The Best Portable Grills of 2024

If our top gas pick is out of stock, or you’re looking for a portable grill that’s well suited for cooking for a crowd, we recommend the Weber Traveler Portable Gas Grill.

The Traveler performed well in all our tests, boasting even heat throughout its 320 square inches of cooking space. With the Traveler’s large cooking surface, you could easily grill 14 to 15 burgers at once.

Like the Q 1200, the Traveler has a single gas burner and cooks over cast-iron grates. This means u can’t cook with indirect heat. However, the lowest heat setting was low enough to cook our chicken drumsticks to golden-brown perfection.

The Traveler comes in a rolling cart that stands at the perfect height for most grillers. It has one large, sturdy side table that has no problem holding a plate full of food. When the grill is cool, you can fold the cart down small enough to fit into the trunk of a car.

The Traveler is a solid choice for anyone who cooks for five to six people. It works equally well for someone who wants to routinely use their portable grill on a deck or patio.

When unfolded, the grill measures 43.6 inches tall, 23 inches deep, and 37.2 inches tall. Depending on the size of your balcony, it may be a good option there, too.

The Cuisinart Petit Gourmet did a fantastic job, overall. We loved its lightweight, small profile and how easy it was to transport: the lid locks and you can carry it by the handle.

When you’re ready to cook, the legs pop out and create a sturdy base. The lid's design keeps smoke from flying into our faces when it is open. You can comfortably fit six burgers on its porcelain-enameled grate.

We were happy with the Petit Gourmet's even heating. However, it’s not as powerful as some of the other gas grills in this guide. The chicken took longer to cook, although it looked beautiful and tasted great when it did get there.

We were super happy with the Coleman RoadTrip 285’s design. The portable cart was easy to lower for transport, letting us wheel the 3-burner grill to and from events.

We love the pull-out side tables, and the grill is decently sturdy when set up, too. Add in the eight-burger capacity and we felt like we were cooking on a full-sized grill!

We had some trouble with the griddle-like design in the middle of the cast-iron grates. The flat portion transferred more heat than the spaced grates, creating an uneven heating pattern. We also found this grill difficult to clean. The removable water pan catches grease, but it was a complete mess after our tests.

The portable design of the Char-Broil Grill2Go X200 was spot-on. The lid locks shut, and it’s light enough to carry it by the handle from place to place.

Other than that, your money would be better spent on a better portable gas grill. We didn’t love the infrared grates. These get way too hot, even on the lowest setting.

Cooking the chicken is difficult without burning it. The grates are difficult to clean, even with the scraping tool.

We loved the design of the NOMADIQ Portable Propane Gas Grill. The grill packs up into a compact package that you can carry with one hand.

Unlocking the grill and twisting it apart yields a surprising amount of grilling space. You can up to cook eight burgers on its 226 square inches of grilling space. The split Y propane hose creates two temperature-controlled cooking zones. This is unique considering that most portable gas grills only have one temperature-control knob.

On the flip side, this grill doesn’t have a lid, and the two cooking zones are separated by the grill’s body. This means there’s still no way to cook with indirect heat on this gas grill. The split cooking space makes cooking larger cuts difficult.

Additionally, we didn’t like how the propane hose only works with one-pound propane canisters. There’s no way to use a propane adapter to hook it up to a larger propane tank.

Solo Stove has been making fire pits for years, and they recently started selling cast-iron accessories to turn those fire pits into grills.

If you’re not looking for a combo fire pit/grill, we recommend picking up the Solo Stove Grill Ultimate Bundle.

With its 22-inch diameter and 360 square inches of cooking space, the Grill Ultimate Bundle is as large as a full-sized charcoal grill. Although it’s more expensive than most charcoal grills, we were happy with the Solo Stove Grill’s performance. It cooks equally well with both direct and indirect cooking.

Instead of using a traditional vent setup, the Solo Stove uses its fire pit’s signature 360° Airflow technology. It creates convection airflow inside the grill. That surrounds the food on the grill with hot air, cooking it more quickly.

As a bonus, the Grill Ultimate Bundle comes with everything you need to start your cooking adventure. It includes the grill, a stand, a cover to protect the grill, and a carrying case. The package also includes grill tools, four pounds of all-natural charcoal briquettes, and four fire starters.

You can arrange the coals inside of it for indirect heat cooking. However, the Solo Stove’s lack of vents means you can only use the grill at one temperature. You’ll need to look elsewhere if you want to cook using low-and-slow smoking temperatures.

Read the full Solo Stove Ultimate Grill Bundle review

There’s a lot to love about the BioLite FirePit Cooking Kit. This portable grill uses either wood or charcoal. As its name suggests, if you remove its grill grates, it becomes a firepit.

However, the feature that really blew us away with the BioLite is its built-in battery-powered fan. The fan not only kept smoke from billowing up in our faces while we were burning with wood, but it also stoked the coals. This made it possible to light the Biolite grill in half the time of a traditional charcoal grill.

The fan has several settings. You can turn it on low to preserve the coal bed when cooking chicken over indirect heat. You can also crank it up to high to get a hard sear on burgers and steaks. That high heat was useful for searing vegetables when using the grill with its included cast-iron griddle, too.

The Biolite’s grill surface is only about 130 square inches. It isn’t as large as some of the other portable grills we tested for this guide. However, you can cook four burgers over direct heat or four chicken drumsticks with indirect heat.

The Biolite’s small size made it easy to transport. The handles on each side of the grill make it perfect for travel.

Our only complaints about this grill have to do with its grates: they were hard to clean and didn’t fit snugly on top of the fire pit. While we were cleaning them with a grill brush, they moved around and almost fell off the grill. When the grill is hot, you’ll want to be careful with the grates as they could be a safety hazard.

If you want to buy a portable grill that will last a lifetime, it’s the Lodge L410 Hibachi Style Charcoal Grill. This cast-iron charcoal grill is heavy, but it holds its heat well, using fewer coals than most grills.

It did a fantastic job of infusing smokey flavor into our burgers and bone-in chicken. Adding coals is as easy as tossing them in through the fire door built into the grill’s body. It was just as easy to control the heat with the sliding draft door underneath the unit.

Because it’s cast iron, this grill is super simple to clean. Just wash it with warm, soapy water and dry it to prevent it from rusting. Lastly, apply a thin coat of oil to season the grates.

It’s missing a few features to earn our top pick, though. It was smaller than most of the grills, maxing out at four burgers. Plus, it’s heavy, weighing about 30 pounds. It also doesn’t have a lid, making it difficult to turn it into a mini smoker.

The PK Grills PKTX is a great option for anyone looking for a fully functional charcoal grill with a smaller outdoor area.

The 300 square inches of cooking area can fit about 10 burger patties at a time. Its grill folds down to make it easy to store and wheel to tailgating events. The grill’s four vents promote air flow suitable for direct or indirect heat cooking methods. The grill grate hinges in half to allow plenty of access to the coals underneath.

On the flip side, we didn’t love the lid. It’s heavy and felt like it’s going to fall off if we don’t open it carefully enough. The bottom vents were also really hard to access and hot coals fell out if you opened them during the cooking process.

The grill also lacks an ash bucket. It does have two ash catchers, but they’re impossible to clean out without making a mess.

First of all, we love the way our food tastes after cooking on the Big Green Egg MiniMax. It’s everything we love about the larger Big Green Eggs, just in miniature form!

These Kamado-style grills use charcoal but have thick ceramic sides that store a ton of heat. This radiates energy for very efficient cooking. It has the best temperature control of any charcoal grill we tested.

That being said, this is not a portable grill; I had to ask for help to move the 76-pound grill! It’s also much smaller than the other grills. It only fits about four burgers, and it’s significantly more expensive.

Since the ceramic construction takes a long time to cool down, we wouldn’t recommend this model for tailgating. However, it would be a great fit on a small backyard patio where it remains stationary.

Unlike the other grills on this list, the Big Green Egg isn’t available at national chain stores. It’s available at most Ace Hardware stores. They’re usually available through individual dealers.

The prices tend to vary by dealer as the Egg sells as part of a package deal or a special. Find a dealer near you to get the price of the MiniMax (it was available at my local store for $598).

Although the Weber Smokey Joe did a fantastic job of grilling our food, it lacked a few features that would have bumped it up in our rankings.

You can get a premium version that has a lid lock, but the basic version provides no way of carrying the grill. That means when it’s full of hot coals, it stays where it lies until it cools down.

We are pretty happy with the position of the vents. Sadly, the ash catcher isn’t removable, making it pretty difficult to clean. It’s small and simple, fitting about six burgers on it at a time. We prefer the upgrade of the Jumbo Joe to get the extra ease-of-use features.

There were a lot of things to like about the Fire Sense HotSpot Notebook. If this contest were all about being travel-friendly, this one would win!

It folds down completely flat and includes storage space inside for the three-hinged grill grate. Not only that, but it’s available for a fraction of the price of the other portable grills. It’s super easy to set up, and although the stainless steel grate was slightly uneven, it worked well enough for our liking.

The frame is surprisingly sturdy and does a great job at high-heat cooking. Because there are no vents or lids, it doesn’t do well on the chicken tests. There’s just no way to control the heat. Chicken either burns over direct heat or it’s still raw after an hour over indirect heat.

You also can’t move the grill until it completely cools down. The ashes blow around everywhere because it lacks an ash catcher bucket. It’s a great grill if you’re looking for a cheap way to cook hotdogs at the beach. However, we wouldn’t recommend it for heavy-duty use.

The Char-Broil American Gourmet is a barrel-style grill with a hinged lid. While we liked the idea of its pull-out drawer to add coals, the door stuck badly and was frustrating to use. And because the drawer’s grates run vertically, raking the coals from side to side makes it difficult to create an indirect heat pattern.

The grill itself is easy to clean and sturdy. It is difficult to see inside the grill and the round lid design funnels smoke straight into your face. Add in the fact that the carrying handles get extremely hot when cooking. It’s also a touch on the heavy side at 30 pounds, so this one fell to the bottom of our list.

When we first set up the GoBQ Portable Charcoal Grill, we were certain it wasn’t going to work. Made from flexible flame-resistant silicone coated fiberglass, this minimalist grill rolls up into an easy-to-carry package. When unrolled, it looks like a pouch on stilts. Fill the pouch with charcoal, light it using a fire starter cube, place the grill grate on top of it and you’re ready to cook.

The GoBQ did an admirable job of cooking our burgers and chicken drumsticks. The charcoal in it lit quickly and imparted a smoky flavor to the food.

Unfortunately, because it’s so small, it can’t cook more than four burgers at a time. Its size also made it impossible to arrange the coals into an indirect heat pattern. Additionally, the GoBQ doesn’t have adjustable vents. So, you can only use it at one temperature.

When the time came to clean up, we found the ashes were hard to remove from the GoBQ. There’s no ash basket. To clean it, you have to wait for the grill to cool down, remove the grill grate, and turn the whole grill over to remove any ashes.

Given these shortcomings, we can only recommend this grill for occasional use. It’s a good fit for impromptu grilling sessions at the beach. It works equally well as a compact grill to use while camping. However, we can’t recommend it to anyone looking for a grill to cook with on a regular basis.

If our top-rated portable pellet grill is out of stock, we recommend picking up the ASMOKE AS300 Portable Grill. Like the other portable pellet grills we tested, at 45 pounds, it’s a little on the heavy side.

It doesn’t come with any handles to help move it from place to place. The AS3000 folds into a compact enough package to carry from one space to another.

We loved that the 256 square inches of cooking area can hold up to eight burgers. This also means there’s plenty of room for cooking a pork shoulder or a spatchcock chicken. Although we didn’t test the grill at low-and-slow smoking temperatures, it’s capable of ranging from 180°F to 500°F. We were happy to see that it held its set temperature within 10°F when used at medium and high temperatures.

Most pellet grills use a deflector plate to produce indirect heat, allowing your food to cook evenly. AS3000 has a deflector plate. But the plate has a sliding door to allow direct access to the grill’s flames if you want to sear items like burgers and steaks.

Unfortunately, when closed, the sliding door allows more heat to pass through it than the rest of the deflector plate does. This had us moving chicken drumsticks around the AS3000’s cooking surface to ensure that they all cooked evenly.

The Green Mountain Grills Davy Crockett Pellet Grill Tailgating Package cooks delicious burgers and chicken drumsticks, but its design isn’t great.

Heavy and not very portable, the Davy Crockett’s lack of wheels and handles made it difficult to move around. But our biggest complaint was that the grill was extremely noisy during use. The auger made a screeching noise when in use. It kicks on every two to three minutes when cooking at searing temperatures.

We appreciate that the Davy Crockett utilizes multiple power sources. It can draw power from a wall socket or power up via its 12-volt adapter. You can even hook it up directly to a car battery. While it’s nice to have these options, they’re not enough to outweigh this pellet grill’s negatives.