The research
- The best thick-crust pepperoni pizza
- Deep-dish delicacies
- For toppings lovers
- Wood-fired flavor for a little less dough
- For nostalgia, served hot
- For a thin-crust upgrade, appetizer-size
- Other good frozen pizzas
- The competition
- How we picked and tested
The best thick-crust pepperoni pizza
Our pick
DiGiorno Rising Crust Pepperoni Pizza
Filling, dependable pepperoni pizza
Thick, pillowy crust sets this pizza apart, with balanced flavors DiGiorno has down to a science.
Buying Options
$8 from Walmart
$8 from Target
$8 from Amazon
The DiGiorno Rising Crust Pepperoni Pizza was one of our overall favorites. Among the only rising-crust styles we tested that actually rose, it came out nicely browned, with a voluminous, bready crust that was crispy on the bottom and fully cooked throughout.
Whereas other crusts were overly salty or sickeningly sweet, completely bland or strangely spiced, this one was well seasoned, with balanced flavors. Even tasters who don’t favor thick crusts noted that it tasted pretty good and supported a solid slice.
The plentiful pepperoni slices crisped up nicely, the sauce had a garlicky kick, and the cheese was decent and generous. Though not mind-blowing, this was an ample, satisfying pizza that was greater than the sum of its parts. Each ingredient blended well with the others, making for a cohesive, tasty bite.
We preferred this pizza to DiGiorno’s Rising Crust Four Cheese Pizza. Without the salty, spicy pepperoni, the cheese pizza is overly sweet, and we struggled to get it to bake through when following the package instructions.
Deep-dish delicacies
Our pick
Authentic Motor City Pizza Co. Four Cheese
Crispy, garlicky, square-crust pizza
Magic happens in this pan pizza as cheese and garlic caramelize and enrobe the crust.
Buying Options
$9 from Target
Authentic Motor City Pizza Co. Pepperoni
Modest pepperoni on a thick, rich pie
You get only a few pepperoni per slice, but we didn’t mind.
Buying Options
$9 from Target
Authentic Motor City Pizza Co. frozen pizzas have a devoted following, and some of that attention is surely deserved. You can find these “authentic Detroit-style deep dish pizzas” (which are the only pies we tested that come in their own baking pan) at some Wegmans, Costcos, and Targets. They stand out for their crust style—not deep dish in the Chicago sense but more like a rectangular-pan pizza. This is the largest pizza we recommend, bigger even than the notoriously behemoth DiGiorno Rising Crust Pepperoni Pizza, so it’s a great choice to feed a crowd.
The thick, pillowy crust is ample and good enough but on its own is not noteworthy. One taster remarked, “It’s not focaccia. It’d be great if it were focaccia. It’s like white bread.” But the magic happens in the pan itself. The crust is brushed with a garlic butter that, when combined with an excess of cheese, browns and crisps along the edges and underside of the pizza, which makes delectable, lacy, crispy bits that send this pie to the next level.
The sauce is garlicky and peppery, with notes of parmesan and a pleasant, silky texture. The cheese on the Four Cheese pizza, a blend of mozzarella, Parmesan, Asiago, and Romano, was pretty neutral in flavor but melted evenly and covered the pizza well without overwhelming it.
The pepperoni pizza is generously cloaked in part-skim mozzarella, but it’s skimpy on the pepperoni, with only around 16 pieces on a pretty large pie and only a couple per slice. (If you want oodles of pepperoni, you might prefer the Double Pepperoni pizza, which we didn’t try.)
For toppings lovers
Our pick
Screamin’ Sicilian Holy Pepperoni
Pepperoni indulgence
Ready your napkins: This pizza is covered in crispy, oily pepperoni.
Buying Options
$7 from Walmart
$9 from Amazon
Screamin’ Sicilian Bessie’s Revenge
Cheese overload
If you eat pizza for the cheese, this ooey-gooey pie may be the one for you.
Buying Options
$8 from Target
Tons of toppings are the point of Screamin’ Sicilian pizzas, as their boxes boast “Piles of pepperoni!” and “Ridiculous amounts of cheese!”—and it’s not all gimmick. The mountains of toppings have a suitable home atop a solid base. Holy Pepperoni is a maximalist’s dream, with almost two full layers of crispy, oily pepperoni. Combined with the surplus of sauce, this pizza is especially messy to eat—shirt fronts, be warned.
Bessie’s Revenge, Screamin’ Sicilian’s cheese offering, makes good on its promise of generous toppings too, with a blend of shredded mozzarella, Parmesan, Romano, and white cheddar, plus a generous handful of fresh mozzarella slices, a rarity among the pizzas we tried. The browned cheese around the crust brought a nutty, caramelized flavor to the pizza. Some tasters found this pizza intimidatingly cheesy—it’s not for the casual cheese eater. Get this pie if you want a rich, decadent pizza, with an emphasis on cheese.
The sauce on both pies is tangy, pleasingly salty, and actually tomatoey, with garlicky notes and just a hint of dried herbs. The crust is no star, reminiscent of a thicker version of the crunchy, crumbly, almost cracker-like crust you’d find in a Red Baron or Tombstone pizza—but it’s well seasoned and nicely crunchy, offering a balance to the oodles of toppings. The result is a canvas just good enough to let the toppings bounty shine.
Wood-fired flavor for a little less dough
Trader Joe’s Wood Fired Naples Style Uncured Pepperoni Pizza (about $6 at the time of publication)
The Trader Joe’s Wood Fired Naples Style Uncured Pepperoni Pizza finds a middle ground between the fancier and pricier wood-fired Table 87 Coal Oven Pepperoni Pizza and more-nostalgic frozen pies like our pick from Tombstone. One taster likened it to pizza they would be happy to snack on at a bar.
Though the crust doesn’t live up to its Naples-style designation—it lacks the dynamic texture and airy chew of an actual Neapolitan pizza—it was still among our favorites, with large air bubbles throughout, even in the center of the pie. Unlike most of the pizzas we tested, this one came fully cooked. It emerged from the oven crispy on the bottom and chewy inside, without any doughy, underdone bits to be found. But being precooked may also be why this pizza dried out quickly.
The toppings were mixed—the sauce was a decent marinara, it could have used more cheese, and the pepperoni was standard, if on the salty side. This pie was best right out of the oven—we wouldn’t want to snack on it cold.
If you want cheese over pepperoni, go for Trader Joe’s Pizza Margherita, which reminded us of slice-joint pizza, over the Organic 3 Cheese Pizza, which was short on cheese.
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For nostalgia, served hot
Our pick
Tombstone Original Thin Crust Pepperoni Pizza
No frills, crunchy-crust pizza
If you grew up eating frozen pizza, this pie will take you back, with a crunchy crust, chewy cheese, and a strong pepperoni flavor.
Buying Options
$5 from Walmart
$5 from Target
Tombstone’s Original Thin Crust Pepperoni Pizza was our favorite among the nostalgic, lower-priced, thin-crust options we tried, like those from Totino’s and Red Baron. This pie screams sleepover pizza—delightful, if not wholesome—and does what it does well.
The crust was crunchy but still maintained a slightly open, airy crumb—not dense, tough, or overly cracker-y, like others in this category. The ratio of sauce to cheese to pepperoni was spot on, and the toppings were evenly distributed over the pie, with pleasingly browned cheese, especially around the edges. Perhaps most distinctively, this pizza packed an extra pepperoni punch. On closer inspection we realized why: Little cubes of pepperoni are mixed into the sauce in addition to the slices of salty, smoky pep on top.
We also tried Tombstone’s Original Thin Crust 5 Cheese Pizza, and it was decent, but we missed the pepperoni-in-sauce magic.
For a thin-crust upgrade, appetizer-size
Our pick
Table 87 Coal Oven Margherita Pizza
An actual margherita, with fresh, clean flavors
Where other frozen margherita pizzas hardly replicate the classic, Table 87 nails a satisfying—though sort of skimpy—bright, fresh pie.
Buying Options
Table 87 Coal Oven Pepperoni Pizza
Pepperoni cups on a fresh base
Crispy, curled pepperoni top Table 87’s margherita-like base for a scrumptious, snack-size pizza.
Buying Options
Table 87 is the lowest-priced option we found in the growing category of high-end, coal-oven-baked, flash-frozen pizzas, and it is the only one to meet our requirement of being widely available in stores.
Tasters favored these pies for their simple flavors and recognizable ingredients. Table 87 has some of the best individual components of all the pizzas we’ve tasted, with a chewy, floury, crisp crust; bright, simple, tart sauce; and whole-milk mozzarella that tastes milky and fresh.
The Table 87 Coal Oven Margherita Pizza was balanced and restrained, with ample sauce, just enough cheese, and a few leaves of basil that lend some fragrance to the pie, balancing well with the pizza’s other components into a truly scrumptious bite.
The Table 87 Coal Oven Pepperoni Pizza was slightly less successful. The pepperoni slices tasted premium, with subtle spice, and they curled up into delightful little cups when baked. But they didn’t seem quite at home on the pizza, which one taster said was like a margherita with pepperoni on top. It was also dryer than the margherita pizza and could use more sauce. But if you like the idea of roni cups on a thin pizzeria-style crust, Table 87’s pepperoni is a fine option.
Compared with other pizzas we tasted, Table 87’s pies are puny. A pizza might be enough for one person with a salad on the side (or piled on top, as one of our tasters found the Table 87 margherita to be begging for the insalata treatment). But to feed a pair, you’d need two pizzas or a couple of substantive sides to make it a meal, rather than a nice snack.
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Other good frozen pizzas
A pepperoni pizza that doesn’t skimp on cheese: (about $7 at the time of publication) was another self-rising pizza that actually rose, resulting in a browned, puffy crust that was slightly flatter than that of the DiGiorno Rising Crust Pepperoni Pizza. Though it came through on its pillowy promise, the crust didn’t bring much flavor to the table. The sauce was tomatoey, sweet, and slightly garlicky, but nothing special. The sparse pepperoni slices were distributed unevenly and were too oily, with grease dripping off each one. What set this pie apart was the cheese: Chewy, stringy, and plentiful, it covered the pizza crust to crust. This pizza is a great choice for someone who calls in their delivery order with extra cheese.
Tombstone-esque, cracker-y crust, but with whole wheat and whole-milk mozzarella: Newman’s Own Uncured Pepperoni Pizza (about $7.50 at the time of publication) was similar to the thin-crust style of Tombstone but with higher-quality ingredients. It has some actual chew—the light, dynamic texture of a baked good rather than the uncanny crumble of a crust seemingly printed by a machine. Newman’s Own uses 100% whole-milk mozzarella; the only other contender in this taste test that can say the same is Table 87 pizza, our most expensive per-ounce pick. Some liked the cheese, while others remarked it tasted like string cheese, but all agreed the pizza needed more of it. Some tasters also found this one too salty, with an overpowering dried-herb taste.
If you want throwback, kid-friendly pizza but can’t do pepperoni: Tombstone Original Thin Crust 5 Cheese Pizza (about $6 at the time of publication) could be the pie for you. The cheese version of our pepperoni pick left us wanting for those genius little cubes of pepperoni in the sauce. But if you want the same nostalgic vibe, this is still a good version of an inexpensive, kid-friendly frozen pizza. The sauce is a basic marinara with a nice acidic kick. The chewy cheese reminded tasters of cafeteria lunch, and the crust was crunchy around the edges and bready toward the center. This pizza won’t blow anyone away, but it will take you back in time.
A margherita pizza with a homemade vibe: Amy’s Margherita Pizza (about $9.50 at the time of publication) charmed our tasters with its simple flavors and wholesome ingredients. The whole-wheat crust tastes nutty and has a satisfying chew, but it’s more similar to a good homemade crust than one from a pizzeria. The sauce is bright and fresh, with chunks of tomato. The cubes of fresh mozzarella were very mild, with only a slight milky flavor. The overall effect was comforting to tasters who find frozen pizzas too processed. Green flecks of basil might put off picky eaters, but their bark is bigger than their bite, with only a mild herb flavor coming through. We appreciated the noticeable taste of olive oil in this pie and found it to be satisfying and clean, but like the pizzas from Table 87, it’s quite small for the price.
Pizza oven realness, underwhelming cheese: The highlight of Trader Joe’s Pizza Margherita (about $4 at the time of publication) is the chewy, slightly charred, adequately seasoned crust, which reminded our tasters of slice-joint pizza. The sauce is bright and delivers on tomato flavor, but leans sweet and goes a bit overboard on the oregano. The pizza is topped with deli-counter-style slices of mozzarella, rather than fresh mozz, which makes us wonder why it’s called a margherita at all—this is really just a cheese pizza. While the Pizza Margherita doesn’t live up to the potential of its tasty crust or to its “margherita” name, it’s still a serviceable cheese pizza at a reasonable price.
The competition
Cheese
The DiGiorno Rising Crust Four Cheese Pizza (about $10 at the time of publication) took longer to cook than the package instructions specified and still had a doughy flavor and squidgy texture even after extra baking. The cheese was fine, and the edges of the crust that were fully cooked were tasty, but we think frozen pizza should be a fast, no-stress meal, and this pie did not deliver on that front.
The DiGiorno Hand-Tossed Style Crust Four Cheese Pizza (about $10 at the time of publication) baked more quickly and evenly than the DiGiorno Rising Crust Four Cheese Pizza, with a denser texture. The cheese blend had a parmesan kick, but the marinara sauce was salty, and overall, this pizza was middling, evoking chain pizzeria, hospital pizza, and bowling alley pizza for our respective tasters.
We like the sweet, nutty crust and fresh, tomatoey sauce on Amy’s Cheese Pizza (about $11 at the time of publication), but it didn’t have enough cheese, and the pizza is small for the price. We preferred the more satisfying Amy’s Margherita Pizza.
We enjoyed the chewy crust on Trader Joe’s Organic 3 Cheese Pizza (about $5 at the time of publication), which could pass for crust from a pizza shop. But because the sauce was overpowered by the taste of dried herbs and the layer of shredded cheese was quite thin, we preferred the cheesier Trader Joe’s Pizza Margherita.
(about $9 at the time of publication) fell short, with a sickly sweet, under-seasoned crust, overly salty sauce, and rubbery cheese.
(about $9 at the time of publication) had a nicely spicy but sparse sauce and bland, tortilla-like crust. The cheese blend, a mix of cheddar, Asiago, Parmesan, and mozzarella, was nicely funky and tart in some bites, but powdery and acrid in others.
California Pizza Kitchen Crispy Thin Crust Four Cheese Pizza (about $10 at the time of publication) had a disappointing, pita-like crust, too-strong oregano flavor in the sauce, and an odd porky aroma from the smoked gouda in the cheese blend that didn’t serve the overall flavor of the pizza.
Where some frozen pizzas taste like cafeteria pizza in a good way, Great Value Rising Crust Cheese Pizza (about $4.50 at the time of publication) tastes like cafeteria pizza in a bad way, with off-tasting cheese, oregano-overload, and salty, oily sauce. Though fully cooked, the crust tasted raw and returned to a mushy, doughy texture when chewed.
Pepperoni
With fewer pepperoni slices and a mealier textured crust, Red Baron Classic Crust Pepperoni Pizza (about $5 at the time of publication) was outshined by the similar but better executed Tombstone Original Thin Crust Pepperoni Pizza. But if you favor this style of pizza and your store only has options from Red Baron, it’s an adequate replacement.
Aldi’s Mama Cozzi’s Pizza Kitchen Pepperoni Rising Crust Pizza (about $3.50 at the time of publication) is a favorite among Aldi lovers, and we were drawn to the low price, but tasters found the pizza overwhelmingly salty, with a strange and overpowering anise or fennel flavor coming from the sauce.
Costco’s Kirkland Signature Pepperoni Pizza (about $17 for four pizzas at the time of publication) was well cheesed and covered in pepperoni slices, but the crust was bland and overly sweet, with a tough, cracker-like texture and a slightly acrid taste.
The 365 by Whole Foods Uncured Pepperoni Rising Crust Pizza (about $4 at the time of publication) was among the least visually appealing pizzas we tested, with an uncanny seam around the crust as though the pizza had been stamped out by a machine. This crust—which had a dense, closed texture and doughy finish—was a total nonstarter.
In our pizza shopping, we found that even tiny corner stores with minimal freezer sections had Ellio’s Pepperoni Pizza (about $6 at the time of publication) in stock, and this nostalgic pick seemed like a great way to test a Totino’s-tier pizza without having to stomach imitation cheese. But this pizza was unappealing, both visually and taste-wise, with sparse, barely melted cheese, too much sauce, a cloyingly sweet crust, and an imbalance of flavors that barely approximates pizza.
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How we picked and tested
In our first round of frozen pizza taste tests in 2023, we started with pepperoni. We wanted to assess the quality, flavor, quantity, and distribution of at least one topping across the pizzas we tested. Pepperoni was the obvious choice: It’s common, a classic, and the one offered by most brands. In 2024, we sampled the cheese versions of our pepperoni picks, as well as a few additional brands.
To decide which pizzas to test, we asked Wirecutter staffers from across the country to photograph the frozen pizzas available in large grocery chains near them, accumulating a database of pizzas in dozens of stores across 22 cities. We also used the “find in-store” function on pizza brands’ websites. We only tested pizzas that were widely available, avoiding region-specific options, expensive mail-order pizzas, limited-edition pizzas, or anything otherwise hard to find in the average grocery store.
We also noted frozen pizzas recommended by other publications and scoured Reddit threads full of opinionated pizza lovers. We looked at the most-highly rated pizzas at Target.com and read reviews.
We set a price range of about $3 to $11 and disqualified pizzas (like ones from Totino’s) that exclusively use imitation cheese. We focused on traditional crusts rather than outliers like French bread or croissant pizzas. We defaulted to rising-crust options when brands offered them, as these are relatively commonplace, and chose thin crust when they did not. We wound up with a mix of thin-crust, Neapolitan-style, rising-crust, and deep-dish pizzas.
We tried 26 pizzas in brand-concealed taste tests with several members of the Wirecutter kitchen team. We baked each pizza according to the package instructions, noting how long each took to bake and any quirks or challenges. (Our picks mostly cooked true to the instructions, unless otherwise noted.) We examined each pizza frozen out of the package and fresh out of the oven. We took note of which were more or less appealing visually, especially focusing on cheese melt, grease level, and crust integrity and color.
Taste-testers rated and reflected on each pizza’s crust, sauce, cheese, pepperoni, and overall taste. When it came to flavor:
- We avoided overly sweet or salty crusts and noted when they had pleasant flavors, like olive oil or whole wheat. We sought out textures that reminded us of slice-joint pizza, or at least brought something nice to the table, like plentifulness, chew, or crunch.
- We favored sauces that taste like actual tomato, with bright, tart flavors that more closely resembled a fresh or good canned tomato than a bottom-shelf marinara. We developed a deep-seated vendetta against sauces that went too heavy on dried herbs, which can quickly overwhelm an entire pizza.
- We liked cheese that was fresh and milky, and we were pleasantly surprised whenever a cheese blend had a tart, tangy flavor or any notable cheese funk.
- We preferred pepperoni slices that weren’t overly salty but instead offered a balance of salt and subtle spice.
This article was edited by Gabriella Gershenson, Marguerite Preston, and Marilyn Ong.