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For a pizza lover, the perfect pizza oven will let you live out your dreams of being a pizzaiolo with minimal frustration and maximum success. You can make restaurant-quality pizzas from the comfort of your own backyard, and share the joy of a delicious slice with friends and family.
We've purchased and tested more than 30 pizza ovens since 2021. We've baked hundreds of pizzas over the years, and for this review, our team of experts baked dozens of pizzas with each oven, directly comparing the pizza quality side by side.
Our team agrees that the Gozney Arc is the best pizza oven on the market. It combines commercial-grade performance with an approachable design that's suitable for novices and professionals alike. However, at nearly half the price, the Solo Stove Pi Prime gives the Arc a good run for its money.
Editor's Note: We updated our review of pizza ovens on November 5, 2025, to add ovens from Gozney, Solo Stove, and Ooni.
The Gozney Arc is incredibly user-friendly thanks to several standout features. An accurate, built-in digital temperature display eliminated guesswork — and the need for an infrared thermometer — allowing us to easily maintain an optimal temperature of 850 °F. The lateral-rolling gas burner replicates the flame of a traditional wood-fired oven, evenly distributing heat while maintaining remarkable consistency between pizzas. The Arc's 2-minute cook time strikes a comfortable balance between speed and control, while the 14-inch stone is ideal for family-sized pizzas. A mostly pre-assembled design made setup refreshingly simple, and the fact that the oven self-cleans at temperatures above 650 °F meant we rarely needed to clean this oven beyond simply firing it up to bake pizzas.
It may not be surprising that all of this performance comes with a hefty price tag. It's significantly more expensive than the Gozney Roccbox, and unlike the Roccbox, the Arc isn't very portable. It functions more as a permanent backyard fixture, especially if you purchase it with the accessory stand (which we highly recommend if you're planning on investing in a high-quality pizza oven like this one). Even though it's not any more portable, the Solo Stove Pi Prime gives the Gozney Arc a run for its money at a fraction of the cost. While it lacks some of the Arc's high-end features, the Pi Prime's consistent cooking performance is directly comparable to the Arc's.
How it performed in taste tests: The Arc consistently produced pizzas with perfectly cooked bottom crusts and beautifully golden-brown toppings with just the right amount of charring. What truly impressed us was the remarkably low learning curve — we achieved near-perfect pizzas on our very first attempt, something we rarely experienced with other ovens. “The manual offers temperature recommendations, which made it easier to get to know the Arc,” explains our lead tester. "My kids will refuse any charred pizzas, and I had the easiest time making pizzas that they would actually eat!"
The Solo Stove Pi Prime stands out in the crowded pizza oven market, both in terms of design and performance. Its temperature-control dial includes orange markings that highlight an “ideal temperature range” — Solo claims that most users will find success within this range, and that is absolutely true. This simple addition proved invaluable, all but eliminating the typical learning curve of many of the ovens we tested. Despite its metallic exterior, the well-insulated oven kept the outside cool enough that we felt confident placing it on wooden surfaces. Setup was remarkably simple, taking less than 10 minutes from box to first use, and the picture-heavy manual should inspire confidence even among folks who shy away from any mention of “set up.”
While we were impressed with its overall performance, the Pi Prime certainly has its limitations. It can only cook 12-inch pizzas, which feels restrictive when cooking for larger groups, especially when compared to other similarly priced 14-inch ovens, like the Ooni Koda 2. The round, 30-pound design also makes it less portable than some competitors—if you plan to transport your oven regularly or have limited storage space, we suggest considering the Gozney Roccbox over the Pi Prime.
How it performed in taste tests: Much like the Gozney Arc, the Pi Prime impressed us from our very first use. Pizzas emerged with perfectly cooked crusts—crispy and slightly charred on the outside, with tender, airy interiors that define a great brick-oven pizza. Our lead tester was amazed: "I couldn't believe that on my very first try, I turned out a perfectly cooked pizza without burning the crust!"
Where the Gozney Roccbox truly excels is in its unique combination of portability and performance. To be clear, we're not hiking anywhere with this oven, but it's a great choice if you want to take it to your bestie's backyard cookout, or store it in a garage or closet during the off-season. Even though it weighs 44 pounds, the foldable legs collapse this oven to a compact 2.8 cubic feet — about the size of a long milk crate. Despite its size, the Roccbox reliably reached temperatures exceeding 900 °F, and easily hit the crucial 750-850 °F stone temperature necessary to turn out authentic Neapolitan pizzas. High-quality insulation maintains consistent temperatures between pizzas and keeps the exterior relatively safe (though don't expect to rest your hands on it!).
Our main frustration with the Roccbox is the awkward placement of the temperature control on the back of the oven. To avoid reaching around the side of the oven — which is uncomfortable at best and dangerous at worst — we had to walk around to the back of the oven regularly to adjust the temperature. Similarly, placing the built-in thermometer on the side of the oven makes it difficult to monitor the stone temperature. If you prefer to host pizza parties, and you have the additional storage space and budget, it's worth looking into the Gozney Arc. The Arc solves the Roccbox's problems by putting the temperature control and a built-in temperature display right up front, and the larger firebox is big enough for 14-inch pizzas. If you prefer to bring the party with you, you should compare the Roccbox against the Ooni Koda 12. Although the 14-inch Koda 2 is an updated version of the 1st-generation Koda 12, the original 12-inch oven actually tested better than the new version, and its performance holds its own against the Roccbox while weighing a little more than 20 pounds.
How it performed in taste tests: The Roccboxx produced restaurant-quality pizzas with properly cooked centers and appealingly crisp crusts. The unique burner design — with its rolling, baffled flame — creates a cooking environment that avoids the common pitfall of burnt tops with undercooked bottoms. As one taste tester noted, "Look at the perfect spotting on the bottom of this crust and the golden cheese on top. This is one pretty (and delicious) pizza!"
The Ooni Karu 2 has unlocked the ability to make wood-fired pizzas in a small, portable oven. “Ooni put all of their experience into redesigning this multi-fuel oven to make wood-firing pizzas actually reasonable,” commented our lead tester. An extra-large fire pan makes it much easier to stoke a wood fire up to temperature, and an insulated front door greatly improves heat retention. Other touches, like a thermometer and powder coating to improve weather resistance, improve user-friendliness. Even though this is the first oven we've actually enjoyed firing up with wood, the option to add a gas burner makes it more convenient to fire up on a weeknight.
Even though this oven has greatly improved upon previous versions, firing the Karu 2 still involves a steep learning curve. “Controlling the high-fire temperatures of this oven takes finesse,” one tester said, “so don't get discouraged if you burn a few crusts while you figure out heat management.” With the gas burner attachment for the Karu 2, we tended to heat on high and fire on low, and at that low output, the burner was sometimes snuffed out by a stiff wind. If you've never used one of these ovens before, the Solo Stove Pi Prime is much more forgiving, especially if you're working solo, prepping and baking pizzas simultaneously. But if you want to make Neapolitan pizzas to the international standard from the comfort of your backyard, the Karu 2 is the one.
How it performed in taste tests: With a little practice, the Karu 2 produced an excellent pizza, no matter the fuel source. Surprisingly, we were able to stoke temperatures higher with a wood fire than with the gas burners cranked to high. The well-dispersed flame of a wood fire meant a more evenly cooked crust, but it was easier to achieve consistency with the gas burner. Once we made it through the first few burnt crusts, we regularly turned out pizzas with the tell-tale “leopard spotting” on the crusts, a unique feature of Neapolitan pizza.
The Breville Smart Oven Pizzaiolo is a marvel of engineering, clearly designed by a team dedicated to making the perfect pizza from the comfort of your own kitchen. It is the only electric option capable of reaching temperatures above 700 °F to replicate the magic of a traditional wood-fired oven. “But unlike other ovens in this review, this versatile model isn't relegated to only baking Neapolitan-style pizzas,” one tester pointed out. This smart oven uses sensors to optimize oven conditions for your favorite pies, offering automated presets for Neapolitan, thin & crispy Bar-Style, New York, and Chicago Deep-Dish. For anyone looking to consistently churn out perfect pies with ease, this nearly automated smart oven is a technological innovation for pizza-making.
All of these attributes come at an incredibly high cost. “Justifying the price is not easy,” our lead tester admits, given its relative cooking performance compared to other ovens we tested. It won't produce quite the same crispy texture as the similarly priced Gozney Arc — or any of the other lower-priced, gas-fired ovens, for that matter. But it certainly bakes not just one, but four different styles of pizza, and each one turns out beautifully. If you're specifically looking for an electric pizza oven for your kitchen, the Smart Oven Pizzaiolo is, without a doubt, an exceptional option. That said, you can achieve nearly 90% of the performance of this specialty oven for nearly 1/10th of the price by choosing to buy a pizza steel, like the NerdChef 3/8" Steel Stone. It will never compare with a dedicated pizza oven, but it does a solid job upleveling your regular convection oven.
How it performed in taste tests: The best part of the Pizzaiolo is its ability to deliver a variety of delicious pizzas. The crusts of Neapolitan-style pizzas were soft, airy, and fragrant, with just a tinge of singe. We made New York-style pizzas with perfectly cupped pepperoni and the style's distinctly foldable crust. The included carbon-steel pan made it easy to bake Chicago-style deep-dish pizzas, where the laminated dough had a light, airy outer crust and a crispy bottom.
The electric Breville Pizzaiolo offers a convenient and efficient way to make fresh pizzas in your home kitchen.
Credit: Aaron Rice
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We cooked dozens of pizzas in each oven to find which ones performed best. (Pro tip: get creative with your pizza toppings, and don't be afraid to use fruit!)
Credit: Mallory Paige
How We Tested
We purchased all these ovens at retail costs to ensure complete objectivity. Our team of expert reviewers designed numerically based tests that provided us with impartial data to help rank these ovens relative to one another. We then backed up those statistics with real-world cooking experience. An extended testing period enabled us to spend a significant amount of time becoming familiar with the intricacies of each pizza oven over many months. But at the end of the day, our side-by-side comparative testing allows us to break down the pros and cons of the best pizza ovens on the market.
We use direct comparison to identify the strengths and weaknesses of each of these ovens. This is an example of a gas-fired crust (left) vs. one baked in an electric oven (right.)
Credit: Aaron Rice
We divided our testing into four rating metrics:
Cooking Performance(30% of overall score weighting)
Output Power(30% weighting)
Control(25% weighting)
Ease of Use(15% weighting)
You can learn more about our rigorous testing process in our How We Test article.
Making Pizza Dough
We hand-made our pizza dough each week. Achieving the right dough consistency is a crucial step in achieving success with a pizza oven. We recommend making your dough a few days in advance and storing it in the fridge for optimal flavor (although making it a few hours ahead of time will work in a pinch!). And while a dough made with the finest Italian “00” flour is slightly better, using regular bread flour works nearly as well and is much more economical. Lastly, you should invest in some Semolina flour for rolling out the dough. It really helps the pizza slide off the paddle smoothly and has become an absolute necessity when we make pizzas.
We have cooked (and eaten) hundreds of pizzas since we started testing pizza ovens in 2021.
Credit: Mallory Paige
Why Trust GearLab
Our lead tester, Mallory Paige, has a Bachelor of Food Science Degree from Colorado State University. She's worked in restaurants and spent more than a decade crafting gear-centered review articles. She understands the importance of conducting firsthand tests, analyzing large datasets, and providing detailed recommendations. And as a mom of three, she understands the importance of buying fuss-free kitchen tools and getting dinner on the table with ease and consistency.
Senior Editor Aaron Rice started his working career in a pizza shop, so it is only fitting that he now comes full circle to test pizza ovens. Having worked in and around kitchens for over a decade, Aaron has held a diverse array of jobs in the industry — from working on the line for a James Beard-nominated chef to growing and co-managing the market garden at a fine-dining restaurant alongside his wife. Jill Rice became enthralled with wood-fired ovens after organizing a bread and pizza workshop while working at the Dartmouth College organic farm. Since then, she has baked pizza in everything from Dutch ovens over a coal fire, while leading outdoor education trips in Alaska, to slinging personal pies from a home-built backyard cob oven in New Mexico.
Our long-term testing and detailed analysis allow us to recommend the best pizza ovens with confidence.
Analysis and Test Results
It's worth noting that the ovens featured in this review represent the cream of the crop in today's market. By focusing exclusively on top-tier products, our side-by-side testing reveals nuanced differences that might not be apparent until after you've made your purchase and started cooking. Since our testing methodology relies on direct comparison, a lower score doesn't indicate a poor product—it simply means that the oven performed worse in a specific test compared to the other exceptional ovens we were testing it against. A product earning lower marks in our review might still produce delicious pizzas that would impress your dinner guests, and it's well worth considering any of the ovens we include in this review.
We put a lot of pizza ovens to the test each year to help you find the best option.
Credit: Mallory Paige
Our comprehensive approach combines standardized laboratory-style measurements with extensive hands-on cooking experience to provide you with the most thorough evaluation possible. We measure everything from stone temperature recovery times to the leopard spotting patterns on pizza crusts, all while keeping sight of what matters most: how the pizzas actually taste. Our ultimate goal remains constant—to provide you with confident recommendations to help you choose the perfect pizza oven, so that you can host a backyard pizza party with family and friends.
Worse Value
Better Value
What's the Best Value?
The Solo Stove Pi Prime emerged as an exceptional value, delivering professional-grade results at a price point that won't require a second mortgage. With a 90-second bake time, this propane-fueled oven is convenient for firing up on a weeknight when you need to get dinner on the table quickly. For the price, we were genuinely surprised by the consistent heat distribution and the deliciously crispy crusts it produced time after time.
The Solo Stove Pi Prime is a simple pizza oven and works incredibly well for beginners and experts alike.
Credit: Mallory Paige
Determining the best value ultimately depends on your individual use case and how frequently you'll fire up your oven. If you plan to make pizza a regular part of your culinary repertoire and appreciate high-tech kitchen appliances that deliver precision control, the Gozney Arc might actually represent better long-term value despite its higher initial investment. This sophisticated oven combines cutting-edge technology with traditional brick-oven design, offering features like digital temperature controls. For serious pizza enthusiasts who will use their oven multiple times per week, the Arc's superior performance and reliability could easily justify the premium price tag.
We were impressed with the Arc and how easy it was to use from the very beginning.
Credit: Mallory Paige
Cooking Performance
While versatility is a nice bonus (residual heat makes some ovens great for baking), we focus on the attributes of an oven that will allow you to make superb slices.
The most popular models mimic traditional Neapolitan-style pizza ovens. As a result, temperature and time are the two critical components to churning out first-rate pizzas.
Temperature vs. Cooking Performance
Oven Temp
Stone Temp
Cooking Time
Cooking Performance
Gozney Arc
969 F
871 F
2.1 min
1
2
3
4
5
Solo Stove Pi Prime
911 F
841 F
1.5 min
1
2
3
4
5
Gozney Roccbox
795 F
748 F
2.0 min
1
2
3
4
5
Ooni Karu 2
776 F
825 F
1.8 min
1
2
3
4
5
Breville Pizzaiolo
663 F
756 F
2.0 min
1
2
3
4
5
Ooni Koda 2
935 F
848 F
1.6 min
1
2
3
4
5
Presto Pizzazz Plus
208 F
212 F
19.0 min
1
2
3
4
5
Betty Crocker Countertop
208 F
212 F
19.0 min
1
2
3
4
5
The Gozney Arc produces pizzas that could easily pass for those from Naples' finest pizzerias. The Arc consistently turned out pizzas with crust that is delightfully crispy on the outside with just the right amount of chew on the inside; toppings emerged perfectly cooked with bubbly cheese browned to golden perfection. Whether we were on our first pizza or our tenth, the Arc maintained remarkable temperature stability, ensuring every pie came out as delicious as the last.
Our test team loved that the Pi Prime consistently delivered a bubbly crust without burning.
Credit: Mallory Paige
The Solo Stove Pi Prime proved itself a formidable competitor, especially considering its more accessible price point. This oven quickly and easily bakes pizzas with that authentic “leopard-spotted” crust — the mark of a quality Neapolitan-style pizza. The Gozney Roccbox, despite its compact size, produced pizzas with just the right amount of char on the bottom and beautifully blistered crusts that had us savoring every morsel.
Practically perfect crusts, each and every time. Fire up the Gozney Roccbox and share your creations at your next backyard bash!
Credit: Aaron Rice
The Ooni Karu 2 requires a bit more attention to maintain consistent temperatures, particularly when using wood fuel. Still, the pizzas it produced were undeniably delectable, with beautifully caramelized crusts and perfectly melted cheese that stretched satisfyingly with each bite.
There is a fine line between perfectly browned and burnt cheese. The control afforded by the Ooni Karu 2 helps you walk this fine line with precision.
Credit: Aaron Rice
As an electric option, the Breville Smart Oven Pizzaiolo can replicate the conditions of a wood-fired oven from your kitchen countertop. While the flavor couldn't quite match the smoky complexity of its outdoor counterparts, crusts were consistently crispy, with well-cooked toppings that would satisfy even the most discriminating palates. The preset cooking modes eliminate the guesswork for cooking different styles of pizza, which makes it both more user-friendly and more versatile than the other outdoor ovens we tested.
Look at those air pockets! On its Neapolitan setting, the Breville Pizzaiolo turns out pies with a cornicione that is perfectly puffed and charred.
Credit: Aaron Rice
Get Yourself an Infrared Thermometer
For the aspiring pizzaiuolo, a modern upgrade to the traditional toolkit should be an infrared thermometer. A good thermometer, dare we say, is an essential tool that will help you monitor the temperature of the pizza stone. You should aim for an optimum baking temperature of around 750 °F in the center of the stone.
Pizza Cooking Time
Cooking time varied dramatically between the outdoor gas ovens and the indoor electric options. However, the average cook time of the popular outdoor pizza ovens is differentiated by a spread of less than 30 seconds.
Despite its quick cook time, the forgiving Solo Stove Pi Prime makes it easy to achieve those coveted spots and perfect flavors without the stress of split-second timing. The lightning-fast cooking of the Ooni Koda 2, on the other hand, required constant vigilance and frequent rotation to prevent burning the crust or toppings.
We were eventually able to turn out delicious pizzas with the Koda 2, but it took patience and practice to reach that point.
Credit: Mallory Paige
The Gozney Arc strikes an ideal balance of time and temperature thanks to its even heat distribution. We consistently produce beautifully cooked pizzas without needing to constantly spin the pizza, which is a frustrating reality of cooking with many of the smaller ovens.
Without constantly turning the pizza, some crusts from the Gozney Arc puffed up unevenly. But they never burnt, and that's the more important note.
Credit: Mallory Paige
With the propane burner, the Gozney Roccbox rivals the cook times of its larger sibling, but you can expect slightly slower cook times with the optional wood burner. Similarly, cook times with the Ooni Karu 2 varied between 1-2 minutes on gas and 2-3 minutes on wood, with the longer wood-fired times rewarding our patience with deeper, more complex flavors.
The Gozney Roccbox cooks a pizza in just two minutes.
Credit: Mallory Paige
The Breville Smart Oven Pizzaiolo features preset times tailored to the style of pizza you want to cook, which proves advantageous for beginners, in particular. Even though it can cook a high-quality Neapolitan-style pizza in just two minutes, this oven epitomizes the “set-it-and-forget-it” style of cooking.
With just the push of a button, the Breville Pizzaiolo produced high-quality Neapolitan pizzas in just three minutes.
Credit: Aaron Rice
Even budget-friendly electric models like the Presto Pizzazz Plus managed sub-20-minute cooking times, which is respectable, given this is about how long you can expect to wait at a pizza shop. While we're baking fresh pizzas with all of the other ovens, it's worth noting that the Presto Pizzazz is better suited for baking frozen pizzas.
Though still not exactly satisfactory, the electric heating elements on the Presto Pizzazz cook the top of a pizza surprisingly quickly.
Credit: Aaron Rice
Output Power
A Neapolitan-style pizza oven is characterized by its ability to cook quickly and efficiently at temperatures exceeding 800 °F. Since most of these portable ovens are designed in that style, they are also intended to operate within the same range of extreme temperatures.
Oven insulation is where cooking performance and output power overlap. An oven cannot retain this level of heat output without a well-insulated chamber and a pizza stone. While average oven temperatures are important, it's the temperature of the pizza stone that you'll monitor with an infrared thermometer.
The Gozney Arc consistently reached peak temperatures within 20 minutes of preheating and maintained a steady heat, allowing us to bake pizza after pizza without significant recovery time between pies. The insulation on this oven proved remarkably effective, keeping the exterior cool enough to touch while the interior blazed at temperatures well over 900 °F. The stone on the more modestly priced Solo Stove Pi Prime retained heat exceptionally well, ensuring consistent cooking even as we churned out multiple pizzas for hungry guests.
The Gozney Arc has a lateral rolling flame, which allows for very even heating.
Credit: Mallory Paige
The Ooni Koda 2 impressed us with its raw heating power, thanks to its innovative dual-zone temperature control. However, the heat distribution was inconsistent and a bit harder to work with, especially compared to the more user-friendly Karu 2. In its wood-fired form, the Karu 2 can achieve higher temperatures than any other oven we tested, simply because it can be continually stoked with wood. We regularly achieved oven temperatures exceeding 1000 °F, even if we allowed the oven to cool down to a more optimal temperature before cooking.
The addition of a front door to the Karu 2 helps retain heat much better than the original model, the Karu 12, which has an open-air front.
Credit: Aaron Rice
The Breville Smart Oven Pizzaiolo compensated for lower maximum temperatures with clever engineering that maximized heat efficiency. The Element IQ system distributed heat strategically to mimic the conditions of a traditional pizza oven. While it couldn't match the scorching temperatures of its outdoor rivals, it still produced surprisingly delicious results, with properly crisped bases and bubbling, golden-brown cheese. The Gozney Roccbox packs serious power into its compact frame, reaching temperatures that rival those of much larger ovens and maintaining them with impressive stability from one pizza to the next.
Even if it's smaller, the Gozney Roccbox shares many of the same design qualities as the Arc, and can achieve similarly high temperatures.
Credit: Mallory Paige
Control
The main question about managing pizza production comes down to fuel type: do you want to work with a traditional wood-fired oven, the more convenient propane-powered models, or the indoor amenity of an electric oven? While we directly compared all three methods for the sake of ranking options in this review, there are trade-offs and compromises associated with each, and as such, each type of oven is best regarded individually.
A wood-fired oven is the only option if you adhere to traditional standards. However, wood-fired cooking is truly an art form, and as such, these ovens require a commitment to the learning curve and patience while firing. The Ooni Karu 2 offers impressive control flexibility, allowing it to switch between wood, charcoal, and gas (with an optional burner attachment). When using gas, the control proved remarkably precise, enabling us to maintain steady temperatures that consistently produced mouthwatering results. While the wood and charcoal options offer a slightly enhanced flavor, they are incredibly challenging to use, and we don't recommend them over gas-fired ovens.
The width of the oversized fire pan on the Karu 2 allows the wood flames to spread out over the ceiling, generating extreme internal air temperatures that are a bit more gentle than the directed flames of gas burners.
Credit: Aaron Rice
Temperature control separates good pizza ovens from great ones, and the Gozney Arc sets the standard. Its intuitive digital controls make achieving perfect results almost effortless. We could dial in exactly the temperature we wanted to cook different pizza styles. We particularly appreciated the accuracy of the built-in thermometer, which closely aligned with the readings on our infrared thermometer. This gave us the confidence that our pizzas would turn out exactly as intended.
The digital temperature readout on the Arc makes it very easy to use and we particularly like that the color-coded display shows the ideal temp range.
Credit: Mallory Paige
The Solo Stove Pi Prime struck an excellent balance between control and authenticity. The gas burner provided steady, predictable heat, ensuring reliable results every time it was used. Although it doesn't include a temperature readout, using an infrared thermometer and trusting the orange marks on the dial has never given us any issues.
After using the infrared thermometer a few times with the Solo Stove Pi Prime, we learned to trust the markings on the dial and easily made great pizzas every time.
The Gozney Roccbox offers surprisingly nuanced control despite its straightforward design. The gas adjustment was sensitive enough that we could quickly adapt based on how a pizza was cooking, ensuring that every pizza emerged as a delectable masterpiece.
The temperature readout on the Roccbox aligns nicely with the fuel dial, making it easier for new users to find the correct setting.
Credit: Mallory Paige
Indoor electric ovens are the ultimate in simplicity and convenience. However, this benefit often comes at the detriment of pizza quality. Their ease of use derives from the fact that often they simply have no control — many are designed just to turn on and bake pizza. The notable exception to this less-than-exciting rule is the Breville Smart Oven Pizzaiolo. While the presets are convenient, the manual mode gave us complete control over the deck and top heating elements independently.
The Breville Pizzaiolo comes with an additional magnet to change the front-facing display of this oven to a “manual mode.”
Credit: Aaron Rice
Ease of Use
Though ease of use does not factor in as heavily as our other metrics, it is essential to consider how we interact with these ovens. We say it time and again: a tool is only as useful as it is easy to use. The Breville Smart Oven Pizzaiolo is exceptionally user-friendly. Simply plug it in, select your pizza style, and let the oven do the work. No fuel management, no weather concerns, just consistent results that made weeknight pizza dinners delightfully simple.
Among outdoor ovens, the Gozney Arc stands out as remarkably approachable, despite its professional-grade capabilities. Setup took less than 15 minutes straight out of the box, and the intuitive controls allowed us to make restaurant-quality pizzas on our very first attempt. The digital display clearly showed temperature readings and cooking zones, eliminating the learning curve that often frustrates folks who have never used a pizza oven before. Cleaning the Arc proved refreshingly simple too—the removable stone made maintenance straightforward, and the sleek design meant there were few nooks and crannies where cheese or toppings could hide.
The built-in temperature display on the Gozney Arc is extremely handy and helps us bake perfect pizzas every time.
Credit: Mallory Paige
The Solo Stove Pi Prime was very simple to set up, and the orange markers on the dial that highlight optimal temperature zones make it very intuitive to fire, especially for beginners. The Gozney Roccbox is one of the most portable ovens we tested. Although it's surprisingly heavy, its foldable legs and compact design make both transport and storage simple.
An included heavy-duty strap makes it much easier to lift the weighty 44-pound Roccbox, which really helps with setup.
Credit: Jill Rice
For ultimate simplicity, the Presto Pizzazz Plus and Betty Crocker Countertop pizza makers offered plug-and-play convenience that anyone could master immediately. While these electric models can't match the authentic flavors and textures of their high-temperature counterparts, they're certainly easy to use.
The Betty Crocker Coutertop pizza cooker is incredibly easy to use, but sacrifices performance.
Credit: Aaron Rice
How to Choose The Best Pizza Oven
If you're reading this review, then like us, you love pizza. Unlike other kitchen appliances or staples of a backyard setup, a pizza oven definitely qualifies as a specialty item. If you're planning to invest in one of these ovens, it's important to understand the nuanced differences in their capabilities to ensure you're buying the model that best suits your needs. But before we dive into the nitty-gritty details, you can ask yourself a few simple questions to better guide your purchase decision.
What Fuel Type Should You Choose?
Pizza ovens can be split into three main fuel types: wood, gas, and electric. (The notable exceptions are the pizza steels, which work best with a gas-range oven.) Choosing the right fuel type ultimately comes down to time commitment — our Control metric dives into how involved each type of oven is to fire.
You can stoke a wood-fired oven to ultra-high temperatures, which is important if you're specifically interested in baking traditional Neapolitan-style pizzas. But you have to prep a lot of kindling and need to constantly stoke these ovens to maintain these high temperatures — wood-fired ovens almost require two people to operate.
If you favor convenience, a gas oven is the best option. These are by far the easiest to operate because you can control the temperature with the turn of a knob. Electric ovens, similar to gas, are convenient, easy to use, and can be used inside, which is a boon for folks who don't have access to a porch or backyard.
Although propane is preferable to run ovens of this size, there are a few models, like the Ooni Karu 2, that work well as wood-burning ovens.
Credit: Aaron Rice
What Type of Pizza Will You Make?
With so many different styles of pizza, it's important to consider your preferences and goals for making homemade pies. Our in-depth buying advice article breaks down the oven temperatures associated with nearly every type of pizza. But for the most part, these ovens are designed to make Neapolitan-style pizzas — high-fire pies that cook at extreme temperatures in as little as 90 seconds.
Since baking speed is directly related to temperature, pay attention to scores in our Output Power metric. It's also important to point out that even if an oven is designed for high-temperature cooking, that doesn't mean it isn't able to bake other types of pizza. Our Control metric looks at how easily you can vary oven temperature. Although pizza ovens are really a fun addition to any outdoor kitchen, if you're more of a fan of classic NY or Greek-style pies, it's worth considering a pizza steel like the NerdChef.
A Neapolitan-style pizza is notable for the airiness of the crust. It's wonderful that we now have the ability to make high-quality pies like this at home!
Credit: Aaron Rice
What Characteristics Should You Look For?
Not all pizza ovens are created equal. Key characteristics — namely, insulation and airflow — can make huge differences in consistently producing quality pizzas. Ovens with high-quality insulation will preheat faster and do a better job of maintaining even temperatures throughout the oven chamber. Additionally, ovens with proper airflow move the flame through the oven chamber more effectively, resulting in more evenly baked pies. It will likely come as little surprise that the ovens that best incorporate these two attributes produce the best pizzas. While our individual product reviews dive deep into the why, our Cooking Performance metric ranks these ovens based on overall pizza quality.
The innovative baffle plate above the flame injector on the Gozney Roccbox best recreates the way the flame spreads out in traditional wood-fired pizza ovens.
Credit: Aaron Rice
What's an Appropriate Size?
Choosing the right size oven will depend on how many people you plan to feed and whether you plan on bringing your oven along for tailgates or cookouts. If you're hosting a backyard pizza party, then weight and portability are less of a concern than production speed. In this case, focusing on highly insulated ovens that score well in our Output Power metric will ensure you're ability to quickly crank out pizzas. (You can also directly compare average stone temperatures under the specs we listed in our Comparison chart.) But if you want to make pizzas on the go, our Ease of Use metric takes into account the size and weight of every oven and highlights which models are most portable.
Pizza ovens vary a lot in size, and some are much more portable than others.
Credit: Mallory Paige
Other Notable Pizza Ovens We Tested
These dedicated outdoor pizza ovens were among the first to market and set the stage for the current pizza-cooking craze. They still work well and are widely available, but as technology advances, they are no longer as impressive as some of the newer models in our lineup.
Ooni Koda 12 - The first generation of Ooni Koda ovens still holds its own. In many ways, it's arguably better than the updated Koda 2, particularly in terms of cooking performance and control. Like the Koda 2, the Koda 12 takes some time to learn how to use — you can expect to burn some pizzas in the process. Although it only cooks 12" pizzas, at only 20 pounds, it's one of the most portable options if you want to bring the pizza party with you.
For simplicity's sake, it is difficult to match the quick-and-easy setup of a gas-powered oven like the Ooni Koda 12, which will have you firing pizzas in a matter of minutes.
Credit: Aaron Rice
Ooni Karu 12 - Like the Koda 12, this first-generation model set the standard for backyard pizza ovens. While it comes standard as a wood-fired oven, you have the option to buy an accessory gas burner to transform it into a multi-fuel oven. It's affordable as a wood-fired oven, but if you add the gas burner, the price is comparable to the Solo Stove Pi Prime, which is a much better pizza oven overall.
Whether powered with wood or gas, the Ooni Karu 12 is an easy-to-fire multi-fuel system that's (almost) guaranteed to produce beautiful Neapolitan-style pizzas.
Credit: Aaron Rice
Pizza Steels We Tested
We wanted to include pizza steels for folks looking for a better way to cook pizzas with their existing oven. A pizza steel is much more affordable than a dedicated pizza oven, is much easier to store, and is a surprisingly versatile addition to any kitchen. That said, it will take longer to cook a pizza with steel, and as a result, you should expect more of a New York-style rather than a Neapolitan-style pie. That said, their price point and convenience make them an attractive alternative.
It's tough to beat the convenience of a pizza steel for baking pizzas in your regular kitchen oven.
Credit: Aaron Rice
NerdChef 3/8" Steel Stone - A heavy-duty pizza steel (32 pounds!) that will turn out better results than your regular oven ever could. Under the heat of a broiler, we measured an average surface temperature of 686 °F, which is ideal for a New York-style pie. However, because carbon steel transfers heat 20 times faster than a ceramic pizza stone, you can achieve a fast-rising crust that makes pizzas cooked on the NerdChef steel very close to the Neapolitan-style pizzas we made with other outdoor ovens. With dimensions of 16 inches by 14.25 inches, it can even accommodate pizzas large enough to feed the entire family.
Instead of ordering out, imagine baking pizzas that look this good with your oven right at home. We admit, we were skeptical at first, but the proof is in the pizzas we baked with the NerdChef steel.
Credit: Aaron Rice
The Original Baking Steel - At half the weight of the NerdChef steel (16 pounds), the difference in performance was evident. While we regularly cooked pizzas with the NerdChef steel in as little as three minutes, the Original Baking Steel takes more like five minutes. With a lower average surface temperature of 479 °F, it's reasonable to expect longer bake times. However, these conditions are actually better for baking a New York-style pizza — slightly longer in the oven at a slightly lower temperature is key to achieving the balance of chewy and crunchy that a NY slice is known for.
For folks who prefer the thinner, chewier crust of a NY-style pies, the Original Baking Steel should be considered against more expensive outdoor ovens focused on producing Neapolitan-style pizza.
Credit: Aaron Rice
Conclusion
However you go about it, pizza making is fun. These portable ovens offer the opportunity to pop up a pizzeria in your own backyard and encourage sharing joy and pizza with friends and family — the ever-important community component to the art of Neapolitan pizzaiolo. Whether you choose the authentic experience of wood-fired cooking, the convenience of gas, or the simplicity of electric models, the ovens we've tested can transform your homemade pizza game from merely good to absolutely magnificent. The key is matching the oven to your specific needs, cooking style, and commitment level—choose wisely, and you'll be rewarded with years of mouthwatering pizzas that rival your favorite pizzeria. We hope that this comprehensive review helps guide your purchase decision so that you can get off the internet, get outside, and get to making pizza. Buon appetito.
