and the need for a propane tank rule it out as a conveniently portable option for us. We tested it with Gozney’s Arc Pizza Oven Stand, which let us wheel it around easily. We like the height of the stand for accessing the oven, and a lower shelf keeps the propane tank out of the way of children and pets.
Fuel source: Gas | Pizza Diameter: 14 inches | Temperature Range: Up to 950°F
Everdure makes some of the sleekest outdoor appliances on the market, and since testing its portable charcoal grill, we’ve kept an eye out for new releases. The brand’s debut pizza oven, the futuristic-looking Kiln comes ready to use out of the box. Adjusting the flame to find the best took some trial and error, but its controls are easy to use. The Kiln resembles the Gozney Dome in size and shape, but it’s more than half as expensive. Given the price difference, we’re not surprised that Gozney ovens gave us better results across the board. Still, this newcomer’s design and mostly consistent results make it a solid choice.
We wish the Kiln had a built-in temperature gauge to read the stone. Instead, we used an infrared thermometer to determine when to load the pizzas. While we planned to preheat it to 750°F, we cut it at 693°F at the 30-minute mark, per the manufacturer’s instructions to lower the heat after 30 minutes on high. With the flames lowered, the pizzas took between 3 minutes 56 seconds and 6 minutes 8 seconds to cook, making it one of the slower gas ovens. The crust turned out doughier than we’d like, cooking the most around the edges and the least right below the sauce. We were pleased with how well the ricotta browned, the pepperonis cupped, and the vegetables charred.
Fuel Source: Gas | Pizza Diameter: 16 inches | Temperature Range: Up to 932°F
If you want a pizza oven to be the focal point of your outdoor kitchen, we recommend investing in the extra-large Alfa Moderno 2 for its top-tier results and polished retro design. It can burn wood, charcoal, propane, or natural gas, should your fuel preferences change over time (or day to day). Preheating the stone to 750°F took almost an hour using propane, a relatively long time. Pizzas cooked in under four minutes with perfectly charred edges. Homemade dough gave us the most consistent browning across the top and bottom. While the instructions don’t mention turning pizzas, we found it necessary for even cooking and too easy not to — it’s a spacious oven, even for two 10- to 12-inch pizzas.
Connecting the Moderno 2 to propane was a bit confusing, but setting it up, on the whole, daunted us, as it comes with three instruction manuals. It ended up being a simple but time-consuming process. Just removing the protective film from the stainless steel parts took about 20 minutes. We recommend having a second person around, especially to lift it. After assembly, we found it intuitive to use with controls like a built-in temperature gauge, a push-button ignitor, and a knob to regulate gas flow (as you’d find on a gas grill).
Fuel Source: Gas, charcoal, or wood | Pizza Diameter: Two 10 to 12 inches | Temperature Range: Over 900°F
Our Favorite Pizza Oven
After testing 22 outdoor pizza ovens and kits, we named the Ooni Koda 16 the best pizza oven overall for its hot burner and wide-mouth design, which made temperature control and consistent results easy. We think it’s a fair price for what it offers.
Food & Wine
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Factors to Consider
Size
Pizza ovens range in size. On the smaller end are ovens that fit up to one 12-inch pizza, while larger ovens, such as the Alfa Moderno 2, can hold double that. For the average person, however, we recommend a mid-size oven, like the Ooni Koda 16 or the Gozney Dome, which can hold pizzas up to 16 inches. More than accommodating bigger pizzas, the mouths of these ovens were large enough for us to easily rotate pies in our tests, and that’s the key to even cooking. Of course, a smaller oven may make more sense for your budget, outdoor space, and portability goals, while a larger oven is a great investment for those who entertain often and want to splurge.
Portability
If you’re looking for a portable pizza oven, some of the smaller options have design features that make them easier to pack up and carry. For example, the Gozney Roccbox and Ooni Karu 12G have smaller constructions, fitting 12-inch pizzas at most, in addition to folding legs and detachable gas burners. Just because a pizza oven is considered portable doesn’t mean it’s lightweight, though. While some models fall under 25 pounds, the Karu 12 G and Roccbox weigh 34 and 44 pounds, respectively, which some may find heavy.
Midsize pizza ovens, like the Everdure Kiln S and Gozney Arc, weigh about the same as a heavier portable grill but without the wheels of one, so they’re not exactly portable. Large pizza ovens like the Alfa Moderno 2 and Gozney Dome weigh more than 100 pounds and will take up a more permanent place, though you can buy a wheeled stand for the Dome to get it from one side of the patio to the other.
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Other Pizza Ovens We Tested
Strong Contenders
Gozney Roccbox Portable ($499 at Amazon)
With retractable legs and detachable burners, the Gozney Roccbox is a good portable option, though its 50-pound weight might require two people to move. We’d recommend it to people with some outdoor cooking experience, and if you’re an avid camper, you’ll likely find it to be a great fit. We didn’t find it as beginner-friendly as others for a few reasons. It ran extra hot and was slow to temperature changes in our tests. The heating element doesn’t sit flush with the oven, and the safety of that design concerned us, but it did remain secure in our tests. The Roccbox met our criteria for quick heating, good heat retention, and even cooking, though our results weren’t as consistent as with the Gozney Arc.
Ooni Karu 12 Pizza Oven ($299 at Ooni)
Ooni built the Karu 12G on the foundation of the Karu 12, but we’re glad it hasn’t retired this editor-favorite for its portability and quick cooking. “I fell in love with this 26-pound rectangular marvel of stainless steel and ceramic fiber during the first firing with charcoal and wood,” says Food & Wine Editor-in-Chief Hunter Lewis. “Within 30 minutes, my infrared thermometer clocked the pizza stone at 900º,” he says. “After I dialed down the power of the wood flame that licked the roof of the oven and washed over the dough, the machine turned out gorgeously charred pizzas with crispy bottoms and bubbly crusts in less than 90 seconds.”
Ooni Karu 16 Pizza Oven ($649 at Ooni)
The larger sibling to the Karu 12, the multi-fuel Ooni Karu 16 is equally efficient, especially if you’re interested in firing up slightly larger, 16-inch pies. As with the Ooni Koda 16, the wide opening of this oven made rotating the pizzas easy. It gave us crisp, brown crusts, though the bottoms of the crusts were consistently paler, which put it lower on our list. The Karu 16 runs on wood or charcoal out of the box, but you can also buy a gas burner to cook with propane ($119 at Ooni) or natural gas ($149 at Ooni). While the Karu 16 has foldable legs, its size (32 x 19.6 x 33 inches) and weight (63 pounds) keep it from being easily portable.
Ooni Koda 12 Pizza Oven ($399 at Ooni)
A smaller version of our Best Overall, the Ooni Koda 12 is great for households with less storage space or beginners who want to try out a pizza oven for the first time. We preferred the wider design of the Koda 16, as the narrower opening made rotating pizzas a bit challenging — our first pizza in the Koda 12 turned out nearly half-cooked as we got acclimated with it. A smaller pizza peel can help. After the learning curve, rotating every 20 to 30 seconds helped us achieve golden crusts. At just over 20 pounds, it’s one of the lightest ovens we tested, and the legs fold to make it easily portable.Solo Stove Pi Prime ($350 at Solo Stove)
If you’re tight on space or time, the Solo Stove Pi Prime takes up little of either thanks to a small footprint and its choice of propane for fuel. It also has a small opening, which has made rotating pies and picking up crumbs a bit difficult. This small issue aside, we found it straightforward to set up, use, and maintain. Testing it at home, we also found it great for cooking steaks on cast iron and roasting vegetables.
KettlePizza Pro Pizza Oven Kit ($330 at Crate & Barrel)
For most people, we’d recommend a dedicated oven over a grill attachment, especially at this price. But, if you lack storage space and don’t plan to make pizza often, the KettlePizza Pro Pizza Oven Kit was the best attachment we tested. It’s easy to set up — just place it on top of a gas grill — and its large opening provided enough room for us to rotate pizzas without letting the heat escape. Though we noticed some hot spots, this design cooked the bottom and top of the pizzas well.
What Didn’t Make the List
We tested several other pizza ovens, and the ones that didn’t cut had a few shortcomings in common: inconsistent results (charring or undercooked pies), inefficient or cumbersome for heat control, or lack of interior space for personal-sized pies. The best pizza ovens should be both efficient and convenient to use at home. For example, we wanted to love the Empava Outdoor Pizza Oven Grill ($1,809 at Amazon) because it’s a beautiful pizza oven at a price that suggests quality. But, after an hour and a half, the built-in thermometer never read above 250°F and the stove temperature hovered around 300°F. So, we weren’t able to cook on it effectively.
We liked the BakerStone Portable Gas Series Pizza Oven Box ($225 at Walmart) for its heat retention; it cooked pizzas with a crisp bottom and charred crust. For a designated portable pizza oven, however, we found it bulky, heavy, and difficult to move. The Only Fire Universal Stainless Steel Pizza Oven Kit ($170 at Amazon) is a good value and produced puffed, crispy pizza dough in our tests. It took slightly longer to cook the pizzas fully, however, and some crusts came out darker than we would’ve liked.
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Pizza Ovens We’re Currently Testing
To keep our recommendations up to date, we constantly test the latest models. Right now, we’re putting the Ninja Artisan 5-in-1 Portable Pizza Oven through its paces. Our conclusions aren’t fully developed quite yet, but so far, we’re fans of its portability and fully electric design. It has total temperature control up to 700°F, making it especially suitable for those who haven’t yet mastered controlling a live fire or gas to achieve the correct temperature for their preferred pizza style. And at $300, we’re excited to see what else this moderately priced oven can do.
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Our Expertise
Mary Claire Lagroue is an editor at Food & Wine, where she has worked on dozens of articles about outdoor cooking. In addition to interviewing Ooni’s founders about what to look for in the best pizza ovens, she’s tested indoor and outdoor models. For this piece, she referenced two rounds of testing data and research to rank our favorite outdoor pizza ovens in several categories.
