The Best Outdoor Pizza Ovens

Gas, wood or multi-fuel?

Gas ovens such as the Koda models light with a turn of a dial, hold a steady temperature and leave no ash. They are the choice if you want pizza on a weeknight, or fish and vegetables at moderate heat. Wood and charcoal add a smoky edge and the pleasure of tending a fire, but they take practice: you feed the fire every few minutes, and the heat rises and falls with it. Multi-fuel ovens such as the Karu 2 Pro burn wood or charcoal and take a gas burner as well, so you can choose the fire at the weekend and gas on busy evenings.

Wood-pellet ovens are a fourth route. We left them out of this guide to keep the choice to gas and to wood or charcoal, the fuels you can buy almost anywhere.

12, 16 or 18 inches?

A 12-inch oven is the easy one to carry and store, but the mouth is tight: a pizza has to be launched precisely and turned often, and a pan for fish is a squeeze. Sixteen inches gives room for error, bigger pizzas and a cast-iron skillet. If you cook for a family or want the oven for more than pizza, the larger size is worth the extra weight. The Gozney Roccbox is a 12-inch oven built heavier: a thick stone floor, dense insulation and a silicone outer jacket. All that mass takes longer to heat up – allow about half an hour on gas.

Ooni also sells a second generation of gas ovens, the Koda 2 range, in 14-, 18- and 24-inch sizes. The 18-inch Koda 2 Pro, listed above, has two side burners and the Ooni Connect digital temperature hub with a food probe, and weighs about 66 lb (30 kg) – more oven than most patios need, but the one to choose if you bake for a crowd.

Portable or permanent?

Most ovens here have folding legs or a compact body and can travel. In practice, the Koda 12 and the Roccbox are the ones you would carry far. The Koda 16 moves easily from the shed to the patio table; the Karu 2 Pro and the Koda 2 Pro, at about 63 and 66 lb, are happiest on a sturdy outdoor table or cart where they can stay. Whichever you choose, it needs a stable, non-flammable surface, and a cover keeps salt air and rain off between uses. For a terrace built around cooking and eating outside, see our coastal patio ideas.

Beyond pizza: fish, vegetables and bread

A hot oven is a superb tool for coastal food. Sardines, prawns and a whole sea bream in a cast-iron pan cook in minutes; peppers, onions and eggplant blister and soften; flatbreads puff up quickly on the hot stone. Turn the gas down after the pizzas and use the falling heat for fish and vegetables, keeping the pan toward the front of the oven, away from the flame. For ideas, see whole fish, espeto style and our easy Mediterranean meals.

Accessories worth buying: peel, infrared thermometer, cover

• A pizza peel sized to the oven. A perforated metal peel lets excess flour fall away before the pizza goes in; a small round turning peel makes turning inside the oven much easier.
• An infrared thermometer tells you when the stone is ready – the stone, not the air, decides whether the base cooks through. Ooni's own model reads surface temperatures up to 999°F (about 537°C) and is preset for cordierite stones.
• A cover against salt air, rain and dust; an oven that lives outside lasts longer with one.
• Heat-resistant gloves and a cast-iron pan for fish and vegetables.

How we chose

We set the criteria first – fuel, size, weight, heat-up time and how well an oven turns down for food other than pizza – and then compared the specifications on the manufacturer's product pages. We list an oven only where we could confirm it in the Amazon store of the US, the UK or Germany, so your version of this page may show fewer models. Ooni's earlier Karu 16 has been succeeded by the Karu 2 Pro, so we list the current model. We have not used these ovens ourselves; we earn a commission on purchases through our links, and it has no influence on what we recommend.