The Best Pellet Grills of 2024 Are Your Most Versatile Backyard Cookers

Sure, the best gas grills provide push-button convenience, the best portable grills ensure camp meals are spectacular, and the best charcoal grills bring back childhood nostalgia. But the best pellet grills? They earn the distinction of rendering the best cuts of steak a deep, smoky flavor. Modern pellet grills exist at a sweet spot, offering easy, computer-controlled temperature regulation and faster startup times. That means you get greater complexity of flavor without committing to a full day of hands-on cooking (an incredible hack when learning how to grill a steak).

Pellet fuels also come in a variety of wood types so you can dial in the specific flavor you’re looking for, like mesquite for chicken or applewood for bacon and pork loin. Many of the best pellet grills also crank up to gas grill-like temperatures, so you can get a quick sear. With prices ranging from a couple hundred dollars to a couple thousand for grills with many of the same basic features, it's hard to decide how much to spend and which features actually matter.

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We assembled eight of our favorite pellet grills in a range of sizes and price points, to make your decision easier. We’ve also broken down some of the common types of pellet grills and their features to help you understand the marketplace a bit better. Our pick for the best pellet grill overall is Traeger Ironwood, a sophisticated and versatile grill built to smoke and roast for years—if not decades—to come.

Read more of the greatest hits from our 2024 Grilling Awards, including the best griddles, best pizza ovens, and best grill tools—plus pro tips on how to clean a grill and where to find the best online steaks.

Best Pellet Grill Overall: Traeger Ironwood

Pellet grills may feel like a recent trend, but their roots date back to the 1970s—as wood pellet stoves were developed to heat homes on alternative fuel sources during the oil crisis. Joe Traeger, with a background in home heating, founded Traeger Pellet Grills in the mid-1980s and launched the category. Traeger has arguably led the market since inception, offering sturdy, thoughtful products that constantly evolve to integrate the latest technology. Though Traeger now has stout competition, its flagship Ironwood is our favorite in this year’s testing.

Traeger Ironwood Overall Impressions

The beauty of a Traeger is they’re designed for pellet grill newbies and veterans alike. The app, programming, and smart design can hold a first-timer’s hand, automatically seasoning the grill, offering more than a thousand recipes, and keeping an eye on the fuel And for those who consider BBQ a lifestyle (we salute you), Traeger Ironwood offers all the precision and control one desires, thanks to the grill’s impressively steady heating and multiple outlets for temperature probes.

Like many of the best grills, Traeger offers a slew of custom accessories, such as storage bins, cup holders, a griddle grate, and paper towel rack. My favorite is the ModiFIRE Sear Grate ($140), which I used with nearly every cooking session. While searing is considered a weakness of pellet grills due to the lower max temperature compared to propane and charcoal grills, I had no trouble achieving a browned exterior on even thinner skirt steaks and burgers.

Final Verdict

The greatest advantage of Traeger Ironwood is its smoke factor. There’s no avoiding an injection of smoky flavor on this grill. I’m in full agreement with Traeger’s oft-repeated line that everything tastes better cooked over wood. So the fact that even roasting smaller vegetables, like asparagus, at higher temperatures, around 400 degrees, still imparted a distinct smokiness impressed me. There's no question this is the best pellet grill of 2024.

Pros:

• Wi-Fi connection and Traeger app allow you to watch and control the grill remotely.

• Guaranteed smoky flavor at any level of heat.

• Exceptional at holding steady temperatures.

• Relatively easy to clean and maintain.

Cons:

• Lower maximum heat (500 degrees) than gas and charcoal grills.

• If you’re cooking for someone who dislikes smoky food, they’re S.O.L.

• You will also smell like smoke. I needed a shower after every session.

Key Features and Tech

I kept marveling, They thought of everything! during my month of testing. The sturdy, double-walled steel construction, plus a thick lid gasket hold heat and smoke in. And the Downdraft Exhaust design circulates the smoke much more thoroughly and effectively than pellet grills with a simple smoke stack.

Though food is the focus, Ironwood’s grease management also stood out among our pellet grills. The porcelain grates are easy to scrape and wipe down, but the star here is the drip tray. Its gently sloping design takes a cue from griddles, helping to guide grease to the Grease & Ash Keg collector.

While Wi-Fi connections and app control centers are standard features, Traeger’s WiFIRE system is especially rich, providing your grill status and actions alongside recipes and how-to videos.

• Cooking area: 616 square inches

• Size: 40 x 59 x 25 inches

• Hopper capacity: 22 pounds

• Warranty: 3 years

Read our full Traeger Ironwood review.

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Best Budget Pellet Grill: Z Grills ZPG-L6002B

Z Grills is a relative newcomer among the best pellet grills, delivering quality smokers at a slightly lower cost. The company produced “white label” grills for other brands for 30 years. In 2016, it started making its own pellet grills under the Z Grills banner, and now can be found at Lowe’s, Home Depot, Sam’s Club, grocery stores, and farm ’n’ feed stores.

The medium-sized Z Grills ZPG-L6002B delivers a substantial 573-square-inch grilling area and a simple, reliable design at a reasonable price. The 20-pound hopper capacity is pretty standard, as is the temperature range of 180 to 450 degrees. This skews high enough to sear, but the low end definitely isn’t low enough for cold-smoking. I like the placement of the smoke chimney to the side, which permits pushing the grill flush against a wall or deck railing, but it does make the prep shelf on that side slightly harder to use.

• Cooking area: 573 square inches

• Size: 46 x 46 x 22 inches

• Hopper capacity: 20 pounds

• Warranty: 3 years

Best Pellet Grill for Small Spaces: Traeger Pro 22

If you’re fitting your pellet smoker onto a smaller deck or balcony, a full-size smoker is a bit much, especially for smaller households. Even if you have the space, adding a pellet grill alongside a traditional gas or charcoal grill can eat up outdoor space quickly. If you want a pellet grill that lets you operate at a normal height, Traeger Pro 22 packs a lot of cooking surface into a 41-inch-wide footprint via an additional half-depth rack above the main rack.

This isn’t a cheap pellet grill, but it’s on the more affordable end of the Traeger lineup by eschewing add-ons such as Wi-Fi control. It’s also not tiny nor light (103 pounds), so if space limitations have you looking for a pellet grill that's as small as it gets and stows away when not in use, look to Traeger Tailgater pellet grill highlighted below.

• Cooking area: 572 square inches

• Size: 49 x 41 x 27 inches

• Hopper capacity: 18 pounds

• Warranty: 3 years

Best Pellet Grill for Professional-Level Smoking: Yoder Smokers YS480S

If you have aspirations of creating contest-worthy smoked meat creations, take a look at the high-end Yoder Smokers YS480S. This model packs the same build-quality of its oversized competition-grade pellet smoker carts into a more reasonable size for the home pitmaster. The grills are built robustly in the heart of barbecue country in Yoder, KS, with ?-inch steel for durability backed by a 10-year warranty.

As a result, this is a beefy, 277-pound pellet grill, and it packs 800 square inches of cooking surface into a relatively small frame. Beyond the burliness, it also boasts a control board meant to handle temperature swings without overreacting and causing costly flameouts or temperature spikes that can spoil a project. It also bests most other pellet smokers on range, starting at 150 degrees up to 600. You can spend a lot less on a pellet smoker, but if you’re ready to upgrade from mass-produced mediocrity to a pro-grade, made-in-the-U.S.A. smoker, it’s hard to beat the YS480S. Need more mobility for competitions or backyard pellet grill races? Step up to the YS480s on Competition Cart, which gives you semi-pneumatic tires on 360-degree casters and a sturdier frame.

• Cooking area: 800 square inches

• Size: 53 x 55.1 x 36.1 inches

• Hopper capacity: 20 pounds

• Warranty: 10 years on grill body, 3 years on control system, 3 years on igniter

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Best High-Capacity Pellet Grill: Recteq Flagship 1100

Many at-home barbecue enthusiasts like to smoke foods in bulk. If you’re going to spend 12 hours tending a smoker, you might as well make it worth your while. And sometimes, if your finished product is good enough, there are just a lot of mouths that turn up to be fed. Stepping up to a larger, competition/catering-size smoker can get pricey, but Recteq’s 1100 smoker gives you capacity without the cost. As the name suggests, you get an ample 1,100 square inches of cooking surface and Recteq quality backed by a 6-year warranty.

Despite a relatively low price point for a grill of this size, there are also plenty of pro-grade features, including Wi-Fi control via the Recteq app. It also has excellent searing capacity, reaching up to 700 degrees, so you can turn your smoker into a de facto grill as needed for cranking out large volumes of steaks, burgers, and dogs. PID controller also gives consistent temperature regulation, so you can count on the the brains of the unit to keep the heat right where you want it.

• Cooking area: 1,009 square inches

• Size: 56 x 52 x 20 inches

• Hopper capacity: 40 pounds

• Warranty: 6 years

Best Combo Pellet Grill: Oklahoma Joe’s Rider Combo

While most of the best pellet grills get hot enough for traditional grilling, it takes longer and burns a lot of pellet fuel, so frequent grillers usually have both. If you don’t want to eat up all that deck space hosting two full-size grills, Oklahoma Joe’s Rider Combo gives you both in the footprint of a single grill. Unlike other combo grills that try to offer both in the same space, this combo has two fully separate cooking chambers which can be run simultaneously—great for putting a finishing char on smoked wings or a steak.

Neither side of the grill is massive, but each has a very respectable 380 square inches on each main rack, plus a total of 237 via elevated racks—which is more cooking area than you get on a single, medium-sized pellet grill. Despite the versatility and size, the price is reasonable and certainly not as expensive (or space-hogging) as buying two separate grills of that capacity.

• Cooking area: 760 square inches

• Size: 48.1 x 68.8 x 30.8 inches

• Hopper capacity: 20 pounds

• Warranty: 2 years

Best Portable Pellet Grill: Traeger Tailgater

Smoking and grilling on your pellet grill at home is great, but with most pellet smokers weighing 200-plus pounds, they’re not very practical for hitting the road. If you’re planning to settle into an all-day tailgating marathon or weekend of camping and want that wood smoke flavor, the Traeger Tailgater offers at-home pellet grill performance in a smaller package. Importantly, the weight is only 60 pounds, and the legs tuck up into the base of the grill for storage and transport. You can also run the Tailgater literally on your tailgate (or a table) with the legs tucked up.

There’s only 300 inches of cooking space, so it’s not going to crank out mass quantities, but it’s great for small groups, small households with small spaces, or adding some signature smoked ribs or chicken to a tailgate or camping spread. The hopper only holds 8 pounds, so you’ll need to stay on top of the fill level more than you would with a full-size smoker.

• Cooking area: 300 square inches

• Size: 36 x 38 x 18 inches

• Hopper capacity: 8 pounds

• Warranty: 3 years

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Best Multi-Fuel Pellet Grill: Camp Chef Woodwind Pro

Many people turn to pellet smokers to help them simplify their barbecuing, but for pitmasters who love the process as much as the product, pellet smokers can feel too automated. Camp Chef’s Woodwind Pro 36 merges the convenience of a smart, Wi-Fi-controlled pellet grill and a smoker-box. The Woodwind’s smoker box can use wood chips, wood chunk, and even charcoal for auxiliary or primary smoke. There’s also a massive, 1,236 square inches of cooking space, so you can grill and smoke in bulk.

The biggest cooking method this opens up is cold-smoking for favorites such as smoked salmon, which aren’t possible with traditional pellet smokers whose lowest temperature is usually too high for true cold smoking. The pellet smoking machinery along with probe temperatures for your meats can be monitored and controlled via Wi-Fi and the Camp Chef app, but you’ll need to manage the Smoker Box manually.

• Cooking area: 1,236 square inches

• Size: 44.5 x 26 x 16 inches

• Hopper capacity: 22 pounds

• Warranty: 6 years on body/hopper body/lid/legs/bottom shelf/grates, 3 years on fan/auger motor/hot rod/controller/casters/wheels/thermometer/drip tray/heat deflector/burners, 1 year on gaskets/probes/other parts

What You Should Look for in the Best Pellet Grills

Like most grills, pellet grills use heat, fire, and smoke to cook food over a grill grate. But the similarities end there when compared to a charcoal- or gas-powered grill, as pellet grills use a wood pellet fuel and electricity to drive the controllers, auger, and firebox that burns the pellets. This basic design is at the core of almost all pellet grills, but there are a lot of features, sizes, and types that differentiate the options on the market.

Size

Pellet grills start as small as compact “tailgater” grills, growing all the way up to massive, competition-grade monstrosities designed to cook for a crowd all day long. Your preference here will come down to the outdoor space you have available and the square inches of cooking surface you need to handle the amount of food you plan on cooking regularly.

Smoker Box Option

A handful of pellet smokers offer the option of a smoker box sidecar that lets you use your pellet grill for cold smoking or to simply increase the amount of smoke. These smoker boxes, unlike your pellet grill’s hopper, usually can accommodate wood chips which is a good way to introduce specific smoke flavors without buying speciality pellets.

If you make a lot of cold-smoked foods, a smoker box is probably a must have addition, but keep in mind you can always purchase a standalone smoker box or tube, such as Camp Chef’s 12-Inch Smoke Tube. These after-purchase add-ons are very manual, but then again so are most pellet grill smoke boxes.

Connectivity

Many pellet grills today offer some kind of connectivity to remotely manage and monitor your smoker via smartphone app. This can be a super-handy feature when managing longer-term smoking projects such as briskets or ribs. If you can spend the day in a lawn chair drinking beer and watching your smoker, that’s great—you made it! Many of us, though, want to get a smoke going while tackling other projects, potentially leaving the smoker for hours. Since pellet smokers have a tendency to stop smoking for nonobvious reasons at the worst possible times, having a connected smoker can give you some peace of mind—or at least let you know you need to get back to your smoker ASAP.

Ideally, you also have the ability to control most of the options on your smoker remotely. Just knowing that your temperature is still correct can be a relief, but having controls on the app gives you the ability to restart a dead smoker or adjust temperature at a specific time when need be.

High-Heat/Sear Mode

Another popular feature on pellet grills is a Sear Mode, or sometimes just a higher maximum temperature. The idea here is to avoid needing a gas grill in addition to your pellet smoker for when you just want to sear up a steak or some burgers and sausages.

The reality is that this is a fairly inefficient way to replicate a gas grill, but it’s attractive to folks who don’t want to accommodate the footprint of two grills in their outdoor space—or foot the bill for both. A pellet grill usually takes much longer to reach those high temps (over 400 degrees) and it burns a ton of pellets in the process, so I have traditionally kept a gas grill sidecar on my smoker for quick meals. But if you're an infrequent griller who just wants the option built into your smoker, be sure to shop for a model with a high-temp range.

Why You Should Trust Us

Matt Allyn doesn’t remember a time in his life without a grill. Even when he lived in New York City, Allyn worked out a deal with his landlords to share a grill for a little roof space—then carried his pellet grill up four flights of stairs. He's also been testing, overthinking, and writing about gear for major consumer publications since 2007, with a steady focus on products that enhance outdoor recreation.

When summer rolls around, Justin Park does most of his cooking outdoors via grill, smoker, flat top griddle, and pizza oven. After years of struggling with traditional smokers at his high elevation, pellet smoking made Park's outdoor cooking life much easier. Over the years, he's tested nearly a dozen pellet smokers from top brands such as Camp Chef, Traeger, Char-Broil, and more. Park's current smoker is a Camp Chef DLX with grill Sidekick that gives him options without taking up too much space.

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