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Jun 07, 2025

The 4 Best Pasta Makers of 2025, According to Our Tests

We independently evaluate all of our recommendations. If you click on links we provide, we may receive compensation. Our top picks will have you churning out impressive homemade noodles. Food & Wine

We independently evaluate all of our recommendations. If you click on links we provide, we may receive compensation.

Our top picks will have you churning out impressive homemade noodles.

Food & Wine

Cooking boxed dried pasta at home is fine for a quick weeknight meal, but let's be honest: Restaurant-quality fresh pasta is an entirely different experience. There's something incredibly special about making your own pasta dough from scratch, and for quality homemade pasta at home, a good pasta maker is just the thing. Along with the right ingredients, it's one of the Italian cooking tools you need to make dinner taste just as good as the dishes at your favorite restaurant.

Making pasta from scratch may seem daunting, but you'll be surprised at how easy it can be with the right equipment and a few tips. Professional chefs — and Italian grandmothers — use their years of experience to go above and beyond, which can be great if you can score a seat at their dinner tables. But a simple bowl of pappardelle or fettuccine is a much more straightforward process that even total beginners can achieve. The best part about homemade pasta is that total precision isn't necessary: Noodles don't have to look like they're on the cover of a magazine to taste great.

With so many options, figuring out the best pasta maker for you can be tricky. To help you out, we spoke to a team of pasta industry experts and tested 21 models in our own kitchens. With the right pasta maker, making fresh pasta at home will be not only delicious but also enjoyable.

Technically, making fresh pasta requires no specialized equipment. All you really need is flour, eggs, elbow grease, and determination to knead the dough; a rolling pin to roll it out into sheets (aka sfoglia); and a knife to slice individual noodles. However, this old-school method requires time, patience, and a lot of practice.

Thankfully, modern technology has invented pasta makers ease this task. A standard roller pasta machine uses a pair of rollers — which can be powered by hand crank or electric motor — to flatten dough into progressively thinner sheets. Using a separate cutter attachment, it can also slice the dough into even-width noodles of many sizes. This process takes just a fraction of the effort that rolling and cutting by hand would take, and creates pasta of much more uniform size and texture. However, a roller machine can only create flat noodles.

Another type of pasta maker is the extruder, which shapes dough by squeezing it through holes in a die. This can make a much wider variety of flat or tubular pastas, including macaroni, penne, rigatoni, conchiglie, or fun non-traditional shapes like dinosaurs and Christmas trees.

You can also find pasta-shaping attachments for your stand mixer. These attach to the mixer's motor for power, and there are both roller and extruder options.

To find the best pasta makers, we tested 21 models side by side, including manual and electric tabletop roller machines, stand mixer attachments, and extruders. We rated general setup and operation, and compared the results of a series of identical tests.

After completing testing, we revealed the retail prices of the machines to consider their overall value. At the time of testing, the least expensive pasta maker we tested was a hand-cranked model for $29. The most expensive models we tested were an extruder and motorized roller, both for $300. The average price of all the models was $132.

This sturdy and easy-to-use model exceeded our expectations.

It didn't cut spaghetti as cleanly as it did fettucine.

Created by a nearly century-old Italian company, the Marcato Atlas 150 Classic is one of the most popular manual pasta makers for a reason. It wowed us during testing; it didn't jam, pull, or fray, and the handle seated in place more securely than similar models. The stainless steel body felt sturdy and durable but still lightweight. The design is perfect for easy, intuitive rolling — even a total beginner won't have problems with the Atlas 150 Classic. (Just be careful to select the Classic model; there's a standard Marcato Atlas 150 that's made of aluminum rather than steel and didn't do as well in testing.)

There are 10 different thickness settings for various applications, and the included cutter makes fettuccine or spaghetti for added versatility and convenience. We were pleased with how easily and uniformly the cutter did with the fettuccine, but the spaghetti had to be separated by hand. This caused some stands to get squashed and misshapen.

Type: Tabletop manual | Dimensions: 8 x 8 x 7 inches | Materials: Stainless steel | Pasta Types: Spaghetti, fettuccine, lasagne

This machine is built well, made of durable materials, and easy to use.

We wish the handle locked in more reliably.

This Italian-made pasta maker is a manual tabletop model similar to the Marcato Atlas 150 above. It works in essentially the same way, and also includes cutting attachments for spaghetti and fettuccine. The first thing we noticed during testing was the excellent design and construction. The body clamped easily onto our countertop and didn't wobble during use, and the wooden handle made the whole cranking process much easier on our hands. The nickel-plated steel rollers are durable yet lightweight, and the dough easily moved through them without any sticking or jamming. Our favorite feature was the tray that can help feed your sheets through the rollers and then rest the pasta once it's been cut — it's a rare and helpful accessory.

This pasta maker is perfect for beginners, but seasoned pastai will also appreciate the fabrication quality and ease of use. Our one complaint is that the handle kept slipping out in testing, which was unfortunately all too common with manual models.

Type: Tabletop manual | Dimensions: 8.1 x 7.2 x 6.2 inches | Materials: Stainless steel, wood | Pasta Types: Spaghetti, fettuccine, lasagne

This extruder automatically kneads the dough and produces high-quality, uniform pasta with minimal effort.

Some of the plastic pieces don't feel very durable.

For pasta beyond just flat noodles, consider this fully automatic extruder. It works differently than the manual models above: It kneads the dough by itself and then squeezes it through holes in a die to create all sorts of shapes. The whole setup also takes up surprisingly little counter space. You get discs for spaghetti, fettuccine, and penne in the box, but there are tons of other Phillips pasta extruder dies sold separately that can create classics like shells, bowties, and spirals. The one thing we didn’t like about this machine is that it's mostly plastic. Many of the parts, especially the dies, felt flimsy.

During testing, we found the Phillips Viva to be quite user-friendly. It was very much hands-off once we added our ingredients and pressed start. The mixing chamber is the best part; it combines and kneads raw ingredients into the perfect dough in less than 20 minutes. We also loved the “extra extrude” button at the end of the batch, which clears the last bits of dough from the chamber to make cleanup even easier. Handling the extruded pasta was easy as well — we didn't encounter any issues with sticking as the pasta exited the extruder or when we cut it to length. This meant our pasta was all uniform and even, which is important for consistent cooking.

Type: Extruder | Dimensions: 13 x 15.5 x 11.9 inches | Materials: Stainless steel, plastic | Pasta Types: Spaghetti, penne, fettuccine

This attachment is well-constructed and durable, producing well-rolled pasta sheets and precisely cut pasta shapes.

You need an expensive KitchenAid stand mixer to use it.

KitchenAid stand mixer attachments run the gamut and they also include a pasta maker. and are looking to jump into making your own pasta, this attachment set is the perfect addition. It simply clamps into the front of the mixer, using its onboard motor and speed control switch. Not having to use a hand crank is a huge help, not just because it reduces the amount of labor needed but also because it lets you use both hands to feed the dough through the rollers and pull it out the other end. This made a big difference in testing, and we encountered no ripping, tearing, or fraying as we rolled dough successively thinner and thinner.

This set has eight roller width settings, and separate cutter attachments for fettuccine and spaghetti. Both performed beautifully in testing, making distinct, even strands and keeping them separated — in fact, this was one of the only machines that managed to cut all the way through spaghetti consistently. Chris Wright, co-owner of The Pasta Lab, a small-batch pasta producer in Philadelphia, also recommends the KitchenAid attachment for its versatility. “Not only can the dough be prepared in the bowl of the mixer, but a pasta filling can as well,” he says. “Whipped ricotta; blanched, pressed, chopped greens; and salty aged cheese would make a classic ravioli filling and would come together in no time with the help of the KitchenAid.”

This attachment set earned a perfect score in every category we measured; the only downside we can find is that you have to own a KitchenAid stand mixer to use it. That's a pretty serious investment, but it's an appliance most kitchens need, and it can last for decades.

Type: Stand mixer attachment | Dimensions: 9.7 x 3.8 x 2.2 inches | Material: Stainless steel | Pasta Types: Spaghetti, fettuccine, lasagne

The Marcato Atlas 150 Classic Pasta Machine is a tabletop manual machine that snagged our top spot because it’s an excellent choice for beginners and experts alike, and produced some of the smoothest rolling in testing. The Imperia Pasta Maker Machine was a close runner-up, and we loved it because it's durable and was very easy to use.

Tabletop pasta makers come in either hand-crank or motorized styles. "These days, you get both manual and automatic [electric] machines, and they also are at different price points and make different types of pasta, based on the attachments," says Chef Beau Fazio of Heirloom Restaurant in Delaware. Material is also a consideration; some are fully metal, while others have plastic parts.

The hand-crank styles are the most traditional and straightforward. To work these, you insert the handle into its slot on the side and rotate it to turn the rollers. Tabletop pasta makers are best for egg pasta and rolling out long, thin sheets. These can be cut into thin strips for spaghetti or fettuccine, left large for homemade lasagna, or used to make stuffed pasta like ravioli. Manual machines are more traditional and less expensive but require more work. Although they might last longer than motorized machines, they can be hard to use when cooking alone. You have to feed the dough into the machine on one end, guide the pasta out of the other, and turn the hand crank simultaneously; it takes practice and can be difficult to do solo. Some models, though, offer an optional motorized attachment that cranks the handle for you, or a tray to help feed the sheets into the machine.

Electric pasta makers can be motorized versions of hand crank machines, stand-alone extruders, or attachments for stand mixers. Generally, electric pasta makers are easier to use but harder to clean and maintain. With motorized versions of hand crank machines, you also have to keep up with the speed of the rollers when feeding your dough into it and delicately guiding it out the other side. Attachments can only be used with stand mixers, usually one specific brand, which is an expensive investment if you don't already own one.

Extruders are electric machines that squish dough through a die to make shapes. This allows for more complicated types of pasta, including round penne and rigatoni, spiral rotini and cavatappi, and lots more that aren't possible with a roller-style pasta maker. Extruders can still make spaghetti and similar flat shapes but can’t make lasagne, stuffed pasta, and other recipes that call for wide sheets. Most extruders will mix and knead the dough for you, which is convenient but makes them much harder to clean. There's also more room for error if your ingredient ratio is even slightly off. When using electric extruders, you have to cut lengths of pasta as it comes out of the machine, which takes some skill and precise timing. An extruder is better for larger batches of pasta or big households, since smaller batches of dough can be more difficult for these machines to work through.

A pasta maker attachment for a stand mixer is beginner-friendly. It performs the same tasks as a tabletop machine but uses the stand mixer's motor for power. This requires much less elbow grease and is much less expensive than an electric pasta maker with its onboard motor. However, an attachment is only a good choice if you already have a compatible stand mixer — without one, it's useless.

Standalone pasta makers are great for those who don't own stand mixers. However, they take up more space. Manual and motorized tabletop models require some cabinet organization to keep track of all their parts. Extruders usually take up the most space since they contain a chamber for mixing the dough as well as shaping and cutting tools.

The best machine for you will also depend on the types of pasta you want to make. Most manual pasta rollers come with cutters for spaghetti and fettuccine, and of course, you can roll out long sheets and cut them to size with a chef's knife or pizza cutter for lasagne and stuffed pasta like ravioli. A roller can't produce short, tubular shapes, though. For that, you need an extruder and a specialized die. Both types of pasta makers might be compatible with additional cutters and dies that make a wider variety of shapes; just make sure an accessory works with your exact model before you buy it. Lots of pasta shapes can also be made by hand, albeit with some practice and specialized techniques.

Manual and electric rollers are best for egg doughs — think lasagna, tortellini, and wide pappardelle. The fat in the egg yields a dough that is silky and pliable, perfect for big sheets or bouncy, long noodles. Extruders can be used with egg dough, but they work best with semolina dough — a type of pasta dough made from just semolina flour and water. Extruded pasta has less moisture, and excess fat in the dough can cause smearing and sticking. Semolina dough is more rigid and can hold the shape of tubular pasta, like the kind you need for creamy tomato rigatoni or penne all’arrabbiata.

You can get metal pasta makers in stainless steel, chrome-plated steel, or aluminum. Weightier stainless steel will have the most stability and durability, with more resistance to corrosion and rust. However, it's not dishwasher-safe like aluminum or chrome-plated steel parts can be. Aluminum tends to be the cheapest and lightest metal, more prone to bend or dent.

Extruders and some electric pasta makers come with primarily plastic parts. These are easier to clean and a lot lighter than their metal counterparts. They're often dishwasher-safe and don't need protection from moisture like many metals. However, plastic is much less durable than metal, so plastic pasta makers are likelier to break. Some manufacturers sell individual replacement parts, but in many cases, you'll have to replace the whole machine if something wears down or snaps.

If you're new to homemade pasta, don't worry! It's not hard to learn how to use a pasta maker. For a roller machine, you can start with any egg pasta dough recipe you like. If you have an extruder, it's best to use the recipe the manufacturer includes with the instructions.

After kneading, let your dough rest for a minimum of 30 minutes (an hour or two is best), tightly wrapped in plastic or covered with an upturned bowl on your work surface. When you're ready to start shaping, divide the dough into reasonably sized pieces — as many pieces as there are eggs in the recipe is a good guideline. Keep the dough you're not working with wrapped or covered to prevent drying out.

For a roller machine, flatten your piece of dough slightly with the heel of your hand or a rolling pin before feeding it into the machine. Start with the thickest setting (the lowest number) and run your piece of dough through. Next, decrease the thickness by one notch, and repeat. (To ensure a better you can, fold the rolled dough into thirds and run it through the two thickest settings a second time.) Keep rolling thinner and thinner, lightly dusting with flour as needed to prevent sticking, until you reach the size you want. Once all your dough is rolled out, it's time to cut. You can do this manually, or by attaching the machine's cutter attachment and feeding the sheet through. Be gentle with the noodles as they emerge from the machine; you may need to pull apart strands that didn't cut through all the way.

Each extruder machine will have slightly different instructions and recipes, but you'll start by mixing the dough. Once it's thoroughly kneaded, insert the die shape you want and set the machine to extrude. As the pasta comes out of the die, cut it to your desired length and gently toss it with flour to prevent sticking. The very beginning of each batch produced by an extruder is often a little uneven; you can drop the ugly noodles back into the dough chamber to get remixed and recycled.

To clean a manually operated metal pasta maker, you should not use any water, as this could cause the machine to rust. Wait about an hour after using your machine to allow any remaining bits of dough to dry, then use a dry cloth to wipe flour and dough from the outer parts of the machine. Use a dry pastry brush or thin wooden skewer to remove any bits of dried dough from the rollers or attachments.

To clean an electric pasta maker, you’ll need to disassemble the machine and wash each part separately. Always refer to the manufacturer’s instructions for the exact procedure. Some pasta makers have dishwasher-safe parts, but we always recommend hand-washing to prolong their life.

"Homemade pasta cooks so much faster than dried pasta, due to the water content," says chef Andy Clark of Gravitas in Washington, D.C. "With dried pasta, you have time to drop the pasta in the water and make the sauce, but fresh pasta cooks so quickly, the sauce needs to be almost finished." It depends on the shape of the pasta, but fresh flat noodles can cook in about a minute, while stuffed pasta may take up to 5 minutes. If your recipe gives a range of cooking times, start tasting at the lower end to prevent overcooking.

"Long pasta should be checked after a minute, and you'd want a little less than al dente because the pasta will finish cooking in the sauce," adds Clark. "Stuffed pasta should be tender on the edges where the pasta is sealed."

There is no one type of flour that’s perfect for every type of pasta. Different shapes and types of dough have different needs, so no flour is one-size-fits-all. “There are so many different styles of pasta, and each calls for specific raw materials and equipment to produce,” says Wright. “For example, extruded shapes (rigatoni, fusilli, bucatini, etc.) are best made with semolina or its relatives. Semolina is made from durum wheat, which has a hard, glass-like structure that ultimately translates to ideal cooking & eating qualities when dried. Egg dough for tagliatelle or stuffed pasta is best made with finely milled and sifted wheat flour with medium gluten strength.”

Egg dough is usually used to make long shapes, like the kind rolled out from tabletop or attachment rollers, and can be made with all-purpose flour. Italian-style 00 flour, an extra-fine flour made for pizza and pasta, will lend a softer texture. While most extruded shapes are best made with semolina flour, some extruders can also produce pasta from egg dough, too. Semolina is also great for hand-formed shapes that don’t use pasta makers at all. If you’re new to the world of homemade pasta, pick up bags of both 00 and a bag of semolina to experiment. Even if you only make egg dough, semolina is perfect for dusting.

Most homemade pasta is made with egg dough, and the good news is that you don't really need to dry egg pasta very much at all. A 30-minute rest to let some of the surface moisture evaporate is more than enough to set the shape and improve the texture. For flat pasta like tagliatelle and lasagna, a slightly dry, leathery surface helps the sauce cling. You can dry your pasta simply on a dish towel-lined sheet tray or on a dedicated pasta drying rack. The goal with drying egg dough isn't long-term storage or hard, brittle dried pasta like you buy in the store; eggs are perishable, and food containing raw eggs should not sit out at room temperature for more than 2 hours.

For longer-term storage of egg pasta, pop it in the freezer. "Freezing your pasta extends the shelf life of the pasta, and gives you quick and easy access to it," says chef Bobby Little of Brooklyn bistro Leroy's. It'll maintain its quality for about 2 months in a freezer-safe container. You can boil pasta right from the freezer; expect to tack on about 1 extra minute of cook time, but always start checking it for doneness early to prevent overcooking.Semolina pasta made with no egg can sit out longer, to dry fully for pantry storage. The ideal drying window for semolina dough is between 1 and 3 hours, depending on the hydration of your dough, the temperature in your kitchen, and the exact shape. Allowing air to circulate around semolina pasta gives it a rougher exterior, perfect for grabbing onto sauce, and helps set tubular shapes like penne to keep them from collapsing. Shapes made with semolina dough can be stored for months or years, but they might wind up a little brittle, and the cooking time can be longer than store-bought dried pasta — 20 minutes or more.

CucinaPro 5-Piece Pasta Maker Deluxe Set ($50 at Amazon)

This model is impressively inexpensive, and we loved how secure the clamp was, especially during rolling. However, a lot of dough stuck to the rollers, and we had significant trouble with the cutters.

Marcato Atlas 150 Pasta Machine with Motor ($350 at Amazon)

The motorized version of our best overall pick didn't work quite as well as its manual cousin. We experienced some clogging and jamming during testing, which prevented this model from making the cut. The aluminum body was also less sturdy than the stainless steel Classic 150.

Antree Pasta Maker Attachment 3 in 1 Set for KitchenAid Stand Mixers ($80 at Amazon)

Given its elevated height, this roller machine made feeding in the pasta easier. The cutters worked very well, and the cut pasta didn't stick together. We had one instance of light jamming during testing, and we found the machine challenging to clean.

GVODE 3-Piece Pasta Attachment Set for KitchenAid Stand Mixer ($110 at Amazon)

We liked how well the cutters worked on this KitchenAid attachment, and we didn't have any issues with jamming. However, set includes many different pieces that need to be switched out multiple times during use, which was cumbersome and prevented the GVODE from making the list of winners.

Emeril Lagasse Pasta & Beyond Automatic Pasta and Noodle Maker ($220 at Amazon)

While comprehensive, this model was not particularly user-friendly and required us to study the manual before diving in. For such a high price, the Emeril Lagasse extruder just isn't worth it.

The other pasta makers we tested didn’t measure up for several reasons. We encountered multiple issues with clogging and jamming in our tabletop models. With one stand mixer attachment, the problem was the cutter, which just didn't cut all the way through the dough sheet. Some of the extruders we tested were less than satisfactory when it came to cutting and shaping the dough, too. Finally, a few of the models we tested have since gone out of stock.

This was one of our favorite pasta drying racks in testing. It's affordable, sturdy, and has long arms in a spiral orientation that fits a lot of noodles in a small space but leaves room for ample air circulation. It stands 16 inches tall, so you can easily dry long pasta without the ends crumpling against the counter. A rack with arms like this is only for long pasta; if you're looking to dry other shapes from an extruder machine, consider a tiered rack instead.

You can cook pasta in any pot big enough to keep the noodles submerged. However, it's best to cook pasta in a large volume of water, which will maintain its temperature better when you add the noodles and give the pasta room to move around without sticking together. We like a stockpot, which is huge and comes in handy for lot of other purposes — soups, stews, and of course, homemade stock. This Misen model was our favorite stockpot in testing because the stainless steel was easy to clean, and its 8-quart capacity is the sweet spot of big enough for pasta but not so enormous that it fills an entire cabinet by itself.

Nick DeSimone, an Italian-American food writer and restaurant cook with nearly a decade of professional cooking experience, authored this piece. Much of their career has been spent working at Italian restaurants and making fresh pasta daily.