The Best Air Fryers of 2026

How to choose an air fryer

Almost every air fryer crisps food the same way — a heating element and a fan blowing hot air around a basket. What actually separates them is four things you can measure before you buy, and those are the four axes we rank on.

1. Footprint — will it fit?

Air fryers are counter hogs. The number on the box is the capacity; the number that matters is the footprint— how much counter it eats and whether it clears your upper cabinets. We list the real width × depth × height for every pick (pulled from the manufacturer's listing), because a "compact" 4-quart model can still be 15 inches tall. If counter space is tight, jump to our best small air fryers.

2. Capacity — how many people?

A rough guide: 2 qt feeds one, 4 qt feeds one to two, 5–6 qt feeds two to four, and 8 qt or a dual-basket feeds a family. Bigger baskets need bigger footprints, so this trades directly against the point above. Two-basket machines like the Ninja DualZoneare the honest answer to "too small for us" because they cook two foods at once and finish them together.

3. Wattage and running cost

An air fryer draws 1,400–1,800 watts, but it runs for 15–25 minutes, not hours — so it costs far less than the oven it replaces. At the US average electricity rate, a 1,550-watt fryer running 20 minutes uses about 9¢ of electricity per batch. We compute this for every pick from the manufacturer's stated wattage — no other roundup publishes it. The full math is in how air fryers work and what an air fryer costs to run.

4. Basket materials

This is where the "are air fryers toxic?" worry comes from. Most baskets use a nonstick coating; some are ceramic and explicitly PFAS-free, and a few (like the Ninja Crispi) cook in borosilicate glass with no coating at all. We read the coating type off each spec sheet rather than guessing. If this matters to you, start with the best non-toxic air fryers, then the best ceramic air fryers for the machines that put the coating claim in writing, and the materials explainer, are air fryers toxic?

Basket vs. oven-style

Basket air fryers (drawer pulls out) heat fast, crisp hard, and are easy to clean — the right default for most people. Oven-style air fryers (a door and racks) hold more and can toast or bake on multiple levels, but they take up more room and preheat slower. If that trade sounds right, our best air fryer toaster ovens ranks that field on interior height and real depth. If you're weighing a countertop oven instead, read air fryer vs. toaster oven and air fryer vs. convection oven.

Who should skip an air fryer

If you already have a convection oven you like and rarely cook for one or two, an air fryer mostly buys you speed and less counter cleanup, not a new capability. We'd rather tell you that up front than pad a list. Everyone else — especially small households who reheat and crisp a lot — gets real daily value.

Go deeper

Feeding a family is the one job a single basket handles badly, and best dual-basket air fryers covers the two-drawer machines that fix it — including an honest account of how much counter depth they cost you, which is the most common regret in that format. If you have narrowed it down to the two brands most people end up choosing between, Ninja vs. Cosori shows why they are not really competing on the same things at all.

And once you own one, most air fryer complaints — it smokes, it smells, food sticks, it seems slower than it used to be — are cleaning problems in disguise. How to clean an air fryer has the five-minute routine, the monthly deep clean of the heating element that almost everyone skips, and the specific fixes for each of those symptoms.