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Our double-oven pick, the GE Profile PGB960, has been discontinued. We’re currently researching alternative models and will update the guide with a new pick.
We looked at 66 freestanding gas ranges (which typically cost around $1,000), and frankly, it was hard to tell most of them apart. But the GE Adora JGB735 is one model that stood out (just a bit) from the pack. It has the sturdiest build and some of the best-looking finishes for the price without skimping on cooking performance or features.
The best looks and build quality of any affordable, freestanding gas range that we found. It has a great cooktop and oven, too.
May be out of stock
*At the time of publishing, the price was $1,080.
The cooktop on the Adora is about as good you’ll get for around $1,000. It has a stronger pair of power burners than you usually see, both situated in the front row where they’re easy to reach, covered with continuous grates. The oven is big enough to comfortably fit a hefty 26-pound turkey or a spacious 15-by-20-inch baking stone. It also has a high-heat cleaning mode as well as a convection mode for quicker, crispier, evenly done cooking. The previous version of this range, the JGB720, received largely positive reviews and seemed generally reliable, so we’re optimistic about the current model. Keep in mind, however, that because it’s new, we’re as yet unsure how it will perform in the short to medium term, and there aren’t many reviews so far on retail sites that we can draw conclusions from. We’ll monitor customer feedback for evidence of widespread defects and update the guide as we know more. We also wish that the oven came with a third rack.
A well-built stove with great oven controls, though its cooktop layout could be more convenient.
May be out of stock
*At the time of publishing, the price was $1,124.
The build quality on the Frigidaire Gallery GCRG3060A feels almost as sturdy as that of the GE Adora, plus it has a third oven rack and a number pad, for easier control over the oven. We don’t think the Frigidaire cooktop is as versatile, since its second-strongest burner isn’t all that strong and sits in the back row (though some people might prefer this layout to keep hot pots away from kids). But the Frigidaire is a good alternative to the Adora if that model is sold out, or if you need a stove that’s sold somewhere besides Home Depot.
Inexpensive but perfectly capable of cooking dinner, it has better features than most other cheap gas ranges.
*At the time of publishing, the price was $630.
If you just need a cheap stove that works, the Whirlpool WFG320M0B has the best balance of features for a low price. It has one of the better cooktops that you can get for less than $600, with a stronger power burner than most competitors and continuous cast-iron grates, which are especially uncommon at this price. The oven has a similar capacity to what you get in a pricier stove, but it lacks convection, self-cleaning, or a number pad for control—all of which are typical for budget stoves. It seemed to us like it’s well built, and it has a strong average user rating.
This double-oven range has one of the largest lower ovens we’ve seen in this quirky product category, and one of the strongest power burners we’ve seen on any freestanding range.
May be out of stock
*At the time of publishing, the price was $1,980.
If you’re looking for a double-oven range (read more about them here), we’d suggest the GE Profile PGB960. It has best-in-class cooking features, including as powerful a cooktop as we’ve seen on any freestanding range, and a lower oven that can fit bigger birds and roasts than other two-cavity models.
The best looks and build quality of any affordable, freestanding gas range that we found. It has a great cooktop and oven, too.
May be out of stock
*At the time of publishing, the price was $1,080.
A well-built stove with great oven controls, though its cooktop layout could be more convenient.
May be out of stock
*At the time of publishing, the price was $1,124.
Inexpensive but perfectly capable of cooking dinner, it has better features than most other cheap gas ranges.
*At the time of publishing, the price was $630.
This double-oven range has one of the largest lower ovens we’ve seen in this quirky product category, and one of the strongest power burners we’ve seen on any freestanding range.
May be out of stock
*At the time of publishing, the price was $1,980.
I’ve written about appliances professionally since 2012, first as a staff writer at Reviewed and now at Wirecutter. In that time, I’ve put in well over 100 hours on stoves alone, including research into more than 200 different models. I also co-authored our guide to high-end ranges.
Here’s what we did for research:
To be clear, we did not do our own hands-on performance testing, like Reviewed or CNET do. But even those sites haven’t tested many major cooking appliances recently. In the past, we’ve made sure to read performance reviews of the models we consider recommending, but we barely found any for the most current models. Our picks are based on research, reporting, and some time pressing the buttons, turning the knobs, and opening the doors in appliance showrooms.
In this guide, we focus on gas-powered stoves (also known as ranges—the terms are interchangeable) that are 30 inches wide, because that’s the most common size in the US. All of our picks are freestanding ranges, which have finished sides and a backguard and aren’t as expensive as other types of stoves.
If you’re looking for an upscale stove, we have guides to slide-in gas models and even high-end pro-style ranges. And we cover freestanding and slide-in electric ranges in separate guides, if you’re looking for those instead.
Any range will cook your food. But after talking to a bunch of experts and comparing more than 60 models, we think that these are the most important features to look for in a freestanding gas range:
Any decent range will have, at a minimum, a 13,000 Btu power burner, but you can expect 17,000 or 18,000 Btu on the better models. The stronger burners heat up your cookware faster, so you’ll save a couple of minutes waiting for water to boil or for a pan to get hot enough for a good sear. Some readers have told us that they prefer to have the strongest burners in the front row of the cooktop for easier access. But one advantage of having the strongest burners placed diagonally is that it’s easier to fit two large pots or pans on the range in that arrangement, and we’ve heard from some people who would rather have one strong burner in the back row so that they can boil water where kids can’t reach the pot.
Most gas ranges also have a 5,000 Btu simmer burner. Most manufacturers are mum about how low this burner turns down, but Frigidaire told us that theirs can get as low as 500 Btu, and we’d imagine it’s a similar figure on other brands’ stoves. On any model, this burner is useful when you need to simmer, hold, or melt and want to minimize the risk of scorching.
If you spend more than $700, gas ranges typically come with a center griddle that’s handy for cooking eggs, bacon, pancakes, or grilled cheese without a pan.
Continuous grates are a nice feature because they make it easy to slide cookware around the surface of the cooktop and help keep larger items balanced better than smaller, single-burner grates can. Most people seem to agree that continuous grates just look nicer, too. Any stove that costs more than $700 usually has this feature.
Capacity matters a little bit, but most ovens are larger than 4.8 cubic feet, which is plenty of room for a huge 26-pound Thanksgiving turkey, a 16-inch pizza stone, or all but the very largest sizes of baking sheets or roasting pans.
Every oven comes with at least two racks, but some pricier models have three, which offers a bit more loading flexibility.
If you’re spending more than $700 on a gas stove, you should absolutely expect the oven to have a convection fan. If you choose to turn it on, you can cook at lower temperatures for less time. Large batches of cookies will bake more evenly, pastry crusts get flakier, and roasted meats and veggies are both crispier on the outside and juicier on the inside.
Almost all gas ranges come with a broiler. In mid-tier and high-end ranges, it’s an overhead broiler in the main oven cavity. Cheaper models usually have a dedicated broiler drawer beneath the oven, which can be difficult to reach and often doesn’t work as well as integrated broilers. If you expect to use your broiler a lot, you might want to avoid models that cost under $700.
We think that a self-cleaning mode is worth having, particularly a high-heat (aka “pyrolitic”) mode. Repair technicians tend to believe that high-heat cleaning will shorten the lifespan of your range by burning out the heating element or damaging the electronics. But it’s also by far the easiest way to clean an oven. Manual cleaning is hard, unpleasant work, even if you use a (smelly) cleaning spray. Some ranges have a steam-based, pseudo–self-cleaning feature, but it’s not very effective, according to most user reviews. Here’s our take: If you spend more than $700 on a range, it should have a high-heat cleaning mode. If you’re worried about damaging your appliance, use it sparingly or not at all.
The more finish options there are, the more flexibility you have in outfitting your kitchen. We gave a slight preference to those with at least three options, one of which should be stainless steel.
For the models we were able to check out in a store, we looked for knobs that felt securely fastened to the front of the range, without too large a gap between the dial and the body. We checked for oven doors that opened smoothly but not too lightly, racks and drawers that glided, and a tightly laminated control panel. And we jiggled the grates to see how secure they were on the cooktop and how easy they were to remove for cleaning. (All of the units we saw were floor models, so they may have seen more wear-and-tear than a range in a typical house.)
Reliability and customer service are difficult to pin down. But here’s the standard we’ve set for our picks: Owner reviews shouldn’t reveal any clear, consistent pattern of widespread defects, design problems, or egregiously bad product support. For this reason, we favored slightly older and more-popular models because they tend to have more user ratings, so we know more about them.
We also took into account reliability data from J.D. Power and Yale Appliance + Lighting. Neither source is comprehensive, though.
Over our years of reporting on appliances, we’ve also gathered feedback from repair technicians about the brands that they think are the most reliable. But this is highly anecdotal and not especially consistent, so we don’t weigh it too heavily in our decisions unless there seems to be a consensus about a brand or product.
A wok grate, temperature probe, or any other cooking accessory can be cool and useful, and many ranges come with one or more of these as a toss-in. But you can buy any of them separately, too.
Extra cooking modes like delayed starts, food-specific presets, or scan-to-cook modes are all fine, but we doubt that most people ever use them. We didn’t go out of our way to avoid models with these kinds of cooking modes, because they’re hard to avoid, but we didn’t favor them, either.
Wi-Fi connectivity won’t baste the turkey or turn the cookie sheet. Maybe you can think up some edge case where connectivity will come in handy a couple times per year, but we don’t think this is a useful feature. Not too many freestanding ranges offer it, anyway.
The best looks and build quality of any affordable, freestanding gas range that we found. It has a great cooktop and oven, too.
May be out of stock
*At the time of publishing, the price was $1,080.
The GE Adora JGB735 is our favorite freestanding gas range. The cooktop is versatile, with a sensible burner layout, and it has a decent-size oven with convection and a self-cleaning mode. It’s also available in better-looking finishes than most ranges at this price (around $1,000). Although we don’t know how reliable this range is yet, we thought its predecessor, the GE Adora JGB720 (still available in stainless steel), felt sturdy and well built when we looked at it in person, and that model has received largely positive reviews. On the downside, the JGB735’s oven comes with two only racks.
We had a chance to look at a showroom model of the previous version of the Adora at a Home Depot in Portland, Maine, and could find no issues with the build quality. The burner knobs felt secure, the control panel was tightly laminated to the backguard, and the racks and storage drawer slid easily in and out. The grates sat securely in position and felt sturdy. They also extended further to the edge of the cooktop than most ranges’ grates, which gives you more room to work. They’re made from cast iron, which is more heat retentive than steel (a common alternate material used to make cooktop grates).
The JGB735 comes in five finishes: stainless steel (JGB735SPSS), fingerprint-resistant slate (JGB735EPES), black slate (JGB735FPDS), white (JGB735DPWW), and black (JGB735DPBB). Most ranges come in just stainless and glossy black or white, so the Adora gives you some more options for finding a good-looking finish that works for your kitchen.
With an 18,000 Btu power burner, the JGB735 should be able to boil water and heat up a pan for searing as fast as any range at this price. Roughly speaking, it should boil a gallon of water in 8 to 10 minutes, depending on the pan and other materials.
The cooktop is laid out with the two most powerful burners placed diagonally across from each other—the 18,000 Btu power burner on the left front and a 12,000 Btu burner on the right rear. These are the burners that most people use the most often, and having the two power burners diagonally across from one another offers more space for using two large pots and pans at the same time.
The less powerful burners are the 9,500 Btu burner on the right front and the 5,000 Btu simmer burner on the left rear. GE would not tell us exactly how low the simmer burner could turn down, but we think that it goes low enough to handle tasks like melting butter without burning it too easily. There’s also a 10,000 Btu oval-shaped burner in the center; the range comes with a griddle that you can use over that burner, or you can leave the grate over it. The whole cooktop surface is capped with continuous cast-iron grates, which are dishwasher-safe and designed to separate into three parts for easy cleaning.
At 5.0 cubic feet, the JGB735’s oven can easily fit a Thanksgiving turkey or Christmas ham. It has a single-fan convection mode, which helps spread heat more evenly within the oven, making for more uniform cooking temperatures. The JGB735 offers a high-heat cleaning option, along with a steam-and-wipe mode (which, according to a lot of users, doesn’t work very well).
On the site for Home Depot (the only retailer that sells this range), the former version of our pick, the JGB720, has an average score of 4.5 stars out of five, drawn from more than 2,500 reviews; 92 percent of buyers gave it at least four stars, making it one of the most positively reviewed freestanding gas stoves we’ve seen.
We have not taken a look at the JGB735 in person yet, and because it’s so new, there are few reviews for this model, but we’ll continue to monitor customer reviews for potential issues and update this guide accordingly.
The oven comes with only two racks. Three is pretty standard at this price. If you really miss that extra rack, you could always just buy another one.
A well-built stove with great oven controls, though its cooktop layout could be more convenient.
May be out of stock
*At the time of publishing, the price was $1,124.
If you can’t get the GE Adora, we think the Frigidaire Gallery GCRG3060A is the next-best option for a freestanding gas range because it has a very similar set of specs and nice-to-have features.
One clear advantage is that it has a number pad, so you can directly input the oven temperature or timer length, rather than having to repeatedly press arrow keys. It also comes with a third oven rack, so you can load more baking sheets or roasting pans at a time than in the GE Adora.
However, the Frigidaire has a few disadvantages. The overall build doesn’t feel quite as sturdy as the GE’s, though it’s still better than that of most freestanding ranges. It doesn’t come in as many finishes, though they are premium ones: stainless (GCRG3060AF) and black stainless (GCRG3060AD). And the cooktop layout isn’t as practical, in our opinion. The second-weakest burner is in the front row, while the second-strongest burner is in the back. Some people might prefer this arrangement, though, because you can boil water reasonably quickly in the back, where the flame and hot pot are out of the reach of kids.
Otherwise, the GE and this Frigidaire are pretty similar. Both have an 18,000 Btu power burner, a griddle that fits over the oval-shaped center burner, and dishwasher-safe continuous cast-iron grates. The 5.0-cubic-foot oven is the same size, and it also has a convection fan. Frigidaire describes the system as “true” convection, meaning it has an extra heating element by the fan, but we doubt most people would notice a difference when comparing it to the basic convection system in the GE. Frigidaire promotes the oven’s air fry mode as something special among freestanding ranges, but it’s really just a version of convection cooking.
Owner reviews for the GCRG3060A are solid. It has an average of 4.6 stars out of five on Home Depot, which is above average for a freestanding range. The older FGGF3059T (which we recommended in this guide until it was discontinued in early 2020) had one common complaint: A not-insignificant number of owners claimed it leaked a lot of heat into their kitchens, which we suspected was due to a factory-defective improperly sealed gasket. The GCRG3060A hasn’t been out long enough for us to get a sense of whether that’s still a problem.
Inexpensive but perfectly capable of cooking dinner, it has better features than most other cheap gas ranges.
*At the time of publishing, the price was $630.
Our favorite budget-friendly gas range is the Whirlpool WFG320M0B. It usually costs around $600 and has better specs and owner ratings than competing stoves at its price. The cooktop is surprisingly versatile, with a sensible burner layout and continuous cast iron grates, and the oven is larger than average. On the downside, there’s no convection mode or self-cleaning option, it only has four burners, and the broiler is located in the drawer beneath the oven. But those are all typical for a stove this cheap.
The WFG320M0B has two 15,000 Btu power burners that are strong enough to boil a gallon of water in maybe 10 to 12 minutes, a couple of minutes slower than the 18,000 Btu burners on the GE Adora or Frigidaire Gallery models. Having two strong burners like that is almost unheard of in a stove that costs so little, and they’re both situated at the front of the cooktop. It also has a 5,000 Btu simmer burner and 9,500 Btu burner in the back row. All these are beneath a set of dishwasher-safe continuous cast-iron grates, whereas most competing models at this price have independent steel grates, which aren’t as functional or attractive.
At 5.1 cubic feet, the oven is an average size, with plenty of space for a 26-pound turkey, 16-inch pizza stone, or top-round roast. Otherwise it’s a very basic oven: Just two racks in five height positions, no convection mode, no number pad to input temperatures, and no self-cleaning option. The broiler is located in the bottom drawer beneath the oven, which may prove difficult to reach for people with mobility issues—but that’s standard for gas stoves in this price range.
This is the second year in a row we’ve recommended the WFG320M0B as our budget-friendly pick. We’ve checked out several units in a few different stores over the years and have always found that the knobs felt secure (and that the whole appliance felt generally well built), especially for how little it costs most of the time. Most of the complaints in the owner reviews deal with the placement of the broiler, the occasional defective unit, or poor installation. It earned an average of 4.4 stars out of five on Home Depot, with 91 percent of owners giving it at least four stars.
The WFG320M0B comes with three finish options: black (WFG320M0BB), white (WFG320M0BW), and stainless steel (WFG320M0BS), which sometimes costs an extra $50. The MSRP is actually $750, but in the almost two years that we’ve been recommending this model, we’ve never seen the white or black versions cost more than $600.
This double-oven range has one of the largest lower ovens we’ve seen in this quirky product category, and one of the strongest power burners we’ve seen on any freestanding range.
May be out of stock
*At the time of publishing, the price was $1,980.
A double-oven range isn’t as spacious or versatile as a double wall oven—but it can still be a good way to add extra cooking convenience to a kitchen that’s set up for a regular, 30-inch stove. We’d suggest the GE Profile PGB960 because it matches the best cooking features of any freestanding gas range, and it seems to be well built.
Relative to similar stoves from other brands, the Profile PGB960 has the strongest and most versatile cooktop we found, including an 18,000-watt power burner. The lower-oven cavity has 15 inches of clearance, which is the tallest you’ll find in this category. That extra space means a large turkey, ham, or other roast is more likely to fit. This GE should be able to handle something like a 20-pound turkey. There’s a convection feature in the lower oven, too.
It does still have some of the same downsides as all double-oven ranges: It can be a pain to bend all the way down to the lower oven, you probably won’t be able to fit the largest birds or roasts in it, and you might get some heat transfer between ovens.
But if you think a double-oven range will suit your needs, we think the Profile 960 is your best bet. It’s available in three finishes, stainless steel (PGB960SEJSS), black stainless (PGB960BEJTS), and black slate (PGB960FEJDS).
Maytag MGR8800FZ: The cooktop is similar to the GE Adora, which is great, but it doesn’t have a high-heat self-cleaning option.
Samsung NX58M6630: Great specs, but Samsung is infamous for its poor customer service for appliances.
Frigidaire FFGF3056TS: It’s a less-good version of the 3059T for a similar price.
GE JGBS60: Even cheaper than the JGBS62, the JGBS60 has a lot more finish options but a slightly weaker cooktop and independent grates rather than continuous grates.
GE JGBS30: And still cheaper it goes. The JGBS30 is almost exactly the same as the JGBS60 but without any digital controls. Everything here is analog. That may or may not prove for a longer lifespan—it depends who you ask—but you’ll have to get used to dial controls and a funny looking backguard.
We looked at more than 60 gas-powered slide-in ranges, and we think the GE JGS760 is a good-looking, reliable performer that will work in most kitchens.
Switching away from gas cooking can be better for your health and the environment, but we don’t think switching is as urgent as recent headlines have implied.
Whether we’re making a morning cup of coffee or grilling up burgers, the Coleman Classic Propane Camping Stove is our choice for campfire cookouts.
Pellet stoves offer a sustainable way to heat your home and reduce reliance on fossil fuels.
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