Electric Smoker vs Pellet Smoker: Which One Should You Buy?

Most people should buy the pellet smoker, and the reason is the fire. A pellet smoker burns wood for the entire cook and climbs to 500°F, while an electric cabinet smolders a small tray of chips on a heating element and stops at 275°F. The electric box wins only when your budget stops near $350, when a lease bans open flame, or when you mostly smoke jerky, fish and cheese at temperatures a pellet grill can’t hold.

The money gap is smaller than people expect. A Masterbuilt 40-inch Digital Electric Smoker is $379.99 in October 2026, and a Pit Boss Pro Series II 850 is about $500 at Lowe’s, so the real question is whether about $120 is worth real wood smoke and 225°F more headroom. This page sits in our smoker and grill comparisons, and the pellet grills named here have full write-ups in the Pit Boss review and the Traeger review.

We haven’t run the two side by side ourselves. The specs come from Masterbuilt, Pit Boss and Traeger listings checked October 2026, and the cooking notes are what owners of both consistently report.

When an electric smoker is the better buy

Price is the obvious case. The Masterbuilt 40-inch Digital has 970 sq in across four racks for $379.99, and the 30-inch 710 with Wi-Fi is $349.99. A pellet grill worth buying starts around $500, and most cost $700 to $1,200.

Low temperature is the case people miss. Masterbuilt digitals run from 100°F to 275°F, and that bottom end is what makes them useful. Jerky dries at about 160°F, hot-smoked salmon wants about 150°F, and summer sausage sits at 170°F for hours. Pellet grills bottom out at 165 to 180°F, and owners report they overshoot at the low end, which turns jerky into chips and melts cheese. If your smoking is more fish and sausage than brisket, the electric cabinet is the right tool.

It’s also less to learn. Plug it in, set a temperature, add a handful of chips every 45 to 60 minutes. There’s no auger to jam, no fire pot to clean, no ash to vacuum and no pellets to keep dry, and owners say the first cook takes about ten minutes to figure out.

Rules can decide it. An electric smoker has no flame, and apartment buildings and HOAs that ban charcoal, gas and pellet grills often allow one. It’s the only smoker that makes it onto a lot of balconies.

And it costs almost nothing to run. An 800 to 1,200 watt element cycling on and off costs roughly 10 to 20 cents an hour in most of the country, against a dollar or two of pellets for a pellet grill.

When a pellet smoker is the better buy

Smoke flavor carries most of the argument. A pellet smoker burns wood the whole cook. An electric smoker heats a small tray of chips that smolders for 30 to 45 minutes and then goes to ash, and owners report that unless they reload every hour for the first three hours, a 12-hour pork butt tastes faintly of smoke at best. Plenty of electric owners end up adding a smoke tube, at which point they’ve built a weaker pellet grill.

Range is the second reason. A pellet grill runs to 500°F, which means crisp chicken skin, roasted vegetables, a pizza stone and a turkey with brown skin. Everything from a 275°F electric cabinet comes out pale, so wings get finished in the oven or on another grill.

Weather is the third. The Masterbuilt cabinet is thin, uninsulated sheet steel, and owners in the northern half of the country report it can’t reach 250°F on a 30°F day with wind. A welding blanket becomes standard equipment. A pellet grill holds 225°F in the teens, burning more pellets to do it.

Shape matters as much as square inches. The Masterbuilt’s 970 sq in is four narrow shelves, and a full packer brisket won’t lie flat on most of them. A pellet grill’s 650 to 1,600 sq in is wide and flat, so a 14 lb brisket fits on the bottom rack with room beside it.

The warranty gap is wide too. Masterbuilt electrics carry a one-year warranty, and owners report the control panels and elements are the common failures around year two or three. Pit Boss and Weber give five years, and Traeger gives ten on the Woodridge and Ironwood.

Watch out: Don’t plan on doing jerky or cheese on a pellet grill’s lowest setting. Owners report it runs hotter than the dial says down there. For cheese, the usual workaround is a smoke tube inside an unlit grill on a cold day.

What each one cooks better

Dish	Better on	Why
Ribs	Close, slight edge to pellet	Three hours at 250°F with two chip reloads gives a decent rack; pellets give a deeper ring and firmer bark
Pork butt	Pellet	Electric bark comes out soft and grey, with smoke in the outer half inch
Brisket	Pellet	The 275°F ceiling stretches a 14 lb packer past 16 hours
Chicken and turkey	Pellet	Skin needs 375 to 425°F to crisp
Jerky, fish, cheese, sausage	Electric	Holds 150°F all afternoon
Overnight cooks	Pellet, 20 lb hopper or bigger	An electric needs a chip reload every hour for smoke

Ribs are the electric smoker’s best dish, and owners are happy with them. On a pellet grill the smoke ring is deeper and the bark sets harder, because the fire is real and you can push to 275°F at the end.

Brisket is where the electric runs out of room. With no way to raise the heat past 275°F to push through the stall, most electric owners wrap early and finish in the oven. Pork butt has the same problem in a milder form, and owners describe electric pulled pork as tender but pale.

The most common mistake new electric owners make is expecting crisp poultry. At 275°F the skin turns rubbery no matter what you do. Smoke the bird in the cabinet, then finish it skin-side up in a 425°F oven for 15 minutes.

Prices and running cost, October 2026

Smoker	Price	Notes
Masterbuilt 30-inch 710 WiFi Digital Electric	$349.99	Wi-Fi controller
Masterbuilt 40-inch Digital Electric	$379.99	970 sq in, 100 to 275°F
Masterbuilt 40-inch with window and legs	$449.99	Same range
Other analog electrics	$150 to $250	Smaller cabinets
Pit Boss Pro Series II 850 (pellet)	about $500 at Lowe’s	850 sq in, 20 lb hopper, 180 to 500°F, Flame Broiler
Traeger Westwood (pellet)	$699.99	653 sq in, 450°F max
Traeger Woodridge (pellet)	$899.99	860 sq in, 24 lb hopper, 10-year warranty
Weber Searwood 600 (pellet)	$999	648 sq in, 600°F

The roughly $120 between the 40-inch Masterbuilt and the Pit Boss 850 buys real wood smoke, 225°F more headroom, a sear plate, five years of warranty instead of one, and a cooker that works in February. I can’t think of a better $120 to spend on outdoor cooking.

The gap only makes sense the other way if $500 is out of reach or the no-flame rule decides it. Both are real reasons. Go in knowing the electric smoker is a smoke oven, not a grill, and you’ll still want something else for burgers.

Running cost does favor electric. Expect about $25 of electricity a season against $150 to $250 of pellets, which works out to roughly $600 to $1,100 over five years. Owners who have owned both mostly say they’d pay it again, and the pellet calculator will show what your own cooks would burn.

Which one I’d buy

I’d buy the pellet smoker, and at the low end that means the Pit Boss Pro Series II 850 at about $500. It’s the cheapest grill on this site that smokes properly, grills properly, and has a warranty that runs five years. If the budget reaches $900, the Traeger Woodridge adds a 10-year warranty and a better app.

I’d buy the electric smoker in three cases. One is a budget capped at $350, where the $349.99 Masterbuilt 710 beats any pellet grill at that price because there aren’t any worth owning. Another is a balcony or HOA that bans flame. The last is a cook who mostly wants fish, jerky and sausage at 150 to 170°F, where the electric is the right tool and the pellet grill is the wrong one.

Every pellet smoker runs on a wall outlet too, and our guide to electric pellet smokers explains what that means for your power supply, and the full pellet grill ranking covers the rest. If you’re weighing pellets against a stick burner instead, pellet grill vs offset smoker is the next page.