Best Kamado Grills

The Big Green Egg Large is the most popular size of the iconic ceramic kamado cooker, capable of grilling, smoking, roasting, and baking. Big Green Egg is the brand that brought kamado cooking to the American mainstream.

The Big Green Egg XLarge is the crowd-size version of the iconic ceramic kamado, with a 24-inch grate that swallows two packer briskets or four whole chickens side by side. Same thick ceramic and lifetime warranty as the Large - nearly double the cooking area.

The Big Green Egg MiniMax packs the full ceramic kamado experience into a 19.5-inch-tall tabletop cooker that ships with its own carrier. It's the Egg for balconies, tailgates, and campsites - same 750°F ceiling, a quarter of the footprint.

The Kamado Joe Classic III is an 18-inch ceramic kamado loaded with innovations like the 3-tier Divide and Conquer system, SloRoller smoke chamber, and a single-finger Air Lift hinge. It's the feature-rich rival to the Big Green Egg.

The Kamado Joe Joe Jr. is a compact 13.5-inch portable ceramic kamado that brings full kamado versatility to small spaces, balconies, tailgates, and camping. It's the most portable cooker in the Kamado Joe line.

The Kamado Joe Big Joe III is the 24-inch flagship of Kamado Joe's ceramic lineup - everything the Classic III does, scaled up to brisket-and-a-half capacity, with the 3-tier Divide & Conquer rack system, SloRoller smoke chamber, and a heavy-duty rolling cart included.

The Char-Griller Akorn is a budget kamado-style grill that uses triple-wall insulated steel instead of ceramic to deliver kamado-like efficiency at a fraction of the price. It's the popular gateway into kamado cooking.

The Weber Summit Kamado E6 is Weber's 24-inch kamado-style charcoal grill built from dual-walled, air-insulated porcelain-enameled steel instead of ceramic. It pairs kamado heat retention with kettle conveniences like the One-Touch ash cleanup, a hinged RapidFire lid damper, and a flip-up diffuser for easy fuel access.

The Kamado Joe Konnected Joe is an 18-inch ceramic kamado with pellet-grill convenience bolted on: a push-button electric fire starter lights the charcoal for you, and a WiFi-connected fan holds your set temperature automatically while real lump charcoal does the flavoring.

The largest Egg, with a 29-inch grid and 672 sq in of cooking area against the XLarge's 452. At 375 lbs of ceramic it is a fixed installation, not a grill that gets moved, and Big Green Egg positions it for restaurants and competition teams rather than backyards. Everything else — the ceramic body, the 200-750°F range, the lifetime warranty — matches the rest of the line.

The Medium sits between the Small and the Large with a 15-inch grid and 177 sq in of cooking area. Big Green Egg rates it for an 18 lb turkey, six burgers or four steaks — enough for a couple or a small family, in a body 48 lbs lighter than the Large. It is the smallest Egg that still takes the full-size ceramic accessories most owners eventually want.

A 13-inch grid and 133 sq in in a tall, narrow 80 lb body. It shares its cooking area with the MiniMax but not its shape: the Small is a conventional standing Egg meant to live on a nest or in a table, where the MiniMax is a squat carry-handle model built to travel. At $699.99 it is the cheapest full-shape Egg.

The entry Kamado Joe: an 18-inch ceramic grill with 250 sq in of grate, on a cart with locking wheels and folding side shelves. Series I keeps the two-tier Divide & Conquer rack and the slide-out ash drawer but uses a cast-iron daisy-wheel top vent instead of the Kontrol Tower, and has no Air Lift hinge — those are what the $500 step to Series II buys.

Series II is the same 18-inch, 250 sq in ceramic body as Series I with the two upgrades that define the tier: the Kontrol Tower top vent, which holds a set position through rain and lid lifts, and the Air Lift hinge, which takes most of the dome weight off the handle. It keeps the two-tier Divide & Conquer rack; the three-tier system and premium shelves are reserved for Series III.

The 24-inch Big Joe in Series II trim: 450 sq in of grate, Kontrol Tower vent, Air Lift hinge and the two-tier Divide & Conquer rack, on a cart with locking wheels. It is the Classic Joe II scaled up by six inches of grid, which is the difference between one packer brisket and two. Series III adds a third rack tier and premium aluminum shelves for about $1,000 more.

Primo is the one American-made ceramic kamado, built in Georgia, and the only major brand with an oval rather than round firebox. The oval shape is the point: a firebox divider splits it lengthwise so one end runs hot and the other indirect, giving true two-zone cooking that a round kamado cannot do without stacking racks. The All-In-One configuration is the grill on a cradle with locking casters, fold-down side tables, heat deflectors, deflector racks and the firebox divider included.

The Akorn Auto-Kamado is the steel Akorn body with a digital controller and a fan that manages airflow automatically, plus Wi-Fi so the temperature can be set from a phone. It is the cheapest way to get set-and-forget charcoal control — the feature that otherwise means a $2,000 Konnected Joe or a third-party fan controller. Everything below the controller is the standard Akorn: triple-walled insulated steel rather than ceramic, cast iron grates, and an EasyDump ash pan. Char-Griller no longer lists the Auto-Kamado itself — only its cover remains on the maker's store — and the $449.99 that once bought it now buys the plain AKORN Kamado with the cart. It is still widely owned and still turns up at retail, which is why it stays here.

A tabletop steel kamado: 155 sq in, 36 lbs, side carry handles, and the same triple-walled insulated body as the full-size Akorn. It is the cheapest kamado of any kind, and unlike the ceramic portables it can actually be carried by one person to a campsite or tailgate. Cast iron grates and a removable stainless warming rack come standard.

The mid-size Primo, and the one most buyers actually land on. The oval firebox is Primo's whole argument: because the grate is a rounded rectangle rather than a circle, you can bank charcoal on one long end and run a true two-zone fire inside a kamado, which a round Big Green Egg cannot do without a divider accessory. Priced here as the All-In-One package, which is how most dealers sell it — grill head, cradle stand, side shelves, ash tool and grate lifter in one box. The Oval XL 400 above it adds 100 sq in; the Oval JR 200 below it drops 90.

The smallest oval Primo: 210 sq in, 100 lbs, and the same 151–850°F range and two-zone oval firebox as the LG 300. Primo also sells a two-piece GO cradle and base for it, which makes it the largest genuinely portable ceramic kamado on the US market. Priced here as the All-In-One package — head, cradle, shelves and tools.

A kamado with no ceramic in it: the body is solid cast aluminum up to 1¼ inches thick, with a hex-pattern stainless steel cooking grid and a hinged grate for adding fuel mid-cook. Because the housing is non-porous metal rather than ceramic, Blaze allows any charcoal, any wood and any lighter-fluid or starter method without risk of absorption or thermal cracking, and covers the whole grill — body, grids, hinge, hardware — under a lifetime warranty. It is sold as a drop-in head for outdoor kitchens, with a separate cart or sleeve as an accessory.

A kamado cast from iron rather than fired from clay, poured at a Columbus, Georgia foundry that has been in business since 1882. The 20.5-inch cooker weighs 334 lbs on its own and 435 lbs on the handle cart, and uses a one-piece 1-inch-thick cast iron firebox, two tiers of ½-inch cast iron grates, an integral hinge that keeps lid and base aligned without strap bands, and a Tel-Tru thermometer. Sold direct with published prices; the stand-alone head is $1,879.99 and the Trex- or stainless-shelved table carts cost more.

Goldens' calls it the Little Brother: the same US-poured cast iron construction, integral hinge and two-tier cast iron grate system as the 20.5-inch cooker, scaled to a 14-inch cooking area and 123 lbs. It is the direct competitor to a Big Green Egg MiniMax or a Kamado Joe Joe Jr., in iron instead of ceramic and at roughly the same price.

The tile-clad kamado. Komodo Kamado builds each cooker to order and clads it in hand-set ceramic tile, in about a dozen colorways; the 21" Supreme is the newest size, added because the 19" is too small for a packer brisket and the 23" is more grill than most couples need. It uses a Hi-Cap lid for extra headroom on the upper grate and a deliberately wide, shallow charcoal basket that puts more fire directly under the lower grate for searing. Three 3/8-inch 304 stainless grates run in four positions. $4,390 is the matte black base price; pebble and metallic tile finishes run to roughly $4,840. The cooking area is the 21-inch main grate.