A digital kitchen scale will make your cooking and baking much easier. And after testing dozens of scales, we found that the best one is under $30. See the rest of our top picks.
If your batches of cookies turn out differently every time you make them, or your bread dough is never quite right, or your attempts at finicky macarons always end in disaster, I have one question for you: Are you using a kitchen scale? If the answer is no, don’t worry—I get it.
A scale might seem like a fiddly gadget that’ll add more clutter to your kitchen than value to your baking. But what if I told you that a simple two-button scale is actually the key to better baking, easier meal prep, and—get this—fewer dirty dishes? The best kitchen scale overall: Escali Primo Digital Food Scale The best budget scale: Amazon Basics Kitchen Scale With a trusty kitchen scale in your arsenal, you can kiss measuring cups goodbye. What’s more, as any professional baker will tell you, a scale is the only way to achieve actually accurate recipe measurements. This is particularly true for ingredients like flour: A cup of flour scooped from the bag will be more densely packed than a cup of flour that’s been spooned into the cup and leveled, making it markedly heavier. This can have a major impact on your baking project, whether you’re making a simple banana bread or attempting something difficult like sourdough, in which the hydration level of your dough is a key factor in how it bakes up. Not an avid baker? A scale will help you more easily portion out burger patties or meatballs, streamline your weekly meal prep, and cut down on the number of dishes you dirty with those Sunday morning pancakes. The bottom line is this: A kitchen scale is like a baking cheat code, and that’s true no matter your level of culinary expertise. That’s why we tested 16 models over the course of several years to find the very best one for home cooks. The best part? Our winner is just $27. New in this update: We tested three new scales: the dual platform scales from Ooni and KitchenAid and a snazzy-looking scale from Smeg. None of them proved to be nearly as accurate as our beloved Escali, but you can read more about them each below. While it may look unassuming, this plastic kitchen scale from Escali has held the top spot for kitchen scales on our sister site Epicurious for over six years now and has been a favorite in the Bon Appétit Test Kitchen for far longer than that. It’s durable, accurate, intuitive to use, and affordable—pretty much everything we could ask of a kitchen scale. What we love: The Escali Primo is made of lightweight plastic that comes in a variety of fun colors . It has a simple interface with just two buttons: one to turn it on and off or tare it, and another that toggles the display between ounces, pounds, and grams. We found it to be responsive and precise in our testing. It was quick to tare back to zero and delivered accurate readings every time we added new weight. It has a generous auto shut-off time compared to most other models we tested at 4.5 minutes, meaning you won’t have to worry about it powering down and losing your measurements midway through your baking project. Plus, its 11-lb. capacity is large enough to accommodate any task a home cook might ask of it. Performance aside, the Escali Primo has several design features that helped it stand out. For one, the fact that the weighing platform is elevated and offset from the base means you can easily read the display or use the buttons even when measuring into a large, wide mixing bowl. The plastic body and sealed control panel make it a breeze to wipe down after a floury baking session and also keep stray crumbs from getting stuck in any crevices. Another detail we like? The four rubberized feet that keep it stable on your kitchen counter. What we’d leave: The Escali can only measure in 1-gram increments. While this was typical of most scales we tested, those looking to use their kitchen scale for dialing in their coffee routine will want something more precise . Unlike some pricier models, the Escali’s display is not backlit, but we didn’t find this to be an issue. It’s also worth noting that the Escali is not a touchscreen device, so you’ll need to use a bit of pressure on the buttons. The best budget scale: Amazon Basics Kitchen Scale Amazon Basics products are hit or miss, but this scale is a certifiable hit. At less than half the price of the Escali, it’s a good option if you’re not positive about adding a scale to the kitchen and want to spend as little as humanly possible to do so. What we love: There are a lot of similarities between the Amazon Basics scale and our overall winner. The Amazon scale has the same two-button setup, a similar elevated weighing platform that makes it easy to see the display, and the same 11-lb. maximum capacity. It’s made of plastic with a stainless-steel platform that’s easy to wipe down and is just a touch larger than the Escali at seven inches across. In testing, we were impressed by the Amazon scale’s accuracy, considering its price point. It responded to weight addition or removal almost as quickly as the Escali and provided an accurate readout about 99% of the time. That 1% inaccuracy happened when we repeatedly added weight or switched back and forth between units of measurement—and when it did happen, the reading was off by a minor amount. The problem was also easily fixed by removing what was on the scale, taring it, and starting over. For $12 you’d be hard-pressed to find a better model. What we'd leave: Unlike the Escali, the Amazon scale’s buttons lack any kind of laminated sealing to prevent crumbs or liquid from entering the crevices around them. As mentioned, this scale isn’t quite as accurate as our top pick, and we also found that it had a tendency to overshoot an item’s actual weight at first . And last, the stainless-steel platform is more prone to scratching or smudges than the Escali’s plastic one. How we tested kitchen scales What makes a good kitchen scale Other kitchen scales we tested and liked These scales didn’t quite make our list of top picks, but they still impressed us in testing and might fit your needs depending on what you’re looking for. You’ll notice there aren’t any other scales marketed as coffee scales on this list, and that’s because the Fellow Tally was the only coffee scale our testers thought could plausibly work as an all-purpose model too. It has a 5.5-lb. maximum capacity that should work for lots of home baking projects, and we quite liked its design and its ability to measure grams, ounces, pounds, and milliliters. That said, unless you’re interested in using it as a coffee scale, all of its coffee-specific features—a built-in timer and a “brew assist” that directs you on the proper ratio of coffee to water—make it too pricey for us to recommend as a basic kitchen scale. This is another scale from the makers of our top overall pick. It’s sleeker and slightly more advanced, with a four-button control panel that includes the typical on-off, unit change, and tare functions, plus a “hold” feature that keeps your measurement on the screen rather than automatically shutting off after a given amount of time. We ultimately didn’t think the added feature and upgraded design merited spending an extra $10, but this is undoubtedly a good scale . This Oxo scale is a favorite among professional chefs for its easy to clean stainless-steel weighing platform, handy pull-out display design , and accuracy. We liked it a lot, but didn’t feel it merited its price tag, which is about double that of the winning Escali at the time of writing. Note: This is a newer version of the model we tested. We also tested the Ozeri Pronto, Etekcity Multifunction Food Kitchen Scale, and GDealer Tempered Glass Kitchen Scale, all of which have since been discontinued. 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