Best Muffin Pans of 2026

One pan instead of two. The Farberware is the 12-cup tin we name for anyone who bakes a dozen at a time and would rather not store a second pan between sessions. Carbon steel, oven safe to 450 degrees, coated without PFAS, PFOA, lead, or cadmium, and dishwasher safe — though hand washing keeps the gray finish looking new longer.

What sold us is how little there is to argue with. Cupcakes drop out, batter that spills over the rim brushes off once the pan cools, and the body feels dense rather than tinny, with a warp-resistant build that stays flat through a full-temperature bake. Where other pans in this group give you something to work around — sticking, rust along the rim, a coating that needs babying — this one doesn't.

Two details are worth checking before you order. The handles are generous, which is genuinely useful when you're pulling a loaded pan off a hot rack, and the pan itself is one of the larger footprints here at 15.2 by 11.4 inches. Measure your cabinet and your oven rack first; a big pan that fits nowhere convenient becomes a pan you stop reaching for.

The Wilton is the least expensive way into a full-size 12-cup pan in this group, and we think it's the right first pan for most people. Twelve standard cups, a scratch-resistant nonstick coating, oven safe to about 450 degrees, dishwasher safe, and extended handles that give an oven mitt somewhere to grab that isn't the batter. It bakes evenly enough that the savings don't show up in the muffins.

The finish is the part to manage. This is a pan that wants discipline: dry it fully before it goes into the cabinet, don't leave it soaking in the sink overnight, and don't stack anything heavy on the cups. Steel this thin, coated this affordably, will spot along the rim if water sits on it, and the coating marks if a knife scrapes across it. A minute with a towel is the whole difference.

One number worth knowing: the wells are listed at 2 inches across and 1.25 inches deep, a little narrower than the 2.75-inch standard, so your muffins come out slightly smaller and standard papers sit a bit loose. Neither is a dealbreaker at this price, and the extended handles are a real convenience on a crowded rack.

Two 12-cup pans and 120 parchment liners arrive in one box, which tells you exactly who this set is for: someone who bakes often enough to be tired of scrubbing wells. The liners are the honest part of the package. Nobody buys a muffin pan for the paper, but a year of it thrown in changes how much you'll actually use the thing.

The steel is what HONGBAKE calls 27 percent thicker than its standard pan, and the pans do feel solid rather than springy, with a wide rim that gives a mitt somewhere to land. The cups measure 2.75 inches across and 1.2 inches deep, so standard papers fit as they should, and both pans are dishwasher safe and rated to 450 degrees. They stack, which matters when you've just doubled the number of pans in the cabinet.

Where we land: at roughly the price of a single mid-range pan you get two pans and a year of liners, which is the best value-per-batch in this group. The coating is a two-layer nonstick rather than commercial-grade, so keep metal utensils out of the wells and don't stack them bare. What you give up is variety — both pans are the same standard twelve, with no mini or jumbo on offer.

If your idea of a muffin is the size of your fist, this is the set. Each cup measures 3.5 inches across the top and 2.75 at the base, deep enough for a generous scoop of batter, and the box gives you three six-cup pans rather than one twelve. That's eighteen oversized muffins across the set, which covers a holiday morning without a second round.

The split into sixes is the smart part, and it's why we prefer these to a single jumbo twelve. A loaded jumbo pan is heavy and awkward to rotate on a rack; three smaller pans go in and out one at a time, fit around other dishes, and stack inside each other in the cabinet afterward. The carbon steel is heavy enough that they don't bend when you carry one full, and the nonstick releases muffins without liners or spray.

These are hand wash only, and the rolled lip is where water collects, so dry there deliberately rather than letting them air dry upside down. Everything else about them is straightforward: rated to 232 degrees Celsius, sturdy, and — for a jumbo pan — priced per muffin about where the standard pans sit.

Silicone's problem has always been what happens once it's full: the tray turns into a wet towel, and you need a sheet pan underneath just to get it to the oven. BAKE BOSS fixes that by molding a steel frame into the rim and handles. The cups themselves are still soft, so you can push a muffin out from the bottom, but the pan carries like a metal one and doesn't sag in the middle.

The set is one 12-cup regular pan and one 24-cup mini, both dishwasher safe and rated for oven use up to about 450 degrees. Release is the other reason to go silicone: muffins, egg bites, and mini quiches drop out without spray or paper, and cleanup is a rinse. The regular pan takes standard liners if you want them, though we stopped bothering.

The mini tray is what makes the pair worth buying. Twenty-four small cups turn out a week of egg bites at once or a party's worth of two-bite brownies, and the regular pan handles a standard dozen alongside. What you give up is browning — silicone insulates, so crusts stay pale where metal would darken them. If golden domed tops are the goal, this isn't your pan; for clean release and a two-minute cleanup, it's the one we reach for.

There is no coating on this pan at all. Nordic Ware makes it from a single piece of pure aluminum with an encapsulated steel rim, which means nothing to chip, nothing to lift, and no rust — ever. If you've thrown out a pan because the nonstick started flaking into the wells, that problem simply doesn't exist here.

The trade shows up in the cups. They run smaller than the other 12-cup pans here, and standard paper liners sit badly in them, so plan on greasing and flouring the wells and baking bare. It's hand wash only as well, and the dishwasher will turn the aluminum dull and gray over time — a detail worth taking seriously if you've gotten used to loading everything.

Where it earns its keep is heat. Aluminum conducts better than steel, so muffins brown evenly across the pan, and the one-piece body has no seams where batter and wash water collect. With the steel rim it stays flat at 450 degrees, and there's no coating to scratch, which means metal utensils aren't a hazard.

So the deal is this: you give up convenience and a smaller cup size, and in return you get a pan with nothing on it that can fail. For a baker who greases properly and wants the same pan a decade from now, that's a straight trade rather than a compromise.

Cream with a printed confetti-dot pattern — the Fimary is the one silicone pan here you won't hide in a drawer when company comes over. It sounds like a trivial thing to lead with, but a pan that stays in sight is a pan you use, and this one looks more like a baking dish than a piece of equipment.

It isn't only looks. A wire runs inside the rim, so the tray keeps its shape when it's loaded and you can carry it to the oven without sliding a sheet pan underneath. It's rated to 450 degrees, dishwasher safe, and thin enough — 0.71 inch — to slide into a crowded drawer, which is more than any metal pan here can claim.

Twelve cups, and it's happiest with small portions: egg bites, mini muffins, cookie cups, frozen yogurt bites for the freezer. It goes from freezer to oven without complaint, and because the cups flex, even a sticky batch releases with a push from underneath. That combination is why it stays in our rotation for breakfast prep rather than for weekend baking.

At the lowest price of any silicone pan in this group, it's the cheap way to find out whether you like baking with silicone — and the frame means you won't have to buy a sheet pan to go with it. Just don't expect it to turn out a tall, bakery-style muffin.