A fire pit is an essential centerpiece to any campsite. But when you’re traveling to different campgrounds, parks, festivals, or even just the backyard, it’s difficult to lug around a heavy metal fire pit.
These portable options are your best bet to build a fire anywhere. Whether you need to cook food outdoors or just want a decorative addition to your patio that’s easy to move or pack up, you’ll find all kinds of lightweight fire pits on this list.
Types of Fire Pits to Consider
The two main fuel sources for fire pits are propane and wood-burning. Gas-powered pits are easy to connect the pre-attached hose to a propane tank and turn on and off, so there’s no need to wait for your fire to burn down or find water to douse it out when it’s time for bed.
A standard propane tank may weigh 20 pounds, though you won’t have to carry along bundles of firewood.
Propane pits also allow you to make a fire during burn bans in certain areas (but you should still check for fire regulations where you plan to use one). Propane pits also generally emit less heat than a large wood-burning fire pit.
Both wood and propane types include models that promise to reduce smoke, so you won’t have to constantly move your chair around the pit when the breeze changes direction.
And if you’re not the type who enjoys smelling like a campfire, they’ll reduce the smoky scent that usually clings to your clothing and skin for days.
Portable fire pits vary quite drastically in design as well. Some look like traditional non-portable fire pits, but are lightweight, while others have folding legs and carrying bags.
Options like the UCO Flatpack and Snow Peak fold flat for backpackers or serious campers who need to keep their flames off the ground.
Also, some pits have more practical features for cooking food and grilling, such as included cooking grates.
The BioLite grill even allows for charcoal, if that’s your preferred method of grilling. So keep in mind how you plan to use your fire pit when considering the options below.
BioLite FirePit Outdoor Smokeless
Dimensions: 27 in. long, 13 in. wide, 15.8 in. tall | Weight: 19.8 lb. | Fuel: Wood, charcoal
Pros
- Included removable grill gate
- The battery pack can also charge phones and other devices
- Fans cut down on smoke
Cons
- Highest fan settings are loud
You’d have trouble finding a more feature-rich portable fire pit than BioLite’s. That battery pack you see on the side powers a four-speed fan, which pumps air through 51 jets, helping quicken the burn and cut down on smoke.
(And it pops easily off the fire pit’s body, so don’t worry about lugging the whole thing into your house and plopping it down near an outlet when it needs a boost.) Plus, it has a USB output so you can charge your devices off of it during our testing, it provided a full dose of juice to our dying infrared camera in a little over an hour.
Just be judicious when using the fan. We found that, when adding medium-sized logs to the fire, it was better to leave it on one of the lower settings, otherwise the blasting air would whip the flame around and make it more difficult for the new log to catch.
The fan also emits a constant high whine, a minor annoyance but one worth mentioning. All the perforations in the FirePit’s body had us concerned the flame would be susceptible to blowing out in the wind.
But even on a blustery day, the fire didn’t suffer. After the flames wind down, the inner removable grate and the ash drain help with clean up.
UCO Flatpack Portable Grill and Fire Pit
Dimensions: 13.5 in. long, 11 in. tall (when packed) | Weight: 3.2 lb. | Fuel: Wood, charcoal
Pros
- Easy to set up
- Folds to fit in a backpack
- Dishwasher-safe
Cons
- Doesn’t fit full-size logs
- Produced a surprising amount of smoke
In its handsome canvas carrying case, the Flatpack could pass for a laptop. It’s that slim when packed down. Though it was by far the smallest of the full fire pits we tested, the Flatpack is sturdy with the legs deployed.
Though keep in mind that, because the stainless-steel body is so thin, it can only support 10 pounds of wood or charcoal.
This also means that the fire demands frequent attention if you light it with small wood since you can’t heap large logs on it. And the load sits fairly high off the ground for the pit’s size, so best to keep it on flat, even surfaces.
The included grill grate makes a nice platform for cooking up hot dogs or burgers at the campsite (or a local park that allows it if you’re an urban apartment dweller with limited storage).
We found during testing that the Flatpack produced a surprising amount of smoke in spite of the small fire. But it does have one trait that none of the other fire pits here can claim: It’s dishwasher-safe.
Camp Chef Redwood Pro Fire Pitt
Dimensions: 19 in. wide, 13 in. tall | Weight: 35 lb. (with lava rocks) | Fuel: Propane
Pros
- Easy to fire up
- Produces steady heat even in the wind
Cons
- Emits a propane odor
As with grilling, often the simplest option for cooking (or heating) with a fire pit is to use gas. Ergo, the 55,000-BTU Redwood was the easiest full-size model to set and fire up.
Instead of getting a fire started and then tending to it, all we had to do was hook up the propane tank, open the valve, and turn the dial on this Camp Chef to get a nice flame going. (Yes, it lacks the experiential fun of lighting your own fire, but sometimes all we want it immediate heat.)
The thing you have to pay the most attention to is the location of the propane tank. Naturally, you don’t want it too close to the flame, but the hose is long enough for the peace-of-mind distance between the two.
And Camp Chef includes a steel support ring in which to nest the tank during our testing, it held the propane upright on the slightly slanting pavement.
Having to lug the tank around somewhat limits the Redwood’s portability, making it better for tailgating and car camping, but, to be fair, unless there’s dry wood readily available wherever you’re setting it up, you’d have to bring along some logs or charcoal for most of the other pits we tested, too.
And though the Redwood stayed lit on the low setting amid light gusts, the rim is low and there isn’t much to guard the flame, so the field of heat can be especially fickle on windy days.
Another thing to note: Even if the Redwood doesn’t produce any smoke, we got hit with the faint odor of propane whenever we were downwind.
Radiate Portable Campfire
Dimensions: 8 in. diameter, 3.2 in. tall | Weight: 4.8 lb. | Fuel: Recycled soy wax and paper briquettes
Pros:
- Smells great
- Easy to transport and clean up
Cons
- Hard to light in the wind
By far the most interesting fire pit we tested, the Radiate is akin to a big, fat scented candle. As such, it smells great. Because the tin doesn’t extend above the wax and provide any wind protection, the Radiate was hard to light the first time in a steady breeze. (Once you burn some of the wax down, it gets a bit easier with slightly more of a barrier against blowing out.)
But once we got one of the paper briquettes to catch, the rest of them caught quickly, resulting in a nice steady flame. The field of heat was pretty small given the Radiate’s size, and, with the lack of wind protection, more susceptible to shifting from one direction to another.
Though for what it is, this disposable fire pit is handy, good for a few uses if you don’t want to commit to a permanent model or have limited storage. Plus, tamping the fire out was easy; we simply threw the lid on top and stepped on it until the flame died, no waiting around for coals to burn down required.
Solo Stove Yukon Fire Pit
Dimensions: 30 in. wide, 16 in. tall | Weight: 45 lb. | Fuel: Wood
Pros
- Bottom vents cut down on smoke
- Produces very little ash to clean u[p
Cons
- Big and expensive
The Yukon is sleek. It’s a fire pit worthy of spending most of its time parked on a patio or in the backyard amid good looking deck furniture and a grill. That’s also due to its large size, which makes it slightly less portable than other pits here.
And though we found it awkward to move given the lack of handles, it is relatively light for its dimensions. The stainless-steel cylinder has holes ringing the base, which draws in air to help cut down on smoke and speed up the burn.
The Yukon positively tore through logs we burned roughly 15 in three hours, what we’d normally use over an entire winter day, with very little ash clean up afterward given how completely the Yukon torched the wood. Plus, we didn’t observe any smoke, but there was some eye irritation when the breeze shifted the direction of the heat.
Speaking of the heat, the Yukon projects it a lot of it in an even circle, but only from the rim and up, which may leave you with cold feet. The rest of our bodies were perfectly toasty.
Our kindling tended to slide off of the domed floor when we were trying to get the fire going, and tending the flame takes some bending or a fire poker considering how deep this Solo Stove is.
If you’ve got the (considerable) cash and want a fire pit that looks great at home and isn’t onerous to throw in the trunk or pickup bed for the occasional weekend of car camping, turn to the Yukon.
Fireside Outdoor Pop-Up Fire Pit
Dimensions: 24 in. long, 24 in. wide, 15 in. tall | Weight: 7.5 lb. | Fuel: Wood
Pros
- Holds a lot of wood
- Open for easy tending of the fire
Cons
- (Relatively) complicated setup
When packed down, the Pop-Up is about the size of a folded camp chair. But bust it out and you’ve got a platform for creating a nice big blaze. The four-square-foot, stainless steel mesh surface can hold up to 125 pounds of logs, according to Fireside Outdoor, and the 3.5-inch walls struck a nice balance of protecting the fire from the wind while not stifling the wide field of heat.
Plus, that mesh promoted airflow, cutting down on smoke. Given that the top is completely open, too, tending to the fire and adding more logs was simple. Not so simple: setting the thing up.
The legs folded out easily enough, but then we had to rig up the heat shield on the bottom with the Velcro straps, drop the four walls individually onto the stanchions, then slide the mesh on.
That’s a lot of parts to keep track of, but the Pop-Up’s great if you want to post up by a roaring campfire for a few hours (or grill up a mess of food on the optional tri-fold grate).
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