The 4 Best Budget And Cheap Air Fryers - Spring 2025

The COSORI TurboBlaze is the best budget air fryer we've tested. We recommend this model as the best medium-sized air fryer overall, and it's a great option if you want an air fryer for less than $100. It's best for cooking for a couple of people, but it has a good amount of cooking surface area for arranging ingredients in a single layer, which is important for the crispiest results. It produces good-quality air-fried food, so your food gets mostly evenly browned without being under or overcooked.

It's very versatile, with five fan speed settings for different cooking methods. When baking, you can use a medium fan speed to avoid drying out cakes and cookies, and when dehydrating, a very low fan speed to prevent lighter items from blowing around the basket. The downside of this model is that it preheats slowly and doesn't maintain the most stable temperature during cooking, making it more difficult to follow recipes accurately.

The best cheap air fryer we've tested is the Beautiful 6qt Digital. 'Beautiful by Drew' products are only sold by the brand at Walmart, and this model is available there for well under $100. Like the previous pick, this medium-sized option has a 6qt capacity and a good amount of cooking surface area to arrange your food in a single layer. It's bulkier than the COSORI TurboBlaze and takes up more space on your counter for a similar cooking capacity, but it comes in more different colors than most air fryers.

It also makes good-quality air-fried food, so your veggies and chicken wings come out mostly evenly browned and crispy. It's fast and maintains a decently stable temperature, which helps with accurately following recipes. However, most air fryers have more functions for different purposes. There are no 'Bake' or 'Broil' settings, although you can use it with a lower fan speed and lower temperature to dehydrate.

If you need more capacity on a budget, the best option that we've tested is the Ninja Foodi DZ201. This air fryer's dual-basket design lets you cook separate foods with different settings in each basket. Combined with its bigger 8qt capacity, this makes it more suitable for preparing full meals with multiple components and serving several people compared with previous picks like the COSORI TurboBlaze. It has a very good overall performance, producing evenly air-fried food quickly.

You can use the 'Smart Finish' feature to have each basket finish cooking at the same time, and it has a range of fan speeds and temperatures for different recipes and cooking methods. It preheats and cooks quickly and maintains a stable temperature during cooking, which helps you follow recipes accurately. However, it's quite bulky for an air fryer of its capacity.

If you usually cook for the whole family and need more capacity at a lower price, the BELLA 8qt Pro 90088 is a cheaper large-capacity air fryer. This model's round basket has a little less surface area compared with some other large-capacity air fryers like the Ninja Foodi DZ201. With only one basket, it can't be used to prepare different foods simultaneously. However, it's much cheaper and still suitable for preparing meals for the whole family.

It's not the most versatile, since it has only a single fan speed and lacks modes for different cooking methods like 'Bake' and 'Broil.' However, it has several presets for specific foods, like 'Fries,' 'Bacon,' and 'Shrimp,' which act as suggested times and temperatures for the selected item. For an air fryer, it's quite slow to preheat and cook, but it ultimately produces good-quality air-fried food, so most of your chicken wings or French fries turn out crispy and golden brown.