Forget delivery, forget DiGiorno. The best way to have pizza at home is with a pizza oven. You may be picturing those gargantuan brick constructions you’ve seen in some backyards, but the idea that a pizza oven has to be large and expensive is a thing of the past.
Designed to efficiently conduct heat and reach high temperatures, home pizza ovens are intuitive, lightweight, and compact, while still big enough to properly bake a 12-inch pie. You may not think it’s possible to make pizza taste better—even with the existence of pizza taquitos, French bread pizza, and pizza mac & cheese—but trust us, it is. A home pizza will give you perfectly crispy pizzas in a matter of minutes. You’ll also have full control over your culinary creations, right down to your preferred toppings, cheeses, sauces, and even doughs. That means no more side eye from the Domino’s delivery driver as they hand you your Hawaiian pizza. In the mood for a pan pizza that rivals Chicago’s best? Or perhaps you want to give pickle pizza a try? And don’t forget about the most important meal of the day—breakfast pizza! Anything is possible with the right home pizza oven. But before your mouth starts watering any more, first you should find the pizza oven that suits your needs and preferences.
After consulting Nicole Papantoniou, Director of the Good Housekeeping Institute’s Kitchen Appliances & Culinary Innovation Lab, we’ve assembled the best outdoor pizza ovens (and some indoor models too!) that will see you through thick and thin… crusts, that is!
Ready to mangia? A home pizza oven isn’t the only secret to seriously delicious pizza—check out our pizza stone recommendations too.
Our top picks
How we picked these products
We turned to our friends at the Good Housekeeping Institute, who identified the best brands and highest-rated pizza ovens and put them to the test. Their team of on-staff experts—which includes all types: engineers! data analysts! registered dietitians!—rigorously put everyday products to the test (and then more and more tests) in their New York City-based labs to determine which ones you can trust.
After whipping up over 20 fresh, 12-inch mozzarella and tomato sauce pies, these Kitchen Tech Experts put several indoor and outdoor ovens through rigorous tests to analyze their cleanability, speed (for fresh and frozen pizzas!), and ease of use and assembly. Though some of these models haven’t been formally tested in their Lab, they come from brands the Good Housekeeping Institute trusts after years of evaluating kitchen appliances. After reviewing their assessments and discussing their road tests in-depth with Papantoniou, we’ve determined that these are the best home pizza ovens on the market right now.