The Best Nonstick Skillets

Nonstick skillets have coatings on their cooking surfaces that prevent food from sticking. On the best ones, those coatings are impressively slick and relatively durable. You can crack an egg into one and count on a perfect fried egg sliding out a few minutes later. Sautéed vegetables move around the pan with ease and don’t stick or leave behind cooked-on bits that can burn. We often use them when making recipes with sugary sauces, including some stir-fries, that scorch easily. A nonstick skillet works well for cooking all sorts of other delicate and fast-cooking foods, from omelets and pancakes to pan-seared salmon and quesadillas. Another selling point is price. On average, they cost less than many stainless-steel, carbon-steel, and cast-iron pans. 

We don’t recommend using nonstick skillets to make pan sauces. The surface is so slippery that it’s impossible to develop the stuck-on crispy bits of food (or fond) that are essential for adding deep, rich flavor to your sauce. They’re also not well suited for browning butter because their dark surfaces make it hard to see how much the butter has darkened. 

Traditional nonstick skillets have coatings made with PTFE. Best known by the brand name Teflon, PTFE (polytetrafluoroethylene) belongs to a larger category of chemical compounds called PFAS, which are responsible for making surfaces slippery and resistant to water and oils. The way PTFE is produced has changed over the decades, making nonstick pans safer and more durable. Still, all PTFE coatings will eventually wear out with use, and previous tests have shown us that they scratch easily as well. We have tips for extending the life of your pan (see the FAQ “How can I make my nonstick skillet last longer?”), but you will need to replace your nonstick skillet periodically. If you’re looking for longevity, you may prefer to purchase a cast-iron or carbon-steel skillet instead. 

In addition, there are a few rules you’ll need to follow in order to use nonstick pans safely, as PTFE can emit toxic fumes when heated above 500 degrees. (For more about PTFE, PFAS, and how to use nonstick cookware, see the FAQ “Are nonstick skillets safe to use?”) If you’d like a nonstick skillet that isn’t made with PTFE or other PFAS, we recommend checking out our full review of ceramic nonstick skillets.

If you’re only getting one nonstick skillet, it should be a 12-inch model. It’s the most versatile size, spacious enough to cook a frittata for six people or sear four veggie burgers.

On average, the cooking surface of a 10-inch skillet is about 1 or 2 inches smaller than that of a 12-inch skillet. This size comes in handy when cooking food for two to four people. 

We like an 8-inch skillet for small tasks such as frying an egg or preparing a small batch of scrambled eggs. 

• Superslick Nonstick Coatings: The pans we tested have between two and five layers of nonstick coating. Despite those differences, most skillets performed similarly. When the pans were brand-new, we conducted a rigorous test: cooking eggs without any fat until they stuck or until we’d cooked 50 eggs. We repeated that test at the end of our other evaluations so that we could see if the nonstick coatings degraded with use. All of the skillets aced the egg tests, arriving slick and staying that way.

• Tall, Gently Sloped Walls: When we cook in a nonstick skillet, we often move food around quickly—sliding it around the pan with a spatula or tossing it up in the air in a rolling motion. The best pans were tall enough to contain food and sloped at an angle that made it easy to toss food around and then slide it onto a plate or serving dish. We were also able to glide a spatula around the walls so that food or sauce didn’t get stuck and burn. 

• Generous Cooking Surfaces: In the United States, nonstick skillets are generally marketed as 12-inch, 10-inch, or 8-inch. These measurements refer to the diameter of the top of the skillets. Within each category, the size of the cooking surface varies considerably. In 12-inch models, we found that a cooking surface diameter of 9–10 inches provided just enough room for preparing food for up to 6 people. Food got crowded in skillets that had smaller surfaces. For 10- and 8-inch models, we also generally preferred larger cooking surfaces.

• Light Weight: These aren’t hefty cast-iron skillets. We expect them to be light enough to pick up with one hand and maneuver easily around the kitchen. Our favorite 12-inch models weighed 2.5 to 2.75 pounds and were easy to lift and carry. 
• Wide, Comfortable Handles: These let us carry the pans securely from the stovetop to the oven or lift them to slide out eggs or sautéed vegetables. We especially liked stainless-steel handles because they’re durable, ovensafe to high temperatures, and easy to clean.

• Short Walls: If the skillet walls were too short, food spilled over the edges as we stirred. When we’re sautéing vegetables or scrambling eggs, it’s important to work quickly and efficiently. We didn’t like when we had to slow down and take special care to keep food from going overboard. 
• Straight or Sharply Curved Walls: Testers struggled to use a skillet with tall, straight sides that were set at almost a 90-degree angle to the cooking surface. When we joggled a frittata over the walls and out of the pan, it wobbled and nearly belly-flopped onto the plate. Another skillet had dramatically curved walls, limiting the size of the cooking surface. 
• Heavy Weight: The heaviest 12-inch skillets weighed 3.80 to 4.90 pounds and were absolute bears to lift. It was most noticeable when we held the pans aloft with one hand while trying to scrape food from them. What’s more, that extra weight wasn’t a guarantee of increased sturdiness. None of the pans warped when we heated them up and plunged them into ice water, not even the lightest one.