The best pizza ovens for delicious, homemade margheritas in 90 seconds, tested

Score: 96/100

This compact, electric, indoor pizza oven completely surpassed our expectations in testing, delivering consistently delicious slices that had the whole team going back for seconds.

There are five heat settings and the highest heated the pizza stone to 380 degrees in a swift 10 minutes. Our pizzas then took around three minutes to cook, emerging with a golden base, nice spots of charring and bubbly, melting cheese. The handy viewing window allows you to check in on them without lifting the lid, too.

You can only cook one pizza at a time and, after 45 minutes, the oven must be switched off and allowed to cool before using again. With such speedy preheating and cooking times, though, this shouldn’t cause a problem.

Top tip: you can also use the oven for toasting and heating and the second heat setting made some delicious s’mores and waffles.

Read our Kenwood pizza oven review for more details.

Score: 93/100

Nobody wants their pizza served with burnt crusts and sloppy undercooked centres, which is exactly why this cleverly designed oven is such a delight.

It has a rotating pizza stone, so less manual pizza turning is required, and the evenly cooked and nicely charred results could rival an Italian restaurant. Not to mention, it takes just under 12 minutes to heat up, our pizzas cooked in under two minutes on average, and it can even accommodate 16-inch pizzas – perfect for garden gatherings.

However, there aren’t any accessories included, so you will need to invest in a peel (the tool used to place your dough in the oven). The ignition also had a habit of clicking when it wasn’t in use, so we took the battery out when we weren’t cooking. At over 33kg, it’s a heavy option, but if you’ve got a permanent spot for it, it’s ideal for easy cooking.

Score: 92/100

Ready to cook in just three minutes, this pizza oven started off strongly in testing. It maintained this temperature too, with the aluminium and steel build ensuring good heat retention and consistency for cooking.

This also makes the oven fairly lightweight at 13.5kg. It’s sold as portable (just not in a ‘handheld’ way), which means your camping trips are about to have a serious upgrade.

Our pizzas took slightly longer to cook on average than expected, taking closer to five minutes at times, but each one had a light, airy crust and a well-balanced texture. There was some nice charring and golden spots on the cheese too. The oven was slow to respond when we adjusted the temperature but that’s us nit-picking. Pizza fans will love this compact model.

Score: 91/100

With a 24-inch cooking area, this is Ooni’s largest pizza oven with room to cook two 12-inch pizzas, or three 10-inch ones, at once.

It’s more advanced than the original Koda below too – there’s a built-in digital screen that gives you the real-time temperature and lets you control its two gas burners independently (also new) to create separate cooking zones. You just need to remember to set both knobs to the same position if you’re after even results.

Another unique addition is the ability to set timers, check the oven temperature and receive cooking notifications from your phone, via the Ooni app – so you can entertain without interruption during the 30-minute pre-heat time.

The results didn't disappoint either. In under a minute and 40 seconds, testers were treated to three beautifully cooked pizzas, each with a light base, crunchy crust, and golden cheese, with the oven's temperature reaching 500 degrees on test.

Score: 90/100

If your garden is small, then this oven is a savvy buy – while it’s compact, it still produces a delicious pizza. Plus, it comes with a rain cover so you can leave it in-situ. Our testers found it easy to ignite and it heated up in a quick ten minutes. But as it doesn’t have a door to lock in the heat, it’s more exposed to the elements, so it does cook more slowly – taking about three minutes per pizza on test.

The pepperoni pizza was its best dish with even browning across the toppings and the perfect soft-inside-yet-crunchy-outside crust. Our margherita was less evenly charred but the cheese melted well.

It ticks our practicality boxes too. The pizza stone is easy to fit and remove, the external temperature gauge was accurate and its exterior cooled down quickly. It’s the perfect entry-level pizza oven.

Score: 90/100

Ooni is the brand that usually springs to mind when you think of a pizza oven, and it has several high-scoring models on the list. We found the set-up of the gas-powered Koda 12 was seamless, with easy-to-follow instructions both in the box and online. Its compact, lightweight design is ideal for moving around too, making it easy to store.

Lighting it takes a little bit of practice, but once fired up, it reached 380 degrees in just over 11 minutes and cooked our pizza in an average of one and a half minutes. The flames rolled across the roof, providing even coverage, and resulted in excellent pizzas, with airy and charred crusts.

The entrance is shallow so moving the pizza around can be tricky – no accessories or pizza peel are included either – but it has a great depth that allows you to control your cooking by moving the pizza from hot to cooler spots.

Score: 90/100

The Karu, which is one of the newer offerings from Ooni, also impressed. It’s bigger than the Koda 12 and has the option to use gas or wood fuel. Assembly is fairly involved, and it is heavy. Most accessories needed aren’t provided either, including the gas converter. That said, its clever design offers ample cooking control – vents and a chimney let you adjust the air flow and a door helps lock in heat. There’s also plenty of room for rotating your pizzas.

With gas, it didn’t reach the advertised 500 degrees, and took just over 20 minutes to heat up. But cooking time was rapid – pizzas were ready in just under one and a half minutes on average. They were also outstanding quality, only dropping two marks on test. Plus, we found it a doddle to clean. The Ooni app has plenty of guidance on cooking pizzas, too.

Score: 89/100

This is another compact yet efficient pizza oven that impressed our experts with its easy (and cheesy) cooking skills. Both our margherita and pepperoni pizzas had crispy crusts and soft centres, and the oozing mozzarella also had some golden spots. Vegan pizzas were less impressive in comparison, as the toppings weren’t fully cooked through.

Set up was quick and easy, and it took just over 17 minutes to heat up – and that was when we tested it on a cold day. We’d have liked a temperature gauge for an easier way to check when it’s ready for cooking and there weren’t any recipes or tips included. However, with all our triple tested pizza recipes available, that’s hardly an issue.

Score: 86/100

This extra-large pizza oven combines a premium design with a spacious cooking area. It took 22 minutes to reach cooking temperature and heated up to 431 degrees after 40 minutes of use (just a little shy of the 500-degree goal), helping us achieve good spots of charring on all our pizzas with some golden areas of cheese too.

Its cooking times were slightly longer than most other ovens tested, taking around three minutes, or four for pizzas with vegan cheese, but the wide oven mouth made them easy to place and turn. Having the option to switch between the three fuel types is a major bonus, and we liked the two included heat probes, which offer extra reassurance when cooking other meat dishes.

At times, the pizza oven didn’t respond when we changed the temperature, but our main bugbear was with its size – weighing over 70kg, you’ll need a permanent spot for this Gozney pizza oven. However, if you’ve got a dedicated cooking area in your garden, it’s a versatile buy that will deliver quality pizzas every time.

Score: 86/100

One of Gozney’s most compact pizza ovens, the Arc Lite reached an ideal cooking temperature in an impressive 18 minutes. There’s no built-in temperature gauge, so it’s tricky to know when it’s ready to go (we used our own thermometer), but that was the only thing we could fault about its design, which we found robust and easy to use.

The temperature eventually reached 459C during testing, providing enough heat to achieve some charring on the crusts and golden, melted cheese. All our toppings were well-cooked too, but turning the pizzas proved a challenge because of the small mouth opening.

Overall, this is an excellent, compact buy that’s suited to occasional pizza chefs and those who need something a little more portable.

Score: 86/100

This compact pizza oven has folding legs and weighs just 16kg, making it one of the more portable designs from the brand – garden parties and camping trips will never be the same again.

The electric spark ignition lit instantly, and it heated up to almost 450C in 21 minutes – a good temperature for creating Neapolitan-style pizza. A margherita took two minutes to cook (a pepperoni pizza took even less) and had an airy crust with good charring and a soft, well-cooked centre.

Our experts found the narrow mouth made it tricky to turn the pizzas, so some trial and error might be needed to nail the technique. Plus, you need a good pizza peel for the job, which is sold separately.

Score: 84/100

Ninja has taken everyone’s favourite kitchen appliance and given it an outdoor spin – meet the pizza oven air fryer. This sleek gadget combines four functions in total (pizza, bake, air fry and prove), as well as four dedicated settings for cooking artisan, thick crust, New York-style or deep pan pizzas.

Pre-heating took 20 minutes, and we were prompted to ‘Add Food’ by the display as soon as it had reached temperature. Our pizzas cooked quickly, taking two and a half minutes, and the margherita pizza came out with some nice, golden spots. These were missing from our pepperoni and vegetable pizzas though.

The air fryer and bake functions offer more versatility in the type of food you can cook outside – and we certainly took advantage of this in testing. We used the pre-programmed setting to bake cookies and air fry chips. Our cookies had a soft centre and crisp edges, but our chips were on the soggy side so a few more minutes than advised might be needed to crisp them up properly.

Score: 83/100

Despite being one of the more affordable pizza ovens in our list, this didn’t disappoint in testing. Lighting was straightforward and the oven took 21 minutes to preheat. From there, we could cook three pizzas in quick succession, each taking just under a minute and half.

The pepperoni pizza turned out best with an airy crust, soft centre and well-cooked toppings. Across the board, the cheese lacked a golden finish, and the oven struggled to reach the promised temperature of 500C, instead getting to a maximum of 458C.

A standout feature is the dial, which rotates the pizza stone for you, so your pizzas cook evenly with minimal effort. Even so, we recommend purchasing a pizza peel just for getting the the dough in and out of the oven as the narrow (and hot) opening can make the task tricky. There’s one available on the ProCook website though, so it’s easy to add one to your basket when purchasing.

Score: 83/100

Given the unpredictability of the British weather, this indoor pizza oven will appeal if you’re after properly cooked pizza, come rain or shine. You get detailed set-up guidance and cooking tips, and its user-friendly design means you can pop the pizza in and leave it to cook, with no rotating required. We focused on Neapolitan pizzas on test, but its clever technology also allows you to cook New York-style, deep pan, thin and crispy and frozen pizzas.

Like outdoor pizza ovens, it can reach a temperature of 380 degrees in a speedy 16 minutes. The pizzas took longer to cook than in outdoor models, but its average of two minutes 17 seconds is still quicker than a traditional oven.

Our pizza crusts rose well but there were a few spots where it could have benefitted from longer in the oven. It also struggled to melt vegan cheese. Its non-slip feet are sturdy, but the machine takes a while to clean.

Score: 80/100

With foldable legs, a removable chimney, a lightweight design and a handy storage bag, this wood-fired pizza oven is ideal for moving in and out of storage.

The oven reached its 400-degree cooking temperature within 20 minutes, although there’s no built-in thermometer, which makes it hard to know when you can start cooking (we used our own thermometer). Our pizzas took between 30 seconds to a minute longer than expected to cook but the results were excellent: crunchy crusts with spots of charring and perfectly melted cheese. They didn’t quite reach the standards of our winning pizza ovens, as the crusts weren’t as light and airy, but the pizzas still had plenty of flavour overall. We cooked a fantastic medium-rare steak in testing, too, proving it’s not just a one-trick pony.

Note, the hopper for the wood pellets gets hot during cooking, so be sure to use a heatproof mitt when touching and refilling it. All in all, this is a great little oven for depth of flavour at a reasonable price.