Elevate Your Cookout Game with the Best Charcoal Grills for Gatherings, BBQs, and Warm Weather Eats

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Charcoal grills can be intimidating initially, as they’re more complicated to operate than gas-powered grills. But once you get the hang of cooking with charcoal, you’ll probably fall in love with the smoky flavor and tender texture it creates.

Of course, there are several other benefits to charcoal grills. They’re typically more affordable than propane, natural gas, and pellet grills, and they also burn hotter, allowing you to get a beautiful crispy crust on your food. Plus, because charcoal grills typically have a simple design, they’re less likely to break down, and when they do have problems, repairs are usually straightforward.

Become a grill master this warm season. Check our picks for the best grill cleaners and indoor grills.

Best Charcoal Grills

What to Consider

Cooking Preferences

Don’t get carried away with obsessing over the most feature-heavy charcoal grill—consider what and how you’ll cook, and take it from there. You can get by grilling burgers and hot dogs with a compact, inexpensive charcoal grill.

More features can help with lavish fare, like seafood, steak, or brisket. If your favorite recipes require on-the-fly adjustments, like changing the grate height and temperature, find a charcoal grill with the features to accommodate.

Grills work best at a temperature over 400 degrees Fahrenheit, especially when searing meat. Charcoal brand Kingsford recommends maintaining a range of 450 to 550 degrees to begin cooking. (Hot tip: If you don’t have a thermometer, the general rule is to test with your bare hands—if you can hold your hand five inches above your grill grate for no more than three or four seconds, you’re ready to cook.)

Remember, charcoal needs airflow and time to get to the proper temperature. You can always make your own charcoal if you don’t have any on hand.

Cooking Surface

The average full-size grill is around 400 to 500 square inches—plenty of room to make enough food for a backyard gathering. If you’re cooking for one or two people, you can afford to lose some cooking space, but for events and dinner parties, you should skew larger. The larger the surface size, the more vegetables and meats you can cook at one time.

Be mindful of marketing copy advertising how much food will fit on a grill’s grate. A charcoal grill that claims it can fit eight burger patties may only be able to cook one prime rib at a time. In this case, it’s helpful to look at user photos and consider the shape of different foods you like to cook.

Grill Styles

When shopping for a charcoal grill, there are numerous styles, including kettle, barrel, and kamado grills. Kettle grills have a relatively small circular cooking area, making them ideal for small families, but if you regularly cook for a crowd, barrel-style grills offer more space. Kamado grills have thick ceramic walls that provide excellent insulation and work well for grilling and smoking.

Grill Grate Material

A grill grate is the surface you put your food on to cook, and it’s the only part that makes direct contact with your ingredients. With that in mind, the material your grate is made of directly affects your food’s taste and cook time, as well as the lifespan of your grill. Grill grates are typically made with stainless steel, cast iron, and enamel, each with their pros and cons.

• Stainless steel is the most affordable grill grate. It’s a very light material that heats quickly but doesn’t retain heat well. It’s highly corrosion resistant but not corrosion proof, meaning it will rust and discolor over time, eventually causing food to stick while cooking. Steel grates are lightweight, making adding more charcoal to your grill much easier during the cooking process.

• Cast iron is a fan favorite due to its ability to produce sear marks and take a beating. It’s also the most high maintenance. Cast iron grates are heavy and require a lot of upkeep, and are often the most expensive option for grills. They are also, like stainless steel, prone to corrosion. Make sure you properly season your cast iron grate before use to ensure it stays non-stick and rust-free.

• Enamel is a coating that covers stainless steel or cast iron and provides non-stick properties. Enamel protects cast iron and stainless steel from corrosion, though the coating can chip over time, exposing parts of the grate to damage. Enamel stainless steel grates have better heat retention than uncoated stainless steel.

Portability

No grill on this list is a mounted appliance. All of these grills work well in a backyard or garage, but those looking for travel options should skew toward our lighter picks. The smaller the grill, the better for camping trips, small cookouts, or beachside BBQs.

Cast iron components add substantial weight to your charcoal grill, so if you’re leaning toward that material, get yourself a grill with wheels. The heavier the grill, the more troublesome moving and cleaning it may be. Dropping ash around the yard, in the garage, or, worse, on your clothing, can be annoying to clean up, so ensure you’ve got the space to make moving your charcoal grill a breeze.

How We Selected

When selecting the options for this guide, we relied on decades of experience as backyard grill masters, our team’s extensive grill testing, and, specifically, test editor and grill expert, Bradley Ford. Brad has thoroughly tested many of the grills we recommend, using his personal experience and brand familiarity to carefully vet grills we haven’t had the chance to test yet.

To ensure we included grills that are right for everyone, we broke down the grills by style—kettle, barrel, and kamado—and had portable and hybrid-fuel options. Our final picks are highly rated by grillers, and they all come from reputable brands that stand behind their products with solid customer service and warranties.

Barrel Charcoal Grill

If you’re hoping for a decent-sized model for family dinners and neighborhood barbecues, this barrel-style charcoal grill provides 443 square inches of primary cooking area across its porcelain-enameled steel grates.

In addition to its main cooking surface, it has a small warming rack and an offset smoker. You can adjust the charcoal pan to two heights, allowing you to cook at various temperatures depending on what you’re making. (Personally, we put fish and veggie burgers on the top and steaks on the bottom.)

This grill has a front shelf where you can place plates and condiments and a lower shelf for supplies, and it’s mounted on wheels that make it easier to move.

Smokey Joe Portable Charcoal Grill

While it’s on the small side with just 147 square inches of cooking area, this compact grill is an unbeatable value, especially considering its reliable performance. The kettle-style grill weighs less than 10 pounds, making it a top choice for camping or on-the-go grilling, and its porcelain-enameled lid and bowl provide impeccable heat retention.

Its lid dampers allow you to easily control the temperature of the grill, and there’s enough room inside the bowl to manipulate your charcoal for precise cooking. When you’re done, empty the ash catcher before stowing the grill away (and keep in mind that cleaning it can get messy).

Gravity Series 560 Digital Charcoal Grill and Smoker

This full-size Masterbuilt is another model that came out on top when we tested charcoal grills. It fires up to an impressive 700 degrees Fahrenheit, and the charcoal is stored inside a vertical hopper so the heat is drawn in horizontally and diffused before it hits the grates. Temperatures can peak in as little as 15 minutes after lighting the charcoal—that’s really, really fast for a charcoal grill.

There’s a 560-square-inch cooking surface for grilling and smoking, plus you can keep an eye on your steak remotely via the app. Thanks to its smart design, ashes fall into a bucket at the hopper’s base, and cleanup is as easy as opening the door to empty it.

Overall, it’s a fantastic grill for a fair price considering its features. If you’re new to the world of charcoal grills, this is an easy, user-friendly option that you can grow into as you become more experienced.

Rambler Portable Charcoal Grill

This sturdy charcoal grill is as effective for cooking burgers in your backyard as it is for feeding hungry sports fans while tailgating. And, during our last round of grill testing, it won our top prize for best overall.

This grill has a heavy-duty steel construction with thick cast-iron grates that deliver a great sear on food, and it offers 218 square inches of cooking surface that can hold up to 10 burgers at once.

One of its best features is the height-adjustable charcoal tray, which has three fixed settings for different heat levels. It also has an easy-to-remove ash pan, a professional temperature gauge, and large air dampeners for superior airflow control.

V2 Charcoal Grill

This unique grill offers the best of both worlds, allowing you to cook with either wood or charcoal. It has a considerable cooking surface, with an over-fire suspended tripod and barrel design that lets it grill, cook, smoke, and use over a fire pit.

It also has a rail system, letting users raise and lower its coal basket at nine different heights, and adjustable tripod legs to level it out on uneven surfaces. The grill’s circular surface invites a communal cooking experience, with the opportunity for friends and family to gather around its pit, keep warm, and watch their foods roast, cook, or smoke.

Performer Deluxe Charcoal Grill

Most charcoal grills are simple, but this one has various extra features that make it more convenient. For instance, it’s equipped with a propane-powered ignition system that gets your coals lit quickly and easily, and there’s a cook timer built into the grill cart.

The grill is a classic 22-inch kettle, offering 363 square inches of cooking space, and there’s a weather-protected charcoal storage bin underneath the grill’s shelf. It’s equipped with the brand’s one-touch cleaning system and a high-capacity aluminum ash catcher, and the grill’s two-part grate system works with Weber’s Gourmet BBQ System cookware collection.

Portable Charcoal Grill

The Cube portable grill packs up nicely and won’t spill charcoal while you haul it around. Its design is similar to a bento box or cooler, with a hard case top that splits into three parts: a food storage tray, a bamboo food prep board, and a lightweight bottom topped with a chrome grill rack.

It’s simple, too: insert your charcoal inside the internal firebox, light it up, and grill. This nifty product is lightweight and attractive, and it’s available in various colors to suit your style.

Its package makes it easy to handle and bring along for a trip to a friend’s house. Its size makes it best for one or two people, though, so if you need a bigger cooking surface, look elsewhere.

Classic II Charcoal Grill

This 18-inch ceramic grill has thick walls that lock in smoke and moisture, and you can use it to grill and smoke food thanks to its tower-style vent and built-in lid thermometer. It can achieve temperatures anywhere from 225 to 750 degrees Fahrenheit, and you can set its unique half-moon grates at different heights, allowing you to cook multiple foods simultaneously.

The grill’s lid is secured on a convenient hinge that makes it easy to open, and the unit is mounted on a cart with four locking caster wheels. There are two side tables where you can keep plates, tools, and condiments within reach.

Read More About Grills, Smokers, and Accessories

Grills

Best Grills | Best Gas Grills | Best Flat Top Grills | Best Pellet Grills | Best Kamado Grills | Best Indoor Grills | Best Small Grills

Smokers

Best Smokers | Best Charcoal Smokers | Best Electric Smokers

Grill Accessories

Grill Mat | Grill Covers | Grill Gazebo | Grill Cleaner | Grill Brushes

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