If you're looking for a pizza oven, you may have been swayed to buy an Ooni. While they're great, the ubiquity of their pizza ovens can feel a little forced.
In fact, there has been so much interest in brands other than the market leaders that I put together a guide to the best Ooni alternatives, and two brands in particular stood out: Gozney and Solo Stove.
I've tested out plenty of the best pizza ovens in my time and I know the benefits and drawbacks of these brands first hand. While Gozney is the clear winner, its ovens are so expensive that it's well worth considering a Solo Stove pizza oven to save a little money.
Gozney vs Solo Stove: which is best?
TLDR: Gozney is the winner.
This is a tricky one to answer because both brands are attempting to do slightly different things. Overall, Gozney is the better brand for pizza ovens. Gozney not only has a wider range of pizza ovens but they tend to perform better than the Solo Stove.
However, Solo Stove offers good ovens for thousands of dollars less than Gozney. If you're looking for the best possible pizza oven at the lowest possible price, Solo Stove is the obvious choice. So while Gozney is better, it's not a straightforward comparison.
Head-to-head
Winner: Solo Stove
The two brands operate in different price points, so the fairest comparison is between Gozney's cheapest oven and the original Solo Stove Pi. In this head-to-head, the Solo Stove is a better oven for the money.
The Solo Stove is usually around $150 cheaper than the Gozney, and it's packed with features that set it beyond the Gozney. It's a good oven for beginners because it has an extra-wide mouth and a pizza guard at the back which will stop you from throwing your pizza into the fire at the back of the oven.
The Gozney oven is marketed as portable, but it's far from portable. It weighs in at 44lbs, and while that's hardly a tonne, it's a lot of weight to carry around on a camping trip. The Pi, on the other hand, weighs 30lbs. Again, it's not exactly light, but it's a third lighter than the Roccbox and easier to take on a trip.
However, there's lots to recommend the Gozney Roccbox. It's incredibly fast, and can make a pizza faster than all the other ovens we've tested. It has a built-in thermometer, so it's much easier to use than most other pizza ovens. However, I'm not sure these features are worth $150 more than the Solo Stove.
Gozney vs Solo Stove: best gas pizza oven
Winner: Gozney
To be entirely fair, I haven't used the Pi Prime, but it seems like a gas-only version of the Solo Stove Pi, in which case the Gozney Arc is a much better option.
The Arc cooks larger pizzas and cooks them faster than the Pi Prime. On top of that, it has a digital thermometer to make it easier to adjust the temperature. Like the Pi Prime, it has an extra-wide mouth to make loading pizzas easier. It's subjective, but I also think it looks a lot better than the Pi Prime. The metal grill on the Pi Prime seems a little flimsy and a little ugly, but the bone-white finish and clean lines on the Gozney Arc are perfect for almost any outdoor kitchen.
However, the Arc is Gozney's second-cheapest oven, and it's still fairly expensive. The Arc comes in at $699, which is expensive. For the price alone, you might be better off with the Solo Stove Pi Prime, but if you have the money, the Arc is clearly a better oven.
What else do the brands offer?
The best Gozney is one of the oldest: the original Gozney Dome. This huge pizza oven makes delicious 16" pizzas incredibly quickly, and it's packed with helpful features like a digital thermometer and meat thermometer that will help you cook perfect steaks and briskets. However, I rarely recommend this oven, because it's $2000, and you could get a similar oven that performs much better for less in the Ooni Karu 16, our favorite pizza oven.
Similarly, there's Gozney's Dome S1, which is similar to the original Gozney Dome but uses gas only instead of wood. This is the only real difference between the two ovens, and it means that the S1 is usually $500 cheaper than the original, so it's a good choice for a top-line pizza oven without spending thousands of dollars. However, it's still very expensive.
Solo Stove also offers the Pi Fire, a pizza oven attachment that fits over the top of a Solo Stove fire pit so that you can cook a pizza over the flames. However, I strongly recommend you avoid this product. I haven't used this, but I've used lots of grill-top pizza ovens, and the principle is the same.
However, because the heat source is only below the pizza, grill-top attachments like this make poor pizza. they tend to burn the bottom while undercooking the top, and after glancing around at some reviews of the Pi Fire, lots of other reviewers note that it takes around 7 minutes to cook a pizza in this oven, which is far too long. Besides, if you don't already own a Solo Stove, you need to buy one of those too; altogether it's a lot of money and effort for what I suspect is pretty poor pizza.
Pizza oven FAQ
Where are Gozney and Solo Stove manufactured?
Gozney ovens are designed in the UK and assembled in both the UK and China. Solo Stove ovens are assembled in China.
For more help with pizza ovens, check out my guide to how to clean a pizza oven, and what else you can cook in a pizza oven.
