The 9 Best Indoor Pizza Ovens of 2024, According to Culinary Experts and Home Cooks

The Ooni Volt 12 Electric Pizza Oven delivers restaurant-quality results right in your kitchen

Laura Denby is a food, home, and lifestyle writer who specializes in creating thorough and analytical product reviews to help shoppers make more informed purchasing decisions. She has a Culinary Arts diploma from the Institute of Culinary Education and a WSET Level 2 Award in Wine and Spirits. Her work has appeared in leading food and lifestyle publications like PEOPLE, Food & Wine, Real Simple, Martha Stewart Living, Verywell Family, Southern Living, and more.

While it’s fun to bake pizzas outside in the summer, an indoor pizza oven lets the merriment continue all year long — you can whip up crispy, tender pies no matter the weather forecast.

In search of the best indoor pizza ovens for use in home kitchens, we put 12 of the leading models through a series of rigorous tests and assessed each unit’s design, ease of use, performance, and ease of cleaning. We baked plain cheese pizzas and pizza with toppings to test how efficiently each oven transmitted heat, and we paid special attention to attributes that would inhibit indoor cooking — like smoking or overheating.

We’ve divided our winners into categories to meet every budget, for those looking to invest, and for those looking to spend under $300 and $100 respectively. Read on for the best indoor pizza ovens that deliver restaurant-quality pizza right from your counter. 

This heavy-duty pizza oven combines the power and performance of a professional-quality outdoor pizza oven with the convenience of an indoor electric oven. It heats up quickly, reaches super-high temperatures, and yields delicious pizza with crispy crusts and tender insides.  

This indoor pizza oven easily reached an internal temperature of 850 degrees Fahrenheit. Pizzas cooked quickly (our cheese pizza took less than two minutes) and came out with light, airy crusts. Better yet, the oven took only 10 minutes to cool down. When you’re finished, simply unplug the machine and let it cool prior to storage.

The high price makes it an investment best suited for people who often make pizza at home. It’s also quite heavy and takes up a bit of space on countertops, so it’s not as portable as some other brands we’ve tested. 

Surface Area: 13 inches | Maximum Heat: 850 degrees Fahrenheit | Weight: 39 pounds

The lightweight, compact size of this oven makes it portable for moving from the countertop back into storage. We love the hinge-style lid; it allows you to slide the dough into the oven using a pizza peel and remove it, once cooked, without worrying about burning your wrists. The lid design and preset temperature controls are user-friendly for beginners. And it features a clear window, so you can peek in and check on the status of your pizza while it’s cooking. 

This oven baked crispy, light, and chewy pizza dough that rivals some of the best professionally-made pizza we’ve had — with perfectly golden brown crusts and bottoms and evenly melted cheese. 

Surface Area: 11.8 inches | Maximum Heat: 750 degrees Fahrenheit | Weight: 32.3 pounds

This handy pizza oven operates much like a countertop convection oven. Though it takes up a good amount of space on the countertop, its built-in handles make for easy transport back to your storage cabinet. And thanks to simple, clear temperature controls, it’s ideal for beginners.

The pizza stone sits on top of the oven racks, so you can slide the entire thing out if you need to — easier than trying to manipulate your pizza using a pizza peel. That said, the back of the oven gets hotter than the front and sides, so you’ll need to rotate your pizza while baking to ensure even heating. 

Surface Area: 12 inches | Maximum Heat: 700 degrees Fahrenheit | Weight: 25 pounds

This compact pizza oven is similar in size to a large waffle maker, which makes it a perfect choice for apartment kitchens or anyone with limited storage space. That said, it felt quite durable and sturdy during our tests. And it’s so easy to use: It only uses two knobs and a series of temperature presets for three different styles of pizza. The oven baked pizzas with a golden brown crust, gently caramelized cheese and a light, airy center.

We did notice a hotspot in the front of the oven, so be sure to rotate your pizza during the cooking process. 

Surface Area: 12 inches | Maximum Heat: 700 degrees Fahrenheit | Weight: 25 pounds

This efficient oven has simple control panels and six presets, so it’s a hands-off and beginner-friendly way to make pizza at home. It also has two heating elements — one on top and one on the bottom — and you can control them independently to achieve a crispy bottom and delicately melted top. During our tests, the oven heated up quickly and retained that heat during back-to-back baking sessions for multiple personal pizzas.

Keep in mind that due to ventilation limitations this oven should not be used underneath cabinetry. It’s best used on a tabletop or kitchen island where air can freely circulate. 

Surface Area: 12 inches | Maximum Heat: 750 degrees Fahrenheit | Weight: 23 pounds

This pizza oven is -

‘How Lucky Am I’ : Nick Jonas Celebrates,...

a petite, affordable option for smaller households or apartments. It takes up little space and delivers pizzas with a crispy crust that’s golden on the outside and airy on the inside. The control presets simplify the process for pizza lovers who want to try their hand at homemade pies. 

However, we noticed the heat doesn’t circulate evenly throughout the oven due to the “V” shape of the upper heating element, and our pizza came out with some uneven browning. Be sure to rotate your pizza throughout the cooking process to ensure even cooking. 

Surface Area: 12 inches | Maximum Heat: 800 degrees Fahrenheit | Weight: 8 pounds

Similar to the above picks, but at a slightly lower price, this compact gadget is small and lightweight, so it’s easy to move from your counter to a cabinet or small pantry. The hinge-style lid makes it easy to add and remove pizza, so it’s a great option for cooking with your kids (with parental supervision, of course!). The nonstick cooking surface is easy to wipe clean, and although we used a bit of oil, the pizzas slid off easily after cooking. 

This model took a little longer to cook pizzas than some others we tested (around 12 to 15 minutes depending on thickness). However, each pizza came out with a golden crust, a crunchy, crispy bottom, perfectly-cooked toppings, and evenly melted cheese. And while it’s super lightweight, it’s not the sturdiest oven. We noticed some wobbling when opening the lid too quickly. 

Surface Area: 12 inches | Maximum Heat: Unlisted | Weight: 5.5 pounds

This oven uses a rotating tray to continuously turn foods for even cooking. It’s small, lightweight, and easy to store, and it made evenly-cooked, crispy, and airy pizzas. The cooking tray wobbled slightly throughout the process, and pizzas took longer to cook compared to others we tested, similarly to a conventional oven. However, if you like making frozen foods like wings or chicken fingers, this could be a fun way to heat them up, too, and achieve the same crispy, golden results.

Surface Area: 12 inches | Maximum Heat: 400 degrees Fahrenheit | Weight: 6 pounds

For the occasional homemade pizza, this simple and streamlined gadget is an easy choice. There are three simple controls — low, medium, and high — and you don’t have to worry about preheating or setting a specific temperature. Plug in the oven and it will turn on and begin to heat. It’s a no-frills machine that bakes crispy pizzas in a short amount of time. We love that the crusts came out golden and airy, with chewy texture and bubbly surface. To note: the body of the oven gets hot while cooking.

Surface Area: 12 inches | Maximum Heat: 401 degrees Fahrenheit | Weight: 5.29 pounds

Compact Indoor Pizza Ovens: Primarily circular in design, this style pizza oven can either have a rotating top or a hinged, clamshell-style top.

Traditional Indoor Pizza Ovens: Almost like a cross between a toaster oven and an outdoor pizza oven, this standard style pizza oven has a hinged door that opens and closes so you can slide in a pizza with a peel. 

Of all the indoor pizza ovens we tested, the best-performing models could reach at least 700 degrees Fahrenheit like the Cuisinart Indoor Pizza Oven. We noticed that the pizzas baked in these ovens came out with the perfect crunch, tender insides, and gentle browning and spotting. The hotter models yielded pies with bubbly crust and a crunchy, chewy base.

We tested pizza ovens ranging from $50 to $1,000 with an average price of $300. We found that quality is directly correlated to price — high quality, durable, safe and effective pizza makers come with a higher price tag. 

We used our culinary expertise to put 12 of the best pizza ovens through a series of real-world tests to evaluate: 

Laura Denby is a contributing freelance food writer and product tester. With a degree in Culinary Arts from the Institute of Culinary Education and years of professional cooking under her belt, Laura uses her experience as a chef to methodically assess kitchen products for use in home kitchens. For this piece, we tested 12 products in a range of prices and styles to assess design, performance, functionality, and overall efficiency. We found nine winners for a range of budgets and levels of expertise.

We created the PEOPLE Tested seal of approval to help you find the very best products for your life. We use our unique methodology to test products in three labs across the country and with our network of home testers to determine their effectiveness, durability, ease of use, and so much more. Based on the results, we rate and recommend products so you can find the right one for your needs.

But we don’t stop there: We also regularly re-review the categories in which we’ve awarded the PEOPLE Tested seal of approval — because the best product of today might not be the best of tomorrow. And by the way, companies can never buy our recommendation: Their products must earn it, fair and square.

In short, PEOPLE Tested provides recommendations you can trust — every day, every purchase.

Related Articles

Follow Us

Carlos Marqués-Marcet Orchestrates a Del,...