The Best Camping Stoves of 2026

Read Review: The Classic Camp Stove Gets a Modern Makeover: Coleman 1900 3-in-1 Review

The Quick & Dirty: Versatile cooking surfaces, stronger-than-average output, and a tough build make this the best camp stove for most people. The wind protection is notably lacking, one of our only complaints.

This camping stove comes with not one but two cast-iron attachments for grilling and griddle cooking. Trust us, the Coleman Cascade 3-in-1 ($275) aspect is awesome. Thanks to its versatility, you can use two burners like any other camp stove, or one burner with a grill, or one burner with a griddle. For most campers, this stove balances features the best.

What I loved most about this stove in testing was its durability, heat output, and simmer control. All of the features offer a quality feel, and it can cook just about anything. Each of the two burners puts out 12,000 BTU at maximum output, making this stove hotter than the average 10K that most stoves offer. The cooking surface is also wide open when you aren’t using the griddles, and I found that full 12″ pans can be used.

One somewhat glaring error, however, was the short windscreens that this stove incorporates. Not only do taller windscreens reduce heat loss, but they also cut down on grease splatter from a griddle. Build up those walls, Coleman!

Hybrid stoves like the 3-in-1 generally lag behind straight-ahead camp stoves in popularity, but can be an excellent way to divide up cooking space for a number of dishes. The main tradeoff comes when sharing cooking space with multiple pots or pans and not being able to remove griddle attachments.

Thankfully, the Coleman is modular, and this ability, plus hotter burners, keeps the Coleman Cascade 3-in-1 in the top dog spot for hybrid stove options. If you’re a fan of cast iron or simply want an all-in-one option that performs well in every category, the 3-in-1 is one of the best camping stoves you can buy.

The Quick & Dirty: This is the stove for budget campers who want an easy-to-use two-burner that won’t prematurely wear out. It isn’t the most refined or powerful, but the price is right.

The Coleman Cascade Classic Camp Stove ($130) might not have all the fancy features of the others on the list, but it’s hands down the most bang for your buck out of all camp stoves on the market. The windscreens do the job, and the flame pattern can be set from a simmer to a roar. It weighs just under 12 pounds, which isn’t much more than most of the more expensive options.

For as low as less than $100 on sale, you get two 10,000-BTU burners in a classic, trusted design. We’ve cooked up plenty of meals on the Coleman Cascade Classic and appreciate how simple it is. The cooking surface is a bit smaller than a stove like the Camp Chef Everest, but we found we could fit a cast iron skillet and pot for boiling water without a problem. The simmer control knob is a bit rough, which was one of the few downsides we could sniff out.

For the money, we reach for the Cascade Classic almost every time, but budget-hunters may also consider the GSI Selkirk 540+. That stove does bump up the output to 14,000 BTU burners, but asks $50 more for it, and we found cooking performance to be close to the same. The windscreens on the Coleman do protect it a bit better, so consider where you’ll be cooking before deciding between the two.

If you’re camping on a budget or want an extra two burners for large meals, the Cascade Classic would be a great addition to your outdoor kitchen setup.

The Quick & Dirty: A powerful stove for camp gourmands who need high-output or cook at high altitudes. The overbuilt design weighs accordingly, but the long-term durability is worth it.

The Camp Chef Everest 2X ($230) replaced the older Mountain Series Summit model from this brand. The Everest is definitely as high-powered as its predecessor (if not more so), with two 20,000-BTU burners, an auto-igniter, and a redesigned burner area and exterior.

Although the Camp Chef Everest has some of the strongest burners we tested, it still simmers well. And with the new burner and surface design, you get a few more cubic inches of cooking space for the same weight.

Tester Mallory Paige lives in an off-grid cabin and has been using the Everest 2X as her family’s primary stove. After cooking up to three meals a day on it for over a year, the stove has held up impressively well.

The striker still works, and the mix of high output settings and good simmer control meets the demands of any cook. From quickly boiling water at high altitudes to carefully toasting pine nuts, it does it all. This stove roars to life for heavy-duty use, but is delicate enough for finer cooking. The only negative we could rustle up was the weight and bulk.

At 20,000 BTUs per burner, this stove has power to spare compared to standard ~10,000 BTU burners like the Primus Kinjia, and while we typically find this to be enough to cook more camp meals, we can’t complain about having more knob to turn if needed.

The build is stout, and some may consider the 10-pound Primus Alika to be a better all-arounder. For a stove that’ll do most anything, however, it’s hard to ding the Everest.

Read Review: Smaller Than the Best, Lighter Than the Rest: Primus Kinjia Camp Stove Review

The Quick & Dirty: A slim stove option for campers with minimal camp kitchens, or a van build-out to equip. The lack of wind protection makes it tough to use in all conditions, however.

Small but powerful — the Primus Kinjia Camping Stove ($210) brings a light footprint to your camp kitchen and is perfect for those who want a capable stove but don’t want to renovate their campsite in the process.

With a base area of 19” x 12”, the Kinjia slides into spots where other stoves in our testing simply couldn’t, and isn’t much the lesser of a stove for it. The twin 10,200 BTU burner heads are sized more similarly to those on backpacking stoves but still performed admirably in our cooking tests. Where the Kinjia really shines, we found, was in the detail work.

Simmering is a breeze with this stove, and making more delicate dishes like omelets, fish, or crêpes can be whipped up with ease. Camper Bergen Tjossem whipped up a dinner of creamy polenta that required low and slow work and found the Kinjia to be more than up to the task. There’s no ignoring that this is just one good-looking stove, too. The black stove body is accented with brass rivets and topped off with a wood-trimmed handle that adds a bit of class to your next cookout. 

When it comes to fueling, the Kinjia uses a metal canister stand that stands alone. This holds the fuel bottle at what is probably the optimal angle, but in reality, it was just another loose piece we feared losing track of. Tjossem also lamented over the lack of windscreens, but has gotten pretty good at building up DIY walls instead.

The Kinjia is undeniably a compact stove, but there are a few others to consider when camp kitchen real estate is in high demand. For $70 more, the unique Jetboil Genesis Basecamp Stove System folds both burners together to cut down on space, but has slightly less powerful 10,000 BTU burner heads.

Single-burner options like the Snow Peak Home & Camp Burner are a good bit cheaper at $120. However, you do miss out on the ability to cook two things at once. Most lightweight camp stoves leave out windscreens, and we certainly did miss them on this stove when things got blustery.

It’s tough to deny the packed size of the Kinjia, however, and if you don’t need the overbuilt quality of something like the Camp Chef Everest 2X, the Primus Kinjia is an excellent solution. Vanlifers, this is your stove.

The Quick & Dirty: An all-aluminum tank of a camp stove that puts out impressive heat across a big cook surface. You’ll pay for the luxury, but it’s worth it for the long-term durability.

The Camp Chef Mountaineer ($470) may as well come equipped with a chow bell — this is one burly cook station that’s primed to feed the whole wagon train. The Mountaineer is ideal as an overlanding, river rafting, and base camping stove, and is a perfect option for those who cook outdoors often and seriously. 

Sporting the same dual 20K BTU burners as our favorite Everest 2X stove, this stove has firepower to spare, and we love the integrated burner-head windscreens that help direct heat up toward your cookery. The major difference between the two comes in the fueling, and while the Everest ports up to your average green 1 pound propane bottles, the Mountaineer sports a remote hose and regulator for 5-pound canisters. 

The build is also noticeably different between the two stoves, with the Mountaineer decked out in an all-aluminum body that helps to keep the weight down on this larger stove. The cooking surface is a larger 302 square inches and easily accommodates two 12” cast iron pans. During truck-assisted camping in Washington state, we used the Mountaineer to whip up Dutch oven nachos, kebabs, and salmon.

We tested the Mountaineer with the add-on leg kit ($44), and as the saying goes, if you have the means, we highly recommend picking them up. The height is just about perfect, and each of the legs is adjustable to hit the perfect balance. The stove performs equally well on a camp table; however, just be sure to remember the larger footprint it takes up.

The stove has its tradeoffs, one of which is the need for 5-pound propane tanks. An adapter is available to run the stove on more camp-friendly 1-pound bottles, but you’ll have to get your mitts on it separately. The 20,000 BTU burner strength is also hot to trot, and while the stove dials down nicely, we still suggest using slow-heating cookware like cast-iron skillets.

Finally, $470 is not a small amount to ask (the stove jumped in price late summer of 2025), but with no steel to rust out and high-quality burner heads, we’ve little doubt that the Mountaineer could last a decade or more. The price is the same as what you’ll pay for a Partner Steel 18″ 2-Burner Stove, the all-aluminum stoves that Grand Canyon guides adore. With the Mountaineer being easier to snag, we think it’s the one to aim for.

The Quick & Dirty: The camp stove choice for feeding the whole crew. Can be upgraded with a number of different cooking surfaces and has three burners with plenty of heat. Just be sure you can move and store it all.

While the less-refined Explorer 14 has been our go-to get-together cooker for some years now, it was only a few minutes of using the Camp Chef Pro 14 ($380) before reckoning that the title had just been wrestled away. This three-burner 30,000 BTU brute has all the afterburner to boil stock pots of Dungies and whip up the sides — all at once.

The Pro 14 (which, we’ll note, is a name pivot from the previous Pro 60X — same stove) is Camp Chef’s flag bearer and is tricked out with all the bells and whistles you’d expect. All revolves around two huge burner heads that rival commercial units in size and churn out enough heat to get skillets ripping hot. During all of our testing, we never wanted more output.

Those burners are set inside a 14-by-32-inch cooking surface, which, in practice, we could fit two 8-quart stock pots atop. Protected by an ample windscreen and flanked by two folding side shelves that are stable enough for light prep work, the Pro 14 is the cookout battle station of choice for anyone looking to feed a lot of people. 

One of the biggest draws of the Pro 14 for most folks is going to be the suite of other Camp Chef 14-inch accessories that can be mated up to the stove. There are pizza ovens, grill boxes, and griddles, and since the Pro 14 is a two-burner stove, you can use a few simultaneously. Editor Will Brendza used the whole spread while testing, and found the 14-inch Pizza Oven to be the gotta-have-it accessory for the Pro 14. It gets hot quickly and turns out perfect pies.

At around 50 pounds, the Pro 14 is closer to portable grills than some of the lighter camping stoves on our list. However, that weight packs up admirably well and stows with a folding leg design (a definite upgrade from the screw-on legs on the Explorer series). Still, consider that this stove takes some considerable space to move, and plan accordingly.

For family get-togethers or simply aiming to feed a large number of people, the Camp Chef Pro 14 is the stove to do it with.

Read Review: Jetboil Genesis Basecamp Stove System Review: The Benchmark of Car Camping Stoves

The Quick & Dirty: Ideal for campers who want to invest in a system they can build onto. The stove system version is more expensive due to the included cookware, but everything nests inside a single pot.

The Jetboil Genesis Basecamp Stove ($450) brings one of the more novel (if not genius) designs to the classic camping stove. It functions with a clamshell design that unfolds to display the cooking surface. And, underneath each burner is a place to chain additional burners.

“Where the Genesis really shows through is its simmering ability. The burner knob can be spun in four full rotations from the lowest to the highest setting, and each slight movement of the knob makes fractional adjustments to the flame,” we wrote in our full-length Jetboil Genesis review.

This stove system packs up small, and with the ability to chain additional burners, you can turn this system into a full-fledged kitchen for large groups at a fraction of the packed size. It’s quite expensive, but the technology backs it up, and it also comes with a lightweight pot and pan.

It’s that price, however, that keeps us from signing the praises of the Genesis at full volume, as $460 can net you the Camp Chef Mountaineer, easily a more durable and capable stove unit. While the compact nature of the Jetboil stove is one of the high points, we actually end up leaning on the Primus Kinjia more often for the slightly hotter burners and low-profile design that slides into camping bins with ease.

If you’re cramped on space or want to tote a two-burner system into the backcountry, the Genesis could be the best camping stove for you. While the foldability isn’t necessary for the average car camper, it’s truly one of the most versatile setups we’ve tested.

The Quick & Dirty: A stylish option that feels refined to cook on, and best for campers who aim to entertain with it. It’s on the more expensive side, but it will elevate your camp kitchen.

If looks were the main consideration, the Primus Alika ($275) would take top honors with its sleek powder-coated lid, oak laths, and brass accents. But I also particularly like this stove because it hosts several unusual features, including a removable lid, which allows for larger pots and nimble cooking from all sides.

In Primus-land, aka Sweden (this stove is actually made in Europe), they envision the lid-off scene as a “360˚ gathering spot, and a place to connect over drinks and a steaming plate of food.” Needless to say, the company has embraced some new technology since then, and this stove is (almost) entirely well thought out.

A long, flexible fuel hose means you’re not married to canister placement. The regulator also stows neatly underneath, in a spring-action lock. It has a comfy webbing handle and two exterior locks for transport, which means it doesn’t rattle furiously in the car. It’s versatile, too, with an included butane adaptor kit. Oh, and those pretty oak laths aren’t just for show: with the lid removed, they function as a hot plate.

This stove also sports stout grates and two burner sizes: 10,200 BTUs and 13,300 BTUs. Both boil and simmer very well, though with a bit less overall BTU oomph than the Camp Chef Mountaineer or GSI Outdoors Selkirk. The Primus Alika is not as compact as the minimalist Primus Kinjia, but at 24” x 10.7” x 3”, it is a touch smaller and more streamlined than other two-burner models. It’s also easy to clean, thanks to a removable drip tray.

The windscreens work well, but could benefit from smaller gaps at the bottom, and the metal hooks that hold them in place are a rather chintzy design for such an otherwise superbly thought-out stove. Also, although Primus touts its snazzy piezo ignition, camper Karuna Eberl had little luck getting it to work well consistently. Finally, this stove is on the expensive side, though still considerably cheaper than the Camp Chef Mountaineer.

If you’re someone who likes to buy upper-end gear that will last a lifetime, the Alika is your stove. It’s highly innovative, and clearly a lot of thought went into the details of the design.

The Ignik Skullet ($400) is a pretty clever piece of gear for anyone who likes camping in the off-season but hates being cold. It’s basically a high-powered radiant heater and a camp stove mashed into one. During testing in the chilly woods of Big Sur this spring, it put out a massive 48,000 BTUs, acting like a portable patio heater that kept the whole group warm while we handled dinner.

It’s definitely built like a tank (all metal and very rugged), but that means it’s heavy. The unit alone weighs 16.5 pounds, and with the tripod legs and a 20-pound propane tank, you’re looking at a 60-pound setup. This is strictly for car camping or RVing. On the plus side, the adjustable legs are great because you can cook standing up instead of hunching over a picnic table. The auto-ignition also worked perfectly for us, even when it was actively raining.

Cooking on it feels a lot like using a home range. The heat is easy to adjust with a knob, so we could simmer things without much fuss. The top flaps fold out to hold bigger pots, though the wok-style skillet that comes with the full kit is a bit lip-less, so we lost a few scrambled eggs over the side. One thing to keep in mind: it gets incredibly hot. We found we had to wait about 30 minutes after breakfast for it to cool down enough to pack into the car, so don’t plan on a quick getaway right after eating.

Compared to something like the iKamper Disco, the Skullet is much better if your main goal is staying warm, since it throws heat in 360 degrees. It’s also way easier to manage than wood-burning options like the BioLite FirePit+, especially in areas with fire bans. It’s a bit of an investment, but if you’re a cold-weather wimp who still wants to get outside in the winter, it’s a solid way to make the campsite feel a lot more like a living room.

The Quick & Dirty: A camp stove option for those with many mouths to feed. The three burners can cook multiple dishes at once, but they do make the stove slightly bulkier than average.

If you’ve been feeling cramped on your current two-burner setup, the Coleman Cascade 328 ($270) might be the beast for you. It has two standard burners on either side, then a rectangular one in the middle. All in all, you can nestle in three 8-inch or two 12-inch pots. It’s also deeper than typical two-burner models, which means it can handle a large cast-iron pan or spaghetti pot.

Otherwise, the Cascade 328 offers a fairly typical setup, kind of like a Coleman Cascade Classic on steroids. It has an attractive, burlier look and feel, with a beefed-up base and lid. More significantly, it has nicer grates that hold pots and pans a slight bit higher off the flames, which makes simmering more precise. Those grates also have a circular shape, which makes it obvious if the pot is not centered over the flame.

The windscreens work well and are decently tall, with only a small gap at the bottom. The burners are also amply recessed, but that design does create a large gap between the flame and the pot, causing water to boil more slowly. Overall, this stove feels like it can take a beating (like most Coleman stoves).

The knobs have a solid, quality feel to them, plus the whole kaboodle comes with rubber feet, so it can be slightly elevated. Also note that the ignition requires an AA battery. It comes with it, but it would be wise to bring a spare along.

On the downside, those three burners take up space and add weight. It’s more than seven inches deeper than the skinniest stoves we tested and weighs 18 pounds. Luckily, it includes a sturdy handle, which is handy for lugging it around. Otherwise, the only annoying bit is that it’s rattly when transported (stuff some towels inside to help fix that).

On that note, be sure to store the regulator in a camp towel, or it’s liable to roll into the ignitors and break them. Also, if you’re going to be using it with full guns-a-blazin’, bring extra propane canisters, as you’ll blow through your first one in about an hour when all three burners are on high.

Overall, for the price, the Cascade 328 is a great stove, especially for families or those cooking for a larger crew. Like all of the Coleman stoves we’ve used, it’s not particularly fancy, but it will likely be durable enough to be handed down through at least a generation or two.

The Quick & Dirty: A more budget choice that covers your bases, but didn’t stand out in any metric in our testing.

Newly updated, the GSI Outdoors Selkirk 540+ Camp Stove ($180) bumps up the BTUs from an original 10,000 to 14,000, greatly improving this stove’s performance in my cooking tests.

While it doesn’t blow any other stove out of the water, the Selkirk 540+ does its job admirably — easily boiling water or sautéing veggies for any camp meal you can dream up. Twin metering knobs provide a smooth output and twist a full 720 degrees, offering up great fidelity to fine-tuning your perfect stir-fry, and the piezo ignition was strong right out of the box.

Our testing has shown that higher BTU output is connected to worse fuel efficiency, however. Indeed, the Selkirk was thirstier than the typical 10,000 BTU stoves like the Coleman Cascade Classic. This was the main reason the stove didn’t find itself higher in the line-up.

We also greatly appreciated the stainless steel stove basin and easy-to-remove grate for when the time came to clean up. After a few quick swipes, the stove was clean and ready to be put away. Some stoves harbor more nooks and crannies, but there’s no such issue here.

The windscreens, while of ample height, unfortunately, leave a bit of a gap between the base of the stove and the grill supports, meaning that wind had a pesky tendency to skirt around these walls and interfere with the flame pattern. The auto ignitor on this stove is also not perfect, and ours stopped working after about a year of use. Not the end of the world, but other stops get it right every time.

A jack-of-all-trades type of stove, the Selkirk 540+ hit the high points in our testing and would make an excellent stove for anyone who needs a stove that just plain works.

The Quick & Dirty: This overlander-ready stove system is best for folks who camp out of their trail rigs often, or camp chefs who want to get creative. It’s an investment, but it’s built tough to last.

If car-based adventuring is your jam, you’re going to need a camping stove that’s dialed in for the task. And while I’ve tried many, none have made an impression more than the iKamper Disco Series Stove ($515) — an uber-modular cooking system that’s primed for van life, overlanding, or gathering around with friends.

Powering the Disco stove is a Kovea-made 8,455-BTU burner that nests solidly into the tripod stand — an impressive structure in its own right. The burner also sports collapsible feet, allowing it to be fired up on a camp table or tailgate. It runs off your standard-issue isobutane canisters. When coupled with the heat retention of the cast-iron discada, this stove has enough power to shallow fry and can also be dialed back to keep things like tortillas warm. 

The tripod is really where the modularity of the Disco stove shines. Adjustable in height, the stove is meant to be used standing up, providing a real community cooking feeling. A slick little table rides side-saddle and keeps all of your utensils, spices, and beer at close hand. And the real hat trick: the discada can be suspended beneath the tripod and over a campfire, turning this stove into a dual-fuel cooker with built-in entertainment. Get your cowboy TV roaring and lower the skillet to the correct level with the built-in chain and pulley system. Genius. 

Other overlanding-style stoves to consider are the Camp Chef Mountaineer, a rough-and-tumble all-aluminum traditional stove that will pump out more BTUs than the Disco, but with a much larger — and less modular — footprint. The Primus Kinjia takes a different tack that will appeal more to car campers who are strapped for space, but ends up being just about the same packed size as the Disco, and that’s without the built-in cooking surface. 

It’s hard to overstate just how enjoyable this stove system is to use, and that’s not just my opinion. While testing, we fielded questions from almost everyone who passed by camp. Yes, this stove system commands a pretty penny (and became $25 more expensive in 2025), but in use, we struggled to identify any potential failure point that would keep the Disco Series Stove from lasting long into the future.

The Quick & Dirty: A little solo burner that packs up compactly and is perfect for quick overnights or dual-duty while backpacking. Note the butane fuel requirement, which can be harder to find than propane.

While full-fledged stove systems might get all the glory, counting out a good single burner would be foolish, and the Snow Peak Home & Camp Burner ($120) is just that: one heckuva good single burner. 

The utility of a single burner is that it can be used as either a cooking solution for a couple of campers, or added into a camp kitchen as an additional burner for more dishes. During my testing, we did this often, and to great applause — nothing is better than having all your food come out hot at the same time.

Simply open the top, slide out the legs, and engage the locking pin to swivel the burner out onto any surface. Then, slide in a butane gas canister. While minimal, we didn’t experience any durability issues and would expect this stove to hold up well to extensive use.

This is one of the only butane-fueled stoves on our list, highlighting propane’s relative supremacy on the camping stove scene. While it’s not difficult to get, it may not be as universal as going with a propane stove. Compared to single burners like the Jetboil Genesis Basecamp, the Snow Peak exhibits origami-like collapsibility, making it easily the most compact on our list.

At such a small size, the Home & Camp Burner is ideal for in-vehicle cooking (just please ventilate accordingly). With no included attachments, you’ll need to add your own windscreen in blustery weather. If you ride solo often or are looking for a quality camping stove that’s equally capable and compact, look no further.