Everything is an air fryer nowadays. Your wall oven? It has an “air fryer” setting. Your pressure cooker? An air fryer and an air roaster. Your coffee maker? OK, maybe not yet, but look for it at next year’s CES. However, a classic air fryer—the little R2D2 looking pod—is simple, effective, and increasingly, cheap. We’ve tested and reviewed air fryers that run all the way up to $600, but if you are more budget conscious (or just not interested in a practically endless scroll of settings), our recommendations here will get you what you need while being easy on your wallet.
- The best cheap air fryer: Cosori Turboblaze 6.0-Quart Air Fryer, $90
- The best small air fryer: Cosori Lite 2.1-Quart Mini Air Fryer, $80
- An option with upgraded features: Instant Pot Vortex Plus 6-Quart ClearCook Air Fryer, $100
Are cheap air fryers any good?
The short answer is yes. But they are a bit limited compared to top-of-the-line models. It’s possible to get an inexpensive air fryer that produces enough heat and air flow to give you crunchy food, but it will have fewer features when cooking and you won’t be able to cook as many servings at once. Below is a list of what you may forgo in order to keep the price of your air fryer down.
Shape of the cooking chamber
Air fryers broadly come in two styles. The first appliance to be called an air fryer was shaped like an egg, with a pull out basket that had the feel of a basket you’d use in a deep fryer. Those basket style appliances still exist in abundance, but after air frying took off as a trend, the name started to be applied liberally as a setting on toaster ovens and electric pressure cookers. Now, toaster ovens or “multi” ovens (countertop ovens that can offer more than a dozen settings) with air frying settings are as common as the basket-style air fryer.
Ovens with air frying capabilities tend to be more expensive than basket style air fryers. So, when you’re looking for an air fryer under $100, you’ll likely be looking exclusively at basket-style models.
Extra features
More expensive air fryers tend to come with sleeker interfaces and body designs. Some even come with multiple cooking compartments so you can air fry two things at once, at different temperatures. In the models below, we found a happy medium: interfaces that are streamlined and easy to use, but not fancy.
Settings and temperature range
Many air fryers simply have “time” and “temperature” settings, but some models get more detailed with their presets, offering modes for dehydrating and reheating. Some models have multiple fan speeds, or even offer dual fans. While these features don’t usually come on budget air fryers, a few of the models below offer genuinely useful preset options and multiple convection speeds. In general, you don’t need presets. In our experience testing all these air fryers, following the time and temperature instructions on food packaging is good enough.
Materials
More expensive air fryers have more stainless steel or aluminum parts. Less expensive air fryers tend to be made with much more plastic.
What counts as a cheap air fryer?
The models we’ve recommended below range between $68 and $100. If you see air fryers in this article that cost over $100, that’s because their prices bounce around a lot, especially on multi-party seller websites like Amazon. These are air fryers we have regularly seen for $100 or less, but your mileage may vary. You should absolutely keep an eye out for deals on these machines, or check back here for our deals coverage, because they do get marked down during various sales like Black Friday or Amazon Prime Day.
The best cheap air fryer: Cosori Turboblaze 6.0-Quart Smart Air Fryer
What we liked: This isn’t just our favorite cheap air fryer, it’s our favorite air fryer full stop. In testing we were highly impressed with the crispy, perfectly-browned fries, juicy pieces of chicken, and tender-crisp vegetables it produced—overall it just made the crispiest food of any of the air fryers. And that’s kind of the whole point, right? It also did all of this superior crisping in less time than other models we tried.
Our theory about this superior performance is that it relates in part to a clever basket design: The perforated crisper plate is more elevated from the bottom of the basket than other air fryer models, which allows for better air circulation underneath the food. It also has “turbo” fans, meaning that the fan runs at four speeds based on preset cooking functions featured on the display: the “air fry” function runs the fans at speed 5 (the highest), “bake” runs the fans at speed 3 for a gentler cook, and there are extremely low fan settings for dehydrating and proofing. We also liked its simple and clean interface, and the aforementioned extensive list of preset cooking functions it features, which include in their entirety Air Fry, Roast, Broil, Frozen, Preheat, Reheat, Dehydrate, Proof, Bake, and Keep Warm.
What we didn’t like: We have to grasp at straws a bit to find things that we don’t like about this air fryer, but we don’t love that to release the basket, you have to press a button. It makes opening and closing the basket feel less seamless. Also, the space between the basket top and the bottom that leads to better crisping also means food is more likely to fall through and get trapped in the empty space.
The best small air fryer: Cosori Lite 2.1-Quart Mini Air Fryer
What we love: Air fryers are great for cooking small amounts of food, saving both time and energy that the regular oven requires to preheat. Small models like this Cosori excel at dinners for two—useful on those nights when you don’t need enough fries to feed a whole basketball team.
The Lite works just as well as the larger Cosori, but is less expensive and takes up less space. It’s also lightweight and easy to haul in and out of a cabinet. In our testing, it beautifully crisped small servings of frozen foods like tater tots and it was perfect for making two veggie burgers at a time. It has a nice digital interface with four preset cooking functions: air fry, roast, reheat, and bake. At just $80, this air fryer is always great value, but look out for sales: You can often find it for $60 or under.
What we’d leave: Having a large capacity is important in an air fryer if you’re cooking larger quantities of food. In order for foods to crisp properly, you need to make sure you don’t overfill the basket. That hot convection air needs to be able to reach every corner and crevice of the food item in order to get it properly crisp. So if you’re cooking for more than one or two in your air fryer, go bigger. We also like that the larger Cosori has a timer that reminds you to shake your basket of food halfway through the cook time, and this less expensive version lacks that. Not a big deal, but you’ll have to set your own timer.
An option with upgraded features: Instant Pot Vortex Plus 6-Quart ClearCook Air Fryer
What we love: Like our other top picks, this basket-style air fryer performed admirably in all of our testing, getting those crunchy fries and tots, and roasting sliced zucchini so that it was crisp on the outside, with a jammy center. The design feature that makes it unique on this list is a glass window on the front and a light inside, allowing you to monitor what you’re cooking just like a full-sized oven. It also has a dehydrate function and can hold lower temperatures than our other top picks all the way down to 95°F.
What we’d leave: This air fryer’s basket fit one less veggie burger in our testing than the other 6-quart air fryers. It’s also a bit heavy and bulky.
What we looked for in cheap air fryers
Crisp, evenly-cooked food
A good air fryer should be able to provide crispiness that’s markedly different from your conventional oven. We compared frozen French fries and roasted vegetables like zucchini between the air fryers, using a regular oven as a control. We wanted crispy results above everything else. We also wanted our food to be evenly browned, and moist through the center.
Ease-of-use and preset cooking functions
Air fryers in this price range just aren’t going to come with as many fancy presets and features like bluetooth connectivity. In lieu of those features, we looked for air fryers that were easy to operate and understand right out of the box.
Basket design
If price is no object in your air fryer search, you can get one that can completely replace the oven on your range, but that’s not the case with these inexpensive models. Quality air fryers under $100 are all basket style appliances in our experience, but not all basket-style designs work equally well. Air fryers with square, rather than round, baskets tend to offer better capacity and surface area in the cooking chamber, which helps with air flow and the resulting food’s crispness.
Ease of cleaning
The best air fryers have parts that can come apart for easy cleaning.
Cheap air fryers we don’t recommend
This Ninja has a very small basket size compared to the overall size of the air fryer, which makes it a counter hog and annoying to store.
This Cosori, sized in between the two we recommend, lacks some of the modes of the Turboblaze and is just the wrong size. It’s not really big enough to be ideal for a family of four, but lacks the convenience and storability of the Cosori Lite.
We like some of Dash’s inexpensive mini appliances, but this one didn’t hold up. Our fries were soggy and not crispy, and some tofu we made in the air fryer was only browned on one side. The machine also doesn’t have any presets, and its temperature settings are limited and rigid.
How to get the most out of your cheap air fryer
The whole point of air frying is to achieve crisp textures without having to bother with the mess, or, of course, the health concerns of deep frying. In order to achieve that crispiness, it’s important not to stuff too much food into your machine. Overlapping food means that the hot convection air won’t be able to touch every corner and crevice of your chicken finger, leaving it in danger of becoming soggy.
Because convection cooking involves moving air around with a fan, it’s great at ensuring that food will cook evenly. But the side of your food actually touching the basket will get crunchier than the side of the food not touching it. That means it’s still a good idea to flip or shake an air fryer basket while cooking. Luckily, the basket design makes it easy, and kind of fun to do.
Air fryers are excellent for reheating food or crisping the dried exterior of items like skin-on chicken thighs or eggplant. However, they aren’t great for making anything with a wet brine that you would traditionally deep fry. Think of your air fryer as a weeknight meal tool, and a helpful way to heat kid-friendly foods and leftovers, and you won’t be disappointed.