The Best Smokeless Fire Pits

How smokeless fire pits work

Most smokeless pits are double-walled steel cylinders. Air enters through holes near the base, feeds the fire from below and rises inside the hollow wall, where the fire heats it. It leaves through a ring of holes just under the rim, and that hot air ignites the smoke and gases rising from the logs – a second burn you can see as small jets of flame along the top. In OutdoorGearLab's comparison, this secondary burn helped the Solo Stove Bonfire 2.0 do the best job in the test group at taming smoke, even with less-than-ideal wood.

BioLite takes another route: a battery-powered fan pushes air through 51 jets into the fire, so you can turn the flames up or down. The gas option skips the question entirely – propane burns without smoke.

Which size do you need?

Leave room for a full circle of chairs at a comfortable distance from the heat, plus a path behind them. On a small terrace, a 15-inch fire with everyone close feels better than a big fire nobody can sit near. If you are still planning the space, the coastal patio ideas show where a fire pit fits best.

Wood, pellets or gas?

Wood is why most people want a fire pit: the crackle, the smell, the heat on your face. Burn dry, seasoned or kiln-dried hardwood such as oak, ash or beech, split to fit – OutdoorGearLab fitted logs up to 16 inches in the Bonfire 2.0 and up to 20 inches in the Breeo. Softwood and damp logs smoke and spark. Never burn painted, treated or pallet wood.

Pellets and charcoal work in some wood pits; the BioLite FirePit+ is made for both wood and charcoal, which is what makes it a good grill. Check the manual before you try pellets in any pit. Cooking over a fire pit is also how the Andalusian espeto works – sardines on a skewer, leaning toward the embers; our whole fish guide shows the method.

Gas gives you flames at the turn of a knob, no smoke, no embers drifting downwind and nothing to clean. It gives less radiant heat than a wood fire of the same size, but it runs long: in OutdoorGearLab's tests the propane pits had the longest burn times. Where wood fires are restricted, a gas fire pit is sometimes still allowed – check with your town, your building or HOA, or the campground.

Fire pits on decks and near the beach: safety and local rules

On a wooden deck

A deck needs a barrier between the fire and the boards. OutdoorGearLab notes that the Bonfire 2.0 needs its stand to keep it from burning a deck; Solo Stove sells a stand for each size, and a heat-resistant deck pad underneath adds a second layer. Composite and PVC decking can be less tolerant of heat than wood, so check what the decking maker allows. A gas fire pit throws no sparks, but it still needs a non-combustible surface below it.

By the sea

From California to the Costa del Sol, many beaches ban fires on the sand or allow them only in marked fire rings – look up the rules for the exact beach before you pack wood. Wind is the other issue: light the fire with your back to the wind, keep it small and put it out early if gusts pick up. Never bury embers in the sand; they stay hot long after the fire looks dead. On a seafront terrace, stainless steel handles salt air well, while weathering steel such as Corten forms its protective rust layer best where it can dry out, so keep it covered.

How we chose

We have not used these fire pits ourselves. We started with what matters on a coastal patio – smoke, size, weight, cleanup and how the steel copes with salt air – and compared the makers' specifications and retailer data with the independent tests published by OutdoorGearLab, which measured heat, burn time and smoke for the Bonfire 2.0 and the Breeo X Series 24. Then we chose one model per job and wrote down the trade-offs. Products appear only where your country's Amazon store sells them, so the list can be shorter outside the US. For the rest of the outdoor season, see Outdoor Living and the beach packing list.