10 Of The Best Coffee Grinders If You're On A Budget

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If you want to brew the best coffee at home, I'm sorry, but you really need a grinder. It's often the gateway for many coffee lovers into a deeper appreciation for home brewing, and for others, it's the key to unlocking intoxicating aromas and flavors previously unimagined. If this sounds intense or extreme, you'll have to trust me. I've worked in the coffee industry since 2012 and have worn every hat imaginable — from running cafes to selling both roasted and green coffee, competing in national AeroPress and Brewers Cup (pour-over) competitions, in addition to private consulting on drink recipes, barista training, cafe design, and menu development. I've made coffee a significant part of my adult life and love to recommend both equipment and recipes to anyone curious, hoping you can learn from my experience.

I've curated this list to reflect a wide range of grinders that won't have you maxing out your Visa. All of these grinders are burr grinders; if you're unfamiliar, this simply means that the beans are ground between two interlocking stainless steel saw-like burrs, in the same way that black peppercorns get ground in pepper mills. This style of grinding is superior to blade grinders — in reality, these should only ever be used for spices, as they do a horrendous job of grinding coffee, producing a terribly inconsistent grind quality. The price ceiling here is $350, with a mix of hand and electric grinders, mostly for filter but some capable of espresso grinding. Prices may vary.

Fellow is a San Francisco-based coffee equipment company with a strong focus on design — you could say it's the Apple of the coffee gear world, creating slick designs for everything from brewers, kettles, to grinders like the Opus. The design prowess was so strong here that this grinder actually won a Red Dot design award in 2023, in the category of all-purpose conical burr grinders. It may not resemble your grandmother's coffee grinder, with a monolithic and austere appearance that both invites conversation when displayed on kitchen counters, but also sits discreetly as a chic kitchen gadget.

The Opus is positioned as the brand's entry-level grinder, a step below its cousin, the Ode. But it's quite capable. Readers who think that the $350 price ceiling for this list, and the cost of the Opus, is cost-prohibitive, should hold their tongue and read on, as I've included some very affordable manual hand grinders, too. However, know this: The grinder is often considered the most important component in coffee brewing, and I often tell cafe owners not to skimp on a grinder, as espresso machines usually get more focus and budget. To wit, with a crappy grinder and an amazing espresso machine, I can't make good coffee; with a mediocre espresso machine and high quality grinder, I can make a delicious cup of coffee. Here, the Opus' 41 grind settings and 40mm conical burrs will get you there in style.

Purchase Fellow Opus Conical Burr Grinder from Amazon for $169.95.

I could write a very long love letter to the engineers who designed the Encore. This grinder is near and dear to me, as it was my very first proper electric burr grinder, which brought me out of the stone ages of having to grind my beans by hand. The grinder debuted around 2012, and thanks to Oliver Strand's "Ristretto" column in The New York Times, which focused on the then-new third wave style of coffee, it took hold among the coffee cognoscenti as he sang its praises. At that time, there really weren't many solid burr grinder options for home brewers; the product landscape was bare and filled with options in the thousands of dollars range. The Encore felt like a paradigm shift in pour-over brewing for coffee enthusiasts, and all these years later, it's still going strong.

With a mellow price tag of $149.95, coffee fans can bring an Encore home to become a kitchen fixture, gobbling up beans with ease, week in week out. It comes in two color options — white and black — and has essentially remained unchanged for 13 years. It has 40 individual grind settings, allowing you to grind for everything from a moka pot, to pour-over, to French press and Chemex. Its 40 mm burrs are powered by a capable motor, spinning at 550 RPM, with a total capacity of 300 grams. My only complaints are that it is noisy (sorry, roommates) and attracts static, which can create a mess of grounds at times.

Purchase Baratza Encore Coffee Grinder from Amazon for $149.95.

So now that you know my love for the Encore, and the same applies here with its upgraded sister, the Encore ESP. Clever readers may have surmised that the ESP stands for espresso; for years, many Encore users were dismayed over a lack of espresso capability, but Bartaza heard their cries and delivered. If you're scratching your head and wondering, what's the difference? Why do I have to pay around $200 for this version, which is $50 more than the original Encore, for espresso? Well, unfortunately, not all grinders are created equal, and due to the extremely high pressure subjected to an espresso puck, combined with its average 30-second brew time (as opposed to a four-minute pour-over), it creates a set of circumstances that require a very consistent grind quality.

What this translates to is that each microscopic piece of coffee bean needs to be as close in size as possible, and that it's also fine enough to create the resistance needed for an espresso shot to extract in 30 seconds. If the grind isn't fine enough, coffee will spurt out in five seconds and end up tasting like battery acid. It's a delicate balance, and with the ESP, the Baratza engineers simply refined the burrs settings to allow for high-resolution espresso grinds, in addition to coming with a dosing cup, for easy transfer of grinds to the portafilter. If you're looking for an espresso grinder on a limited budget, the ESP is a strong contender.

Purchase Baratza Encore ESP Coffee Grinder from Amazon for $202.

1Zpresso slowly began to wash up on North American shores like a quiet storm, pushing and pulling the tide of hand grinders to eventually saturate the market and leave competitors awe-struck. The Taiwanese company debuted in 2017, at a time when companies like Comandante were unveiling high-quality, extremely precise hand grinders to the coffee world at trade shows. For a while, the market was dominated by Japanese brands like Hario and Porlex, which employed ceramic burrs in clunky configurations, producing abhorrent grinds. The benefit at the time was that you could travel with your hand grinder and whip up a decent cup of Joe in an Airbnb or hotel, or at your office, with a little elbow grease. But some clever engineers knew there was a hole in the market, and that precise grind quality was lacking, in addition to improving upon designs with foldable handles and superior steel burrs.

Here, with the X-Ultra hand grinder, home coffee brewers can enter a world of grind precision that gets you those transcendent, mind-bending pour-overs or espresso shots. For $159, you can pick from three color options like midnight black, space grey, and pacific blue, with 12.5 micron adjustments for a whopping 200 different grind setting options. It comes with a nice carrying case, cleaning brush (always make sure you clean your grinder), air pump, and anti-slip rubber grip. If you travel or are on a budget and don't mind grinding by hand, the X-Ultra will leave you smiling.

Purchase 1Zpresso X-Ultra Coffee Grinder from Amazon for $159.

Timemore, much like the aforementioned Fellow, is a brand that prioritizes gorgeous design in its coffee gadgets. Based out of Shanghai, the Chinese company shook up the industry like 1Zpresso when it first debuted its stylish pour-over accessories and affordable hand grinders, like this Chestnut series. With a price tag of about $87, the C3 ESP Pro provides much to get excited about, and if you're looking for your first hand grinder for espresso, in addition to the spectrum of filter brew methods, you could do worse. The first and most obvious benefit of the grinder is its travel-friendly stature, with a slim profile and foldable grinder arm.

The CNC machining and finishing on these 38 mm burrs is of the highest quality, providing home brewers with 36 different grind size adjustment options. To get super nerdy, the burrs have a 55 to 58 HRC hardness, which means they will last for many years of comfortable grinding before getting dull. Given that this grinder is espresso capable, home espresso enthusiasts who aren't quite ready to shell out multiple hundreds, if not thousands of dollars, on an electric espresso grinder will love the C3 ESP Pro. But, word to the wise, grinding espresso takes three, if not four times as many rotations than coarser, filter brew grinds, so get ready to work out those arms. All in all, this is one of the best do-it-all Timemore grinders in its hand grinder silo.

Purchase Timemore C3 ESP Pro Coffee Grinder from Amazon for $87.20.

The second 1Zpresso grinder in my list is the Q Air, which is also one of the most affordable. With an MSRP of $69, the Q Air, as you may have surmised, is one of the lighter hand grinders in 1Zpresso's lineup. Its aluminum body weighs 370 grams total — smaller than a can of soda, according to the website — which fits snugly into the interior of an AeroPress plunger for the most ultra compact travel brewing setup. It's not intended to handle espresso, which is usually the case for sub-$100 hand grinders, so espresso brewers take note. But if you're looking to make a mean French press at home or the office, this will get you there with ease.

The capacity, due to its smaller size, is limited to 15 to 20 grams, so if you need to brew a large batch for yourself and some loved ones, you might have to do multiple grinding sessions. Its stainless steel burrs have 30 different grind setting options, with moka pot as its finest setting, and Chemex or French press at its coarsest. It comes in three different colors — black, blue, and purple — and you can add-on a travel case at checkout for an extra $20. I've never had a bad cup of coffee when using a 1Zpresso grinder, and the value proposition is certainly high here for home brewers on a tight budget.

Purchase 1Zpresso Q Air Coffee Grinder from Amazon for $69.

It's no secret that to nail a pour-over, you need to nail the grind size. To find the right grind, we baristas call this dialing-in, which means a succession of trial-and-error brews to finally land on the correct grind for the best extraction. It could take three or four attempts to get there, which is yet another reason why buying pre-ground coffee is not ideal, since you're stuck with whatever size the roaster chose. OXO's conical burr grinder is the most affordable electric grinder in our list, coming in at a cool $99.95, and it has 15 grind size adjustment settings to help you find that sweet spot. Sure, it's not as sexy as the Opus, but I've seen worse designs.

For a budget-friendly electric grinder, this could be a great option for those who've tired of hand grinders, or for home brewers simply looking to graduate from those clunky electric blade grinders, into the coffee pro realm of burr grinding. OXO has furnished this bad boy with stainless steel burrs, which are spun by a capable DC motor via a one-touch button. The hopper holds up to 12 ounces of coffee; however, I would recommend grinding only the amount of coffee you need before brewing. Grinding on demand is better than leaving all your beans in the hopper because they will inevitably get stale, unless you live in a coffee-thirsty household and blow through beans fast.

Purchase OXO Brew Conical Burr Coffee Grinder from Amazon for $99.95.

Out of all the grinders I've curated, this is one of the more expensive at $249, but for good reason. The DF54 single-dose grinder is a well-regarded, very capable grinder that primarily specializes in espresso. This is the type of grinder that coffee geeks love because it brings you into that realm of coffee shop quality espresso that can seem unattainable. Though, home brewers can leverage its precision grinding for doing pour-overs as well, as its 54 mm stainless steel flat burrs chomp through beans like Pac-Man on steroids. But what really sets this machine apart from the other grinders in my list are things like a plasma generator — yes, you read that right — and an anti-popcorn disc.

If this sounds like another language, it kind of is, one spoken by super nerdy baristas and geeky home brewers alike. The plasma generator is actually an ionizer, and it attenuates the insanely messy and frustrating issue of static. You see, when beans are ground, the small microscopic pieces of coffee are subject to static charges, which means they spurt out all over the place and even stick to the metal walls of the grinder. The ionizer remedies this by counteracting the static charges, while the popcorn disk here prevents beans from jumping up off of the burrs — like popcorn out of a pot — to further mitigate mess. This, in turn, improves workflow. This grinder is a beast and will have you pulling god shots, as they say, without the mess.

Purchase MiiCoffee DF54 Single Dose Coffee Grinder from Amazon for $249.

Breville is known for making some really well-designed and quality kitchen gadgets, and has been involved in the home consumer coffee equipment realm for years now. Its machines are always eye-catching and meant to tastefully sit on countertops without being an eyesore. What's more, Breville allows home decor-focused coffee fans to match this Smart Grinder Pro to their kitchen's palette, selling the machine in eight different color-ways. This $199.95 grinder is designed to sit next to your espresso machine on the counter, yet, like many of the other grinders on my list, it could also be used for filter brew methods in a jam.

The Smart Grinder Pro comes with 60 unique grind settings and is programmable — the most technologically robust and automated of the grinders in this list — with a nice LCD screen displaying the grind time, number of shots, and grind size number. Pretty neat. You can adjust the grind time in 0.2-second increments for precise dosing control, and it accommodates both 50 to 54 mm portafilters and the professional-level, larger 58 mm size. I think one of the best features of this grinder is that the hopper actually has an airtight seal, unlike the vast majority of grinders out there, which means you can leave a whole bag of beans in it without any worry of oxidizing. This is simply a good-looking modern grinder with a solid brand pedigree behind it.

Purchase Breville Smart Grinder Pro from Amazon for $199.95.

Sure, without a proper coffee grinder, you can get away with grinding your beans in a myriad of ways, but with brands making such high quality hand grinders these days, at such attainable price points, it seems silly to use a food processor or blender, unless you're in a bind. The Timemore Chestnut C2S manual hand grinder will leave you with some cash to spare for more beans, coming in at a meager (compared to the competitors) $69 price tag. Coming in two choices of color, with black or white lightweight yet sturdy aluminum bodies, this puppy really punches above its weight. While I wouldn't suggest it for espresso, everything else it can handle, from super coarse French press all the way down to the fine grinds needed for moka pot brews.

I've used an earlier version of this grinder countless times before, and it was my go-to for travel, providing me with some tasty brews that often blew the free (nasty) hotel coffee out of the water. All you need is some fresh beans, obviously, and a quick call to guest services for a kettle, and you're set. These grinders can obviously be used at home, too, but when it comes to travel, they rule, pairing well with the equally travel-friendly, Alton Brown-approved AeroPress coffee brewer. For home coffee drinkers who love to make pour-overs or even run an automatic drip machine, the C2S is a cheap burr grinder that will satisfy most.

Purchase Timemore Chesnut C2S Manual Coffee Grinder from Amazon for $69.