Whether you're hosting backyard gatherings, camping or simply want to add warmth to your yard, there’s nothing like sitting around one of the best fire pits. But, how do you know which one is right for your needs?
We've spent hours stoking the fires to put more than a dozen of the most popular fire pits to the test (so you don't have to). Tried and tested by an experienced camper, Eagle Scout and former cookstove product designer on his family farm, each fire pit was evaluated several times using the same type of firewood and fire starting techniques.
To make it easy we've divided our recommendations into the best smokeless fire pits and the best traditional fire pits, so you can find what you're looking for without having to search through the whole guide. If you're after a top smokeless pit, we highly rated the Solo Stove Bonfire 2.0 for durability and design. Or if you fancy more of a traditional fire pit, we liked the Bali Outdoors the best for its deep basin and adjustable grilling rack for those s'mores.
To help you decide, here's our selection for the best fire pits to suit every home, lifestyle and budget.
Quick list
Here are our best smokeless and traditional fire pit picks based on our comprehensive testing and expertise.
The Solo Stove Bonfire is the best smokeless fire pit we've tested. Its stainless steel design, allows great airflow for a steady smokeless burn. Easy to assemble, it also comes with a handy, removable ash tray to make cleaning a breeze. It also has a lifetime warranty.
If you're after a basic fire pit, that is compact, this will get the job done. Featuring a 23.5-inch wide and 12-inch deep fire bowl, it's also lightweight. Easy to assemble in just minutes, the fire was quick to light. It also has convenient, carry handles to move around, and a mesh screen cover.
With its unique bowl-shaped design, the Cuisinart fire pit is easy to use when it comes to reaching in to light the fire. What's more, heat can be felt sitting over 6-feet away, offering a cozy experience to sit around. Ideal for hosting evening, outdoor gatherings.
For those after a more traditional fire pit, at an affordable price, the Bali Outdoors is a great option. With its sturdy build, it has a 32-inch diameter interior that holds a lot of wood and offers a cozy amount of heat. It also comes with an adjustable grilling rack.
If you're after something more portable, this Tiki is a great option. Its compact, rectangular design, makes it look stylish, and it comes with a removable ash tray and convenient handles. Built with a 16-gauge stainless steel interior and powder-coated exterior, this fire pit is both durable and sturdy.
One thing that makes the Hampton Bay Piedmont stand out among other traditional firepits is that it comes with a heat shield, protecting the ground from the heat above. It also features a handy grill rack if you fancy toasty a marshmallow or two as you enjoy the flames and warmth from the heat.
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Meet our experts
Rich is an experienced farmer and owns and runs McCollum Orchards, which has been in his family for 200 years. He took on the farm with his wife, Bree, in 2011. Working on the farm full-time, with his wife, Rich has vast experience in testing products for Tom's Guide, including products from fire pits to gardening gloves. His manual dexterity and practical insight enable him to comprehensively test and review products to see if they make the grade. McCollum Orchards is an organic fruit, vegetables, and flower farm on a 100-acre site.
I’m a staff writer on the homes team at Tom’s Guide, and apart from covering all things inside the home, I also take care of our exterior content. Part of this includes writing garden features and overseeing our outdoor buying guides covering solar lights, patio heaters, pruning shears, inflatable hot tubs, and fire pits.
Best smokeless fire pits
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Best smokeless fire pit
As a smokeless fire pit, the Solo Stove Bonfire 2.0 offers everything and more. It has a sleek design, great airflow for a nice smokeless burn, and is very easy to clean after each use. It was the only smokeless fire pit in our tests that had both a removable ash pan (the metal grate the logs sit on) and a removable ash tray located below the pan. This made the Solo Stove Bonfire 2.0 the easiest fire pit clean out of all of those we tested. That’s why it takes the top spot as the best fire pit.
I found the Solo Stove Bonfire 2.0 incredibly simple to assemble, taking less than a minute; just rest it on its base and flip over the fire ring on top. That’s it! It had great instructions, and I was able to build a nice, controlled fire very easily. It produced very little smoke and sparks, and after half an hour, the fire burnt down to a point that was perfect for roasting marshmallows.
Unlike other fire pits that may reserve stainless steel for only the inner burn chamber, the Bonfire 2.0 is entirely constructed out of corrosion-resistant stainless steel. This results in a sturdy and quality product. In fact, Solo stove is so confident in the design and durability, that it offers a lifetime warranty with each fire pit.
Like most smokeless fire pits, the Solo Stove Bonfire 2.0 is not designed to be permanently left outside. There are no built-in handles and the smooth stainless steel design can be slippery when moving. However, it comes with its own canvas travel bag and at just over 23 pounds, it is relatively easy to pick up. The included stainless-steel stand fits and supports well, lifting the fire pit off the ground by a few inches. Overall, I was very impressed with this fire pit, and could find little to complain about. It should provide years of backyard entertainment.
If buying cords of wood is not your thing, Solo Stove also sells a wood pellet adapter for its fire pits; this perforated metal plate sits inside the stove, and lets you pour in pellets to keep the fire going.
Best fire-side experience
What makes the Cuisinart Cleanburn Fire Pit unique is its bowl-shaped design. While the majority of other smokeless fire pits have vertical walls, the Cuisinart Cleanburn’s convex shape gives it two advantages. First, it makes it much easier to reach in to light the fire compared to the traditional deep-cylinder design. Second, once the fire is going, its concave design radiates the fire’s heat outwards towards the user, instead of straight up. Heat could be felt sitting over 6-feet away. This made the Cuisinart Cleanburn the warmest fire pit to sit around, compared to all other brands tested.
Again, I found the Cuisinart Cleanburn very easy to assemble, taking only a couple minutes to figure out. Just rest the fire pit on the base and give it a quarter turn clockwise to lock it into place. The base has a useful integrated ash tray. When it’s time to dump the ashes, just twist the fire pit a quarter turn counter-clockwise and lift it off the base to reveal the ash. It was definitely an inconvenience compared to the Solo Stove Bonfire 2.0, but not a dealbreaker. Though, I admittedly had to use a small hand broom to sweep the excess ash down through the holes in the fire pit, so it all ended up in the tray. At 22-pounds, there is also the option of flipping the fire pit over after removing it from the base to dump out the remaining ash and debris.
With a limited, one-year warranty, you definitely want to take good care of this fire pit and bring it inside after each use. Although it does not come with a cover, they are available to purchase separately online. Overall, the Cuisinart CleanBurn Fire Pit created the best fire-side experience in our tests. It was easy to light, produced very little smoke and sparks once started and burned steadily for about 35 minutes. If it had a better warranty, the Cuisinart Cleanburn fire pit could have tied for first place as the best fire pit.
Best portable fire pit
If you’re looking for the best “portable” smokeless fire pit, the Tiki Portable is our recommendation. It has a stylish and compact, rectangular design, a removable ash tray and convenient handles. Built with a 16-gauge stainless steel interior and powder-coated exterior, this fire pit is both durable and sturdy. Plus, it’s easy on the eye too.
The Tiki Portable had easy-to-follow instructions and took me about five minutes to assemble with the included hardware. It was the only rectangular-shaped fire pit tested, but it performed just as well as its cylindrical counterparts, offering a four-foot heat radius from the fire and the longest burn-time (40 minutes) of all the fire pits we tested. It was easy to reach-in and light the fire because of its width, and it produced a nice, low-smoke flame. Weighing in at 41 pounds, it is surprisingly heavy for a “portable” fire pit, but the handles make moving it easy.
The Tiki Portable features a removable ash tray, and the interior just requires a quick brush between uses to knock the ash down into the tray. You just grab the tray by the handle and it pulls right out of the unit without having to move the fire pit at all. It comes with a weather-resistant canvas cover, however, that does not mean it should be left outside for an extended period of time.
The fire pit also comes with a pack of Tiki Brand of wood pellets; just light the bag for an easy ½ hour campfire. I found this fire pit worked equally well using hardwood and wood pellets as fuel. Both options burn very well, but the wood pellets felt like they produced more heat from a distance, although they didn’t burn for as long as the hardwood. However, it was very easy to add another log or two to the fire after the wood pellets died down. Whether sitting in your back patio or camping by the lake, the Tiki Portable is a great fire pit option for people on the go.
Best traditional fire pits
Best traditional fire pit
We found the Bali Outdoors 32-inch to be the best traditional fire pit, and it comes at a great price. Its large, 32-inch diameter interior holds a lot of wood and throws a nice amount of heat to those nearby. It is solidly built, easy to use and very stable. In fact, it seemed to be the best constructed of all the traditional fire pits we tested. This fire pit comes with an 18-inch adjustable grill that can be swiveled into place at an ideal cooking height. It also comes with a collapsible internal log frame to make building your fire a breeze.
The Bali Outdoors 32-inch does not come with a mesh screen cover, mainly due to the built-in adjustable grill. If you live in an area where local regulations require a screen cover for fire pits, this will likely be a dealbreaker. We did, however, like that that grill can be locked into place at different heights or easily removed if not required. We cooked hotdogs evenly with the grill set at the top rim level.
This fire pit had the most pieces to assemble of all the fire pits we tested and took about half an hour to do so. However, it had very detailed and intuitive instructions, so it wasn’t difficult. It features a nice ledge around the rim that works as a great safety bumper as well as a shelf to rest a mug of hot chocolate. The design also includes a ring of steel that overlaps the legs for support. This acts as an additional safety bumper, so you can’t trip over the legs while walking by. It comes with a very short fire poker. Though it works well when the fire burns down and you can get close enough, it will most likely result in singed fingers when the fire is fully stoked.
We liked that the fire pit has drain holes in its base in case it gets rained on. Based on reviews, the fire pit can be prone to rust, especially at the base of the bowl and the screen around the fire bowl, but that was similar across all fire pits we reviewed. It is designed to be left outdoors for the season, but rust can be prevented if it’s covered or brought inside when not in use. This fire pit was easy to light and it’s easy to build a large, controlled fire which produces a typical amount of smoke for a traditional fire pit. Overall, it provided an all-around nice fire pit experience — that’s why it’s one of the best fire pits.
Best budget
At $128 at the time of this review, the Amazon Basics 23.5 Inch Steel Lattice Fire Pit is one of the best priced fire pits we’ve tested. It features a 23.5-inch wide and 12-inch deep fire bowl with a mesh screen cover. It’s the only fire pit we’ve seen with designated handles, giving it a rustic, cauldron-like appearance. And at 17 pounds, it was very easy to move around and dump out the ash. It has no grill. It is your basic backyard fire pit, but it’s still one of the best fire pits.
It took approximately 20 minutes to assemble and the instructions were very straightforward. The fire was easy to light and produced a nice, controlled flame in a matter of minutes. The attractive lattice design combined with wire mesh allowed plenty of airflow for large fires with very few sparks. Overall, the burn time lasted about half an hour, which was similar across the other traditional fire pits of this size.
Most traditional fire pits we tested came with short fire screen lifting tools or pokers that were only 14-19 inches long. The Amazon Basics Lattice Fire Pit, on the other hand, came with a 3-foot-long fire poker that doubles as a screen lifter. That tool made it much easier to manage the fire at a safe distance compared to all the other fire pits.
The one main drawback of this fire pit is that it doesn’t come with any drain holes. While traditional fire pits aren’t designed to be left uncovered outside for extended periods of time, most have at least one drain hole to prevent accidental water buildup and premature rusting. Besides that one gripe, it is a great overall fire pit that is both sturdy and attractive, at a great price. It has the basics of what you need for a good backyard bonfire.
Best fire pit with a built-in heat shield
The Hampton Bay Piedmont comes with a large 24-inch wide by 12-inch deep fire bowl, an adjustable grill rack and a mesh screen cover. The fire bowl features drain holes drilled into the center to prevent water accumulation and rust. A safety ring circulates the rim of the pit, similar to the Bali Outdoors 32 inch, and this can be used as both a safety bumper and a handle for moving the unit.
One feature that makes the Hampton Bay Piedmont stand out against its competitors is its heat shield. This is a metal pan below the fire bowl that shields the ground from the heat above. Because of this feature, during testing, this fire pit was the only one that didn’t make the ground steam. While the instructions still recommend placing this fire pit on stone or sand, it is nice to have that added layer of protection.
It took about 25 minutes to assemble the Piedmont and getting the safety ring aligned was a little tricky, but it looked great and was very sturdy once completed. The grill uses wingnuts to adjust the height and location of the rack, which proved a little awkward — the one that adjusts the height is located on the inside of the fire pit right next to the fire. We tried cooking hot dogs and had initially set the rack too high, but we were unable to adjust it because of the heat. However, it does have a second grilling option where the user can forego the height adjustment bar and just place the grill on hooks directly above the coals.
The Hampton Bay Piedmont tested very well under our trials and is a great fire pit overall. We were able to build a fire large enough to warm eight people sitting around it, but still felt that it was safe and under control. The one glaring drawback is the short 90-day warranty.
Also tested
We've selected three of the best smokeless fire pits and three of the best traditional fire pits to appear in our roundup, but there were many other hot contenders. Here are some other options that might be the best fit for you, which were tested by Richard Woodridge, using the same criteria as for the fire pits which made our top recommended list.
Other smokeless firepits to consider
Other traditional firepits to consider
How we selected and tested the best fire pits
There are hundreds of fire pits available on the market. The ones chosen for this test were selected because they ranked among the highest in terms of product reviews from reputable brands and vendors. We were looking for fire pits that were durable, aesthetically pleasing and provided a proper balance of functionality and easy maintenance. Not all fire pits we tested earned the right to be listed in our Best Fire Pits ranking.
Our tester
Each fire pit featured in our best fire pit list was tested by an experienced camper, Eagle Scout and former cookstove product designer and his family on their historic farm.
How we tested
Fire pits were separated into smokeless and traditional design categories. Each fire pit was used a minimum of three times and left uncovered outside exposed to the Western, NY elements for at least one month. Ash wood (a hardwood from the ash tree that is available in abundance in the Northeast due to the Emerald Ash Borer infestation) that had been split and cured in standard 16-inch lengths was the firewood used for all tests. All fire pits were started with the same fire-starting technique (crumpled-up newspaper and kindling) and the same quantity of wood. If alternate fuels, such as wood pellets were supplied, we tried those out too.
Heat throw of the smokeless fire pits was tested by walking towards the burning fire pit until heat radiating from the fire could be felt, and that distance was measured. The further the distance, the further the heat was thrown. Hotdogs were the grilling food of choice for this test if a grill was included.
Of course, no fire pit test is complete without roasted marshmallows, and so marshmallows were roasted once on each pit. This tester’s favorite marshmallow roasting stick is a collapsible model from MalloMe ($9.99, Amazon).
What to look for when buying a fire pit
Typically, fire pits have been split into two categories – traditional and smokeless. Within those categories, there are also portable and non-portable designs. The difference between these is usually dependent on weight, the ability to collapse the body and the presence of handles or a carrying bag:
Traditional fire pits
- Constructed of steel and coated in a heat and rust-resistant paint
- Supported by legs that raise the fire bowl off the ground
- Some have an open, shallow design
- Others have a deep wall encircling the bowl that acts as a wind screen and a spark container — these fire pits are usually wide and heavy and create a “normal” amount of smoke
- Some have attachments for cooking food and can double up as a charcoal grill.
Smokeless fire pits
- Constructed of steel with a double-walled design with strategically placed air holes for improved airflow and less smoke
- Sit low to the ground and usually throw less heat outward when compared to traditional fire pits. Why is this different? The double-wall acts as an insulator and most of the heat is consequently directed straight up.
- Fire burns very efficiently and a little ash is usually all that remains of the wood
- The low-smoke design makes them ideal for crowded areas, where smoke can be bothersome
How to choose the best fire pit for you
Looking for convenience?
Find a fire pit that’s easy to clean. Look for ones that are either large enough to reach into with a dustpan or comes with a removable ash tray.
Are you an RV camper?
If you are just planning to use a fire pit for a few nights relatively close to your vehicle, then a portable version could be a good fit along with one of the best coolers. You can get the comfort and safety of a fire pit in a much smaller and lighter package. Some of the portable devices also double up as grills and even power sources.
Are you a hiker?
If you plan to hike into a campsite, then an ultra-portable fire pit, such as the Fireside Outdoors Pop-Up Pit offers a much safer alternative to your traditional campfire, without taking up much space in your pack.
After a grill experience?
Many fire pits can also use charcoal for a more grill-like cooking experience. The BioLite stove with electric forced air is the best all-around cooking fire pit we reviewed, although it didn't make it into our top three of the best traditional fire pits. If you want to up your outdoor cooking game beyond the traditional grilled hotdog, hamburger or chicken, Solo Stove just came out with a new pizza oven attachment for their Bonfire 2.0 stove. Plus, be sure to check out the best outdoor pizza ovens.
What is the best shape for a firepit?
A round firepit is a common choice. Similar to sitting around a campfire, round pits are ideal for emitting heat evenly around the perimeter, and will help ensure a warm seat for everyone. However, if you have a compact space, a square shape would be more suitable.
Not all fire pit manufacturers are the same
BioLite, for example, designs cookstoves and other products to make cooking safer in developing countries. Fireside Outdoor has a mission to revolutionize the campfire experience by reducing pollution and wildfires that can result from camping.
Pricing
Prices for the fire pits we tested ranged from $119 to $599. We recommend looking for a mix of durability and functionality, at a price you can afford.
The facts about smokeless fire pits
While even the best fire pits aren’t completely smokeless, smokeless fire pits are a huge improvement to traditional designs.
They are constructed of steel and have a double-walled design with strategically placed air holes for improved airflow. The air comes in from the bottom to provide the initial oxygen for the fire. Simultaneously, additional air is pulled up and heated between the double-walls of the fire pit where it exits higher up into the burn chamber and completes what the manufacturers call a ‘secondary combustion’ of the smoke and gasses that are released.
However, you should expect some smoke when you start your fire. It will take a few minutes for the fire to grow and for the air to start drafting properly. Once it does, the fuel will burn efficiently as long as the wood stays below the rim of the smokeless fire pit. Anything that sticks up above the rim smokes. As long as a good source of hardwood fuel is used and the wood stays below the rim, there is very little noticeable difference in smoke output between brands and designs.
Smokeless fire pits usually throw less heat outward when compared to traditional fire pits, as the double-wall acts as an insulator and most of the heat is directed straight up. The outer wall also does not get nearly as hot and so the user does not feel as much warmth radiating from the fire pit.
