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Best non-stick frying pans: eight compared, and PFOA free means almost nothing
Six of these eight shout about being free of something. One of those claims has been the law since 2020, one is asterisked, and one brand will not tell you what the coating is at all.
By Mrs House · Updated 26 August 2026 · 12 min read
Mrs House is independent. Nobody pays for a place in a ranking here, and no brand saw this page before it went live.
The short answer
Buy the ProCook Professional at £55. It is a normal PTFE non-stick pan, it is honest about being one, and it carries a 25 year guarantee.
- Best overall: ProCook Professional Non-Stick, £55. PTFE over stainless, oven safe to 260C.
- No coating at all: De Buyer Mineral B, £44. Carbon steel, nothing to wear off, but you have to season it and keep it seasoned.
- Skip: GreenPan Premiere at £99.90 and Our Place Always Pan at £89. Ceramic sol gel, and both stop being non-stick early.
Do not pay £90 to avoid PFAS. Independent testing found ceramic releases food seven to fourteen times worse than PTFE, and owners report it failing inside a year.
How we assessed these
Eight pans, one method. A 28cm frying pan wherever a size choice existed, and where a brand does not make a 28cm we say which size the price is for.
The first job was sorting out three words the whole category leans on and almost every article confuses. PFAS is a class of more than ten thousand fluorinated chemicals. PTFE is one specific fluoropolymer inside that class, which is what most non-stick coatings are. PFOA is a single small molecule that was never the coating at all, only a processing aid used to make it. They are not interchangeable and a brand claiming to be free of one is not claiming to be free of the others.
Then we read every claim against that. Which of the three each brand actually says. Whether a certificate or a test report sits behind it, and for all eight the answer is no. The maximum temperature, oven limit, dishwasher and metal utensil rules, which vary wildly and are not interchangeable between pans. And what one and two star owners say about how long the coating lasted.
We also went to the regulators and the literature rather than to the brands: the German federal risk assessment body on what overheated PTFE does and whether a scratched pan is dangerous, the EU POPs Regulation on PFOA, ECHA on the wider PFAS proposal, and a 2024 University of Cordoba study that actually measured how well different coatings release food.
Every product is scored on the same five parts: does it work (35 per cent), what it is made of (25 per cent), value (15 per cent), everyday use (15 per cent) and honesty of the claims (10 per cent).
The ranking, at a glance
| Pan | Price | Surface | The claim made | Guarantee | Oven to | Score | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ProCook Professional Non-Stick | £55 | PTFE over stainless | PFOA free | 25 years | 260C | 4.0 |
| 2 | De Buyer Mineral B | £44 | Carbon steel, no coating | None needed | 2 years | 200C for 10 min | 3.9 |
| 3 | ProCook Elite Signature Uncoated | £70 | Tri ply stainless, no coating | None needed | 25 years | 260C | 3.8 |
| 4 | Ninja ZEROSTICK Ceramic Pro | £32.49 | Ceramic sol gel | PTFE free | 10 years | 285C | 3.7 |
| 5 | Tefal Expertise Plus | £36 | PTFE | PFOA free | 2 years | Not oven safe | 3.6 |
| 6 | Dunelm Scoville Neverstick | £18 | Not published | None made | Lifetime | Not published | 2.9 |
| 7 | GreenPan Premiere | £99.90 | Ceramic sol gel | PFAS free, asterisked | 2 years | 220C | 2.9 |
| 8 | Our Place Always Pan (26cm) | £89 | Ceramic sol gel | PFAS free | 3 years | 230C | 2.6 |
Two of the eight are ProCook, which was not the plan and is what the scoring produced. Not one of the eight brands publishes a certificate, a test report or a reference number behind any of the claims in that fifth column.
The two we would actually buy
Best overall
25 year guarantee
1. ProCook Professional Stainless Steel Non-Stick 28cm
★★★★☆ 4.0 / 5
£55, and the number that matters is the guarantee: 25 years, on a non-stick coating. Nothing else on this page comes close, and a brand does not underwrite a coating for a quarter of a century unless it expects it to survive. GreenPan gives you two years for twice the money. 1,626 reviews on ProCook’s own site and 4.9 from 193 on Trustpilot.
It is a PTFE coating over a stainless steel body and ProCook says so, claiming only that it is PFOA free. That is the honest version of the claim, because PFOA has been banned in Europe since July 2020 and every pan on this page is PFOA free whether it says so or not. Oven safe to 260 degrees, dishwasher safe, and the one real restriction is no metal utensils, which is the opposite of the Tefal rule and worth knowing before you ruin it.
Pros
- A 25 year guarantee on a non-stick surface, which nothing else here approaches
- £55, less than half the GreenPan and a third less than the Always Pan
- Oven safe to 260 degrees and dishwasher safe
- 4.9 from 193 Trustpilot reviews, with almost no durability complaints visible
Cons
- It is PTFE, so if avoiding fluoropolymers entirely is your reason for shopping, this is not your pan
- No metal utensils, unlike the Tefal and the Ninja
- PFOA free is the only claim made, and that claim is the legal minimum
- No certificate or test report published behind it, same as the other seven
Buy it if you want a normal non-stick pan that lasts and you would rather have a long guarantee than a marketing claim. Skip it if you are specifically trying to get fluoropolymers out of your kitchen.
The clean pick
No coating at all
2. De Buyer Mineral B 28cm Carbon Steel
★★★★☆ 3.9 / 5
£44 from De Buyer direct, and it is the only pan here where the entire PFAS argument simply does not apply. Ninety nine per cent iron, one per cent carbon, made in France, finished with beeswax for storage. There is no coating, so there is nothing to scratch, flake, wear off or worry about, and a seasoned carbon steel pan outlives the person who bought it.
The honest catch is that it is not non-stick when it arrives. You season it, and the surface improves with use rather than degrading with it, which is the exact opposite of every coated pan on this page. It also rusts if you leave it wet, it is hand wash only, and the oven limit is 200 degrees for ten minutes. If that sounds like a chore, it is one, and it is the price of a pan with nothing on it.
Pros
- No coating of any kind, so PFAS, PTFE and PFOA are all irrelevant to it
- It gets better with use rather than worse, and will outlast every other pan here
- £44, cheaper than five of the eight
- Nothing to flake into your food, ever
Cons
- Not non-stick out of the box. You have to season it and keep seasoning it
- Hand wash only, and it rusts if left wet
- Oven safe to only 200 degrees, and only for ten minutes
- Heavy, and the handle gets hot
- No review data published on any of the three UK retailers we checked
Buy it if you want to stop buying frying pans and you do not mind learning to look after one. Skip it if you want to fry an egg tonight with no effort and no maintenance.
The other coating free one, and the best ceramic
No coating, no upkeep
25 year guarantee
3. ProCook Elite Signature Uncoated Tri-Ply 28cm
★★★★☆ 3.8 / 5
£70, down from a usual £149, and it answers the question the De Buyer leaves hanging: what if you want no coating and no maintenance either. Uncoated 18/10 stainless with an aluminium core through a seamless 3mm tri ply construction, oven safe to 260 degrees, dishwasher safe, and a 25 year guarantee that means something because there is nothing on it to wear out.
It is on this page as the honest alternative rather than as a non-stick pan, because it is not one. Food sticks unless you preheat properly and use enough fat, and that is a technique you either have or acquire. What you get in exchange is a pan that browns and deglazes properly, takes any utensil, goes in the dishwasher, and will look the same in twenty years. Only 56 reviews, which is a thin pool.
Pros
- Nothing to coat, so nothing to degrade, and a 25 year guarantee behind that
- Oven safe to 260 degrees and genuinely dishwasher safe
- Browns and deglazes in a way no non-stick pan does
- Tri ply through the whole pan rather than a disc stuck on the bottom
Cons
- It is not a non-stick pan and never will be
- Eggs and fish will stick until your technique is right
- £70 on offer, £149 at full price
- Only 56 reviews, and no review text renders to check them
Buy it if you cook properly and you are tired of replacing coated pans. Skip it if you want to fry an egg with no fat and no thought.
Best ceramic
£32.49
4. Ninja ZEROSTICK Ceramic Pro 28cm
★★★½☆ 3.7 / 5
£32.49 reduced from £64.99, and if you have decided you want ceramic rather than PTFE, this is the one to buy. Ten year guarantee, which is five times what GreenPan offers at three times the price. Oven safe to 285 degrees, the highest here. Dishwasher safe and metal utensil safe, which no other ceramic pan on this page allows.
The claim it makes is PTFE free, and that is precise and true rather than clever. It does not claim to be PFAS free, which the two expensive ceramic pans do with an asterisk. What it cannot escape is the physics: ceramic sol gel coatings are harder and more heat tolerant than PTFE and they release food worse and lose that release sooner. The brand sits at 3.8 on its own site, and durability complaints about coatings peeling appear in the company Trustpilot pool.
Pros
- A 10 year guarantee, five times GreenPan’s and at a third of the price
- Oven safe to 285 degrees, the highest here, and metal utensil safe
- Claims PTFE free, which is accurate, rather than an asterisked PFAS free
- Recycled aluminium body
Cons
- Ceramic releases food far worse than PTFE, which is a property of the material not the brand
- 3.8 out of 5 on Ninja’s own site, the lowest own site score here
- Peeling and blistering coatings appear in the brand’s Trustpilot complaints
- No PFAS free claim, and no test report behind the PTFE free one
Buy it if you want out of PTFE and you want a real guarantee rather than a slogan. Skip it if you want the best release, because ceramic does not give you that.
The big name, and the cheap one
The household name
Not oven safe
5. Tefal Expertise Plus Induction 28cm
★★★½☆ 3.6 / 5
£36, a five layer stone effect PTFE coating, metal utensil safe, and the Thermo-Spot in the middle that tells you when the pan is at temperature. It fries well and Tefal has been doing this longer than anyone. 4.8 from 26 reviews, which is a small pool.
Tefal gets real credit for something the rest of this page avoids. Rather than hiding from PTFE, it publishes an explainer defending it, says plainly what PTFE is, and states it stopped using PFOA in 2012, eight years before the ban. That is a company arguing its corner in the open instead of putting an asterisk on a slogan. Where it loses is practical: only a two year guarantee against ProCook’s twenty five, no maximum temperature published anywhere, and this particular pan is not oven safe at all, which for a 28cm frying pan is a real limitation.
Pros
- Publishes a proper explanation of what PTFE is rather than hiding from the word
- Metal utensil safe, which the ProCook non-stick is not
- The Thermo-Spot genuinely helps you avoid overheating it
- £36 for a well made pan from the brand that invented the category
Cons
- Not oven safe, which rules out finishing anything under a grill or in the oven
- A two year guarantee against 25 years from ProCook and 10 from Ninja
- No maximum coating temperature published anywhere we could find
- Its own pages disagree on whether it is dishwasher safe
- Only 26 reviews on the Tefal shop
Buy it if you want a familiar pan, you use metal utensils, and you never put a pan in the oven. Skip it if you finish things in the oven, because this one cannot go in it.
Cheapest here
Will not say what it is
6. Dunelm Scoville Neverstick 28cm
★★★☆☆ 2.9 / 5
£18 with a lifetime guarantee and 4.7 from 432 reviews, which is the second largest review pool on this page. On value it is untouchable, and a lifetime guarantee on an eighteen pound pan is a genuinely good offer if Dunelm honours it.
The problem is that the page will not tell you what the coating is. It says an innovative new toughening system, a finish that never peels or flakes, and five times stronger, and it never once says PTFE or ceramic. No maximum temperature. No oven guidance. No word on metal utensils. And no PFOA, PFAS or PTFE claim of any kind, which is at least not misleading, but leaves a buyer with nothing to check. For contrast, Dunelm’s own six pound Essentials pan does say what it is, and says Teflon.
Pros
- £18, less than a fifth of the GreenPan
- A lifetime guarantee, the longest on this page
- 4.7 from 432 reviews, the second largest pool here
- Dishwasher safe
Cons
- Does not say what the coating is made of, anywhere on the page
- No maximum temperature, no oven guidance, no metal utensil guidance published
- Makes no PFOA, PFAS or PTFE claim, so there is nothing to verify either way
- No review text renders, so the durability picture cannot be checked
Buy it if you replace pans often and eighteen pounds with a lifetime guarantee is the right trade. Skip it if you want to know what you are cooking on.
The two we would not buy
The asterisk
£99.90, two years
7. GreenPan Premiere Ceramic Non-Stick 28cm
★★★☆☆ 2.9 / 5
£99.90, the most expensive pan on this page, sold as a pioneer of PFAS free non-stick. Read the asterisk on that phrase and it says: our PFAS free ceramic non-stick is made without intentionally added PFAS. That is a statement about the recipe, not a test result, and GreenPan cites only an in house lab. No certificate, no number, no third party report.
The bigger problem is the guarantee and what owners report. Twenty four months on a hundred pound pan, against ten years from Ninja at a third of the price and twenty five years from ProCook at half. GreenPan sits at 3.1 on Trustpilot across 742 reviews with 32 per cent of them one star, and the complaint that dominates is the ceramic losing its release somewhere between three months and a year, including for people using only plastic utensils. That matches the independent lab work: a 2024 University of Cordoba study cooking a deliberately sticky batter up to ninety times per pan found the peel force needed to lift food was seven to fourteen times lower on PTFE than on sol gel ceramics.
Pros
- Genuinely PTFE free, and the ceramic coating is hard and heat tolerant
- Oven safe to 220 degrees, and metal utensil safe
- Thermolon is a well established coating rather than an unknown
- Dishwasher safe
Cons
- £99.90 with a two year guarantee, the worst price to cover ratio here
- PFAS free carries an asterisk reading made without intentionally added PFAS
- 3.1 on Trustpilot from 742 reviews, with 32 per cent at one star
- Owners repeatedly report the release going between three months and a year
- Independent testing found ceramic needs seven to fourteen times more force to release food than PTFE
Buy it if you have decided against fluoropolymers entirely and you like the brand. Skip it if you expect a hundred pound pan to still be non-stick in two years.
Last place
£89 for 26cm
8. Our Place Ceramic Non-Stick Always Pan, 26cm
★★½☆☆ 2.6 / 5
£89, and note it is a 26cm rather than the 28cm everything else here is priced at, because Our Place does not make one. It is the best looking pan on this page by a distance and that is genuinely most of what people are buying. The claim is the broadest here: made without PFAS including PTFE and PFOA, lead and cadmium. Same construction as GreenPan’s, a sourcing statement rather than a measured result, with no test report published.
Then the care rules. Hand wash only. No metal utensils at all, wooden or silicone only. Oven to 230 degrees. That is the strictest regime of the eight, on a ceramic coating that the independent evidence says will lose its release fastest. Our Place shows no rating on its own product page, and its Trustpilot sits at 1.9 from 42 reviews with 76 per cent one star. That is a small, self selecting pool and we would not hang a verdict on it alone, but the complaints in it are specific: chipping from two weeks to a year, coating coming off into food, warping, and a broken handle.
Pros
- The best looking pan here, and design is a real reason to buy something you leave on the hob
- The broadest chemical claim of the eight, covering PFAS, PTFE, PFOA, lead and cadmium
- Recycled aluminium body
- Three year warranty, longer than GreenPan’s two
Cons
- £89 for a 26cm, so more per centimetre than the £99.90 GreenPan 28cm
- Hand wash only and no metal utensils, the strictest care rules here
- No test report or certificate behind the PFAS claim, only a made without statement
- 1.9 on Trustpilot from 42 reviews, with chipping reported from two weeks in
- No review count or rating published on its own product page
Buy it if you want the pan that looks best on the hob and you will treat it carefully. Skip it if you want it to survive a dishwasher, a metal spatula or a busy kitchen.
Prices checked 26 August 2026 and may have changed since. All prices are for a 28cm pan except the Always Pan, which Our Place makes at 26cm only.
The clean pick, and the honest catch
Our clean pick
De Buyer Mineral B
Iron, carbon, and nothing else
Why it wins on materials
✓
There is no coating
Ninety nine per cent iron, one per cent carbon. Nothing to scratch, nothing to flake, nothing to migrate, and no claim to verify because there is nothing there to claim about.
✓
It improves rather than degrades
Every coated pan on this page is at its best on day one and gets worse. A seasoned carbon steel pan is the only one here that gets better with use.
✓
It outlives you
£44 once, against a ceramic pan at £90 to £100 that owners report losing its release inside a year. The arithmetic is not close.
✓
No fume risk at all
The one documented acute hazard in this category comes from overheating a fluoropolymer coating. Carbon steel has none, so an empty pan left on the heat is a ruined dinner rather than anything else.
What you give up
✕
It is not non-stick on arrival
You have to season it, and keep seasoning it. Plenty of people buy one, fail at that, and go back to a coated pan. Be honest with yourself about which you are.
✕
Hand wash, and it rusts
Never the dishwasher, dry it immediately, and a light oil before it goes away. That is a daily habit, not an occasional one.
✕
200 degrees for ten minutes
The lowest oven tolerance on this page by a distance. If you finish steaks in a hot oven, this is the wrong pan and the ProCook tri ply is the right one.
The catch, said plainly. The clean pick here is the pan most people will not stick with, and pretending otherwise would be useless. Carbon steel asks for a habit. If you will not form it, the honest answer is a coated pan with a long guarantee, and that is why a PTFE pan is first on this page rather than second.
Now the part the category gets wrong in both directions. PFOA free is on half these boxes and it means nothing, because PFOA was banned across Europe in July 2020 under the POPs Regulation and industry stopped using it years before that. It was never the coating anyway, only a processing aid. Meanwhile PTFE free and PFAS free are not the same claim either, and the two brands making the widest claim both footnote it as made without intentionally added PFAS, which is a recipe statement rather than a test.
And the scare that is not supported. Germany’s federal risk assessment body is direct about a scratched pan: tiny particles of coating that come off and get eaten are not expected to affect health, because PTFE is inert and passes through unchanged. A scratched pan is a performance problem, not a poisoning. The real hazard is narrower and worth respecting: an empty pan on full heat or a pan over an open flame can pass roughly 360 degrees, at which point the coating degrades and releases fumes with no smoke and no smell. That causes polymer fume fever, which is documented, usually mild, and lethal to pet birds. Cooking oil starts smoking well below that temperature, so smoking oil is your warning. Never heat a coated pan empty, and keep it off naked flame.
What to look for when you buy one
Learn the three words, because the whole category depends on you not knowing them. PFAS is a class of more than ten thousand chemicals. PTFE is one fluoropolymer inside that class and it is what most non-stick coatings are. PFOA is a single small molecule that was a processing aid, never the coating. PFOA free means nothing in 2026. PTFE free is a real and checkable claim. PFAS free is the widest claim and is usually asterisked.
Buy the guarantee, not the slogan. It is the only number on the box a brand has to stand behind. On this page it runs from two years to twenty five, and the two most expensive pans have the two shortest guarantees. That tells you what those manufacturers expect their coatings to do.
Ceramic is not the free upgrade it is sold as. It gets you out of the fluoropolymer question, and independent testing found it needs seven to fourteen times more force to release food than PTFE. Owner reports cluster on the release going within three months to a year. Buy ceramic for the chemistry if that matters to you, not for the performance or the lifespan.
Check the utensil rule on the actual pan, because they contradict each other. On this page metal is fine on the Tefal and the Ninja and explicitly forbidden on the ProCook non-stick and the Always Pan. Assuming is how coatings die early.
Check the oven limit before you buy, not after. The range here is 200 degrees for ten minutes, 220, 230, 260, 285, and one pan that cannot go in the oven at all.
Never heat a coated pan empty, and keep it off open flame. This is the one instruction with a regulator behind it and it is the one that prevents the only real acute hazard in the category.
Ignore the certificates, because there are none. Not one of the eight brands publishes a certificate, a test report or a reference number behind any chemical claim. Under food contact law the duty sits with the manufacturer to self declare, so there is no badge to look for and no register to check.
Final verdict
£55 and a 25 year guarantee, or £44 and no coating at all
This is a category that has been sold to people through fear, and the fear has been pointed at the wrong thing. PFOA has been illegal here for six years and half these boxes still advertise its absence as a feature. Meanwhile a scratched coating, the thing people actually worry about, is a performance problem rather than a health one according to the regulator, and the genuine hazard, an empty pan left on full heat, is the one nobody prints on the box.
If you want a non-stick pan, buy the ProCook Professional at £55 and keep it for twenty five years. It is PTFE, it says it is PTFE, and it is underwritten for longer than any other pan here. If you want no coating at all, the De Buyer carbon steel at £44 will outlive you and asks for a habit in return, and the ProCook tri ply at £70 gets you there with no maintenance if you can cook without a coating.
What we would not do is spend ninety or a hundred pounds on ceramic to avoid a class of chemicals, on a pan the maker will only guarantee for two or three years, with an asterisk on the claim and no test report behind it.