Best Backpacking Stove (2025): MSR, Jetboil, Firebox
Top 6 compared hiking stoves
Honorable mentions
There are a ton of tiny stoves. Here are some stoves that I like, but don’t make the best choices for one reason or another. These are always beautiful stoves and could be an excellent choice for your next hiking trip.
Frequently asked questions
What type of stove is best for hiking?
Box? Alcohol? Traditional white gas? There are a multitude of options, so which is the best ™? The answer is that it depends on where you go (altitude, time, burn prohibitions, etc.), which you cook and how long you hike. Thru-hikers have a set of needs different from those of us who reach only a few weekends and perhaps a trip of 10 days a year. That said, our first choice is an excellent choice for warriors through the pace and the weekend. I love alcohol stoves for their silence and simplicity, but burn prohibitions sometimes mean that they are not allowed. If in doubt, a light cartridge stove configuration is your best bet. The exception is cold. The inverted cartridge stoves do better in the cold, but personally, I count on white gas each time I think that temperatures drop below 20 degrees Fahrenheit.
What is the best stove for cooking really?
Certainly the Nano Firebox associated with the gas burner and the diffuser plate. But there is a weight penalty for all this. The titanium version measures 8.5 ounces, but it cooks like a Camp Coleman stove thanks to this diffuser plate. As indicated above, it is possible to heat a 10-inch saucepan on the edges, which no other hiking stove has successfully managed in my tests.
If you do not want to bear so much weight, the MSR Pocketrocket Deluxe offers the best control of the flames, although there is no way to spread the flame and to heat your pans evenly. Note that aluminum pots heat more uniformly than titanium (and they are much cheaper), so associate the Deluxe Pocketrocket with an aluminum pan will give you the best results in my experience.
That said, be honest with yourself about the kitchen in the hinterland. I appreciate it and I do it, but I only do it when it makes sense. If you try to cover 20 to 30 miles a day, preparing a complex meal is not what you want to do at the start and at the end of each day. For these trips, stay simple, stay light.
How much should my pan weigh?
As little as possible while being functional. Seriously, it depends on what you want to do. If you are solo and just want enough water to rehydrate a pocket of food, you can manage with something around an ounce or two. If you want to prepare a good meal for tired children, it could be worth carrying some additional weight.
Should you buy a stove system?
It depends on you. They often make life easier on the path, thanks to the way most of the panel-pole combo systems click together and wrap well and small. But if you are looking to make weight and cut the weight as much as possible, the answer is certainly not. A small light pot with the MSR Pocketrocket Deluxe or BRS 3000 and a windshield in aluminum paper weighs less than any integrated stove system that I tested. Pro tip: Make your own light pot cover from a heavy leaf to save even more weight.
Why don’t you list boiling times?
Because rapid boiling times are an idiotic number composed by industry so that it has something to compare and boast. The time required to boil water depends on the factors that no one can control in the real world, including the temperature of the starting water, the temperature of the ambient air, the altitude, the wind, etc. Even if you control all these factors to try to summarize a figure, that will not tell you anything because some stoves are better than others in the wind, you can therefore extrapolate anything on their performance in the air that will map their performance in the wind. All this makes boiling a completely useless number.
Which hiking stove do you use?
I have several stoves, but honestly, generally I cook on everything I test for this guide. On the rare occasions, I have no new stove to test … it depends. For solo trips covering good distances, I use the upper choice, the MSR Pocketrocket Deluxe. When I am by bike or to make backpack with my children, I use the Freestyle Firebox stove divided into two units, one with a spiritual burner Trangia and one with the gas burner. The division of all of this between 4 people maintains the reasonable weight (the total weight of this configuration is 26 ounces) and actually gives me a stove with 2 burners and a twigs fire, which is good when you do not know what you can buy during replenishment on the path. In cold weather, I count on a MSR Whisperlite International that I have been for almost three decades for almost three decades. I somehow hate that, but it’s reliable.
Tips and tips
Once you have a stove, familiar with. The cartridge stoves are quite simple. Screw the cartridge, turn the button and the light. However, other stoves, in particular liquid fuel stoves, require a little practice to really make it compose.
I went out and I made coffee on these stoves every morning for months, playing with variables such as simmer controls, a cartridge position, different fuel, windshields, and more in all kinds of conditions. Even if I will never make coffee in a moka jar on the track, the experience with each stove means that I know how each stove behaves in different conditions. Do something similar until you are familiar with how to control the flame, how to maximize energy efficiency and what to do when the wind blows. Here are other things that I have learned over the years on the use of Backcountry stoves:
- Boiling water does not mean boiling: Unless you try to sterilize the water, you don’t need to go to a complete boil to rehydrate a meal and this is a waste of fuel. I usually close the stove when the bubbles start to form at the bottom of my pot. It’s hot enough to rehydrate gear or dehydrated meals.
- High is not maximum efficiency: I hate the noise of the cartridge and white gas under pressure, so I have never had this problem, but a lot of people I have camped seem to think that the burner should always be high. It is generally a waste of energy (the BRS 3000T is an exception, it must really be high). This is where the experimentation and learning the operation of your stove help. Time how long it takes to boil the water at different burns levels and use the lowest adjustment which still effectively bubbles your water.
- Remember that the weight and the volume are not the same: I know, it has been forever since I had secondary school chemistry, but remember that the weight and volume are different despite the fact that the two are often listed in the abbreviation Oz. A fluid ounce Alcohol does not weigh an ounce (it weighs 0.8 ounces). A fluid ounce White gas does not weigh an ounce either (it’s about 0.75 ounces). This is important when you try to determine the weight of cans and fuel bottles.
- Your kitchen pot has: The size and shape of your kitchen utensils are important – some bolts faster than the others on different stoves. Discover this in depth youtube of different combos of stoves and pots to see what I mean, but a point to remember is that again, it is something worth being tested with your stove.
