Instant Pot vs Crock-Pot: Which One Should You Buy?

The short answer

Quick picks

#	Cooker	Best for	Score	Price
01	Instant Pot Duo 7-in-1 Electric Pressure Cooker, 6 Quart The one to buy if you are not sure	1,000 W	8.6	$104.67Amazon
02	Crock-Pot 6-Quart Cook & Carry Programmable Slow Cooker If you only ever slow cook	240 W	7.0	$89.99Amazon

#ad · Prices pulled live from the Amazon Product API, last checked Aug 5, 2026. Where we have no verified live price we show none — we would rather leave a gap than print a number that has gone stale. The wattage column is what the manufacturer publishes; “not published” means exactly that, and we have not estimated one. Scores are ours, compiled from published specifications, and are not test results.

They are not the same appliance

“Crock-Pot” is a brand of slow cooker; “Instant Pot” is a brand of electric pressure cooker that also slow-cooks. That asymmetry is the whole comparison. An Instant Pot Duo can do everything a Crock-Pot does and pressure-cook on top of it; a Crock-Pot does the one thing, and does it with almost nothing to go wrong. So this is not “which is better” but “which fits how you cook.”

Speed is the real difference

Pressure cooking raises the boiling point, so an Instant Pot turns a chuck roast tender in about 40 minutes, dried beans in under an hour with no soak, a whole chicken in half an hour. The Crock-Pot gets to the same tender result — but over 6 to 8 hours, on purpose. If you decide at 6 p.m. that you want a pot roast tonight, only one of these can do it. If you set up dinner before work and want it ready when you get home, the slow cooker was built for exactly that.

Running cost: the surprise

The Crock-Pot draws just 240 W— the lowest of any appliance on this site, and a fraction of the Instant Pot's 1,000 W. But the Instant Pot runs for minutes where the Crock-Pot runs for hours, so the total energy per meal is closer than the nameplate suggests. The exact per-hour figures are on both product cards below, computed at the US average rate so you can compare them directly. The honest summary: neither is expensive to run, and speed, not electricity, should decide this.

Versatility versus simplicity

The Instant Pot is a pressure cooker, slow cooker, rice cooker, steamer, yogurt maker and sauté pan in one 18/8 stainless pot. The Crock-Pot slow-cooks, and its removable oval stoneware crock with a locking Cook & Carry lid genuinely travels to a potluck without sloshing. The trade is the usual one: the versatile machine has a pressure seal and electronics that can eventually fail; the simple one has a heating base, a timer and a stoneware pot, and almost nothing to break.

The decision rule

Buy the Instant Potif you want speed, versatility, or the ability to decide on dinner the same evening — it does the Crock-Pot's job plus a great deal more, and it is our overall category winner. Buy the Crock-Pot if you only ever slow-cook, you value dump-and-go simplicity and a travel-safe lid, and you would rather have one appliance that cannot really go wrong than one that can do everything. If you are torn, the Instant Pot is the safer single purchase, because it can always just slow-cook.

In detail

The picks, in full

The one to buy if you are not sure

Instant Pot Duo 7-in-1 Electric Pressure Cooker, 6 Quart

Rated power:1000 W Capacity:6 Qt / 5.7 L Working pressure:10.2–11.6 psi (70–80 kPa) high Functions:7-in-1, 13 programs Inner pot:18/8 stainless, tri-ply base

Stainless inner potWattage & pressure published

8.6/10

The multicooker that made the category, and still the right default. Instant Brands publishes the wattage, the working pressure range and a stainless (not nonstick) inner pot, which is more than most of the field manages — and it costs less than almost all of them.

Capability: 7.5
Capacity: 8
Documentation: 9.5
Build: 8.5
Value: 9.5

What it gets right

Instant Brands publishes the wattage, the working-pressure range and the pot material — the full set, which most of the field does not
The 18/8 stainless inner pot has no coating to scratch off, so it outlives the nonstick pots in cookers costing more
At the current price it is the cheapest genuinely well-documented multicooker on this site

What it doesn't

No sous vide or air-fry program — this is the plain pressure-and-slow-cook model, by design
The steam release is a manual toggle, not the quiet auto-release of the Duo Plus or Pro
Seven functions is fewer than the sticker-count leaders, though most of those are the same element at different set points

What it costs to run

About 18.8¢ an hour at full rated draw, at the US average of 18.83¢ per kWh.

1,000 W ÷ 1000 × 1 h × 18.83¢ = 18.8¢

1000 W at 120 V / 60 Hz, published on the Instant Pot Duo product page and confirmed on the IP-DUO60 manual specification page. This is an upper bound: the element only draws full power while it is heating up or pressurizing, then cycles off to hold temperature, and no manufacturer publishes a duty cycle — so we compute at full rated draw rather than invent a correction factor. The full method is published.

Skip this if…

…you specifically want sous vide, a quieter steam release, or an air-fry lid — the Duo has none of those, and reaching for it and then wishing it did more is the most common Instant Pot regret. Step up to the Pro or Duo Crisp instead.

$104.67on Amazon

$109.995% off

Price last checked Aug 5, 2026. Prices move constantly — Amazon's at checkout is the one that counts.

#ad · we may earn a commission from this link to Instant Pot Duo 7-in-1 Electric Pressure Cooker, 6 Quart

If you only ever slow cook

Crock-Pot 6-Quart Cook & Carry Programmable Slow Cooker

Rated power:240 W Capacity:6 Quart Type:Programmable slow cooker Crock:Removable oval stoneware

Lowest draw on the siteSlow cook only

7.0/10

Not a multicooker and not a pressure cooker — a plain 6-quart programmable slow cooker with a locking Cook & Carry lid. It is here as the honest counterweight to the whole category: if the only function you ever used on a multicooker was Slow Cook, this does that one job for a fraction of the price.

Capability: 4
Capacity: 8
Documentation: 7.5
Build: 7
Value: 8.5

What it gets right

At 240 W it is by far the lowest-draw appliance on this site — a genuinely cheap way to cook all day
The locking lid genuinely travels — to a potluck, a tailgate, a family dinner — without sloshing
Almost nothing to fail: no pressure seal, no gasket to replace, no electronics beyond a timer

What it doesn't

It only slow-cooks — no pressure, no sauté in the pot, no rice program, no sous vide
Slow by design: a pot roast is a 6–8 hour job here versus 40 minutes under pressure
The stoneware crock is heavy and breakable, unlike a metal multicooker pot

What it costs to run

About 4.5¢ an hour at full rated draw, at the US average of 18.83¢ per kWh.

240 W ÷ 1000 × 1 h × 18.83¢ = 4.5¢

240 W at 120 V / 60 Hz, published on Crock-Pot's own product page for the 6-quart Cook & Carry programmable slow cooker. This is an upper bound: the element only draws full power while it is heating up or pressurizing, then cycles off to hold temperature, and no manufacturer publishes a duty cycle — so we compute at full rated draw rather than invent a correction factor. The full method is published.

Skip this if…

…you want speed or versatility. This is the opposite of a pressure cooker — it is slow on purpose. If you would ever use a sauté, rice or pressure function, buy an Instant Pot and this becomes redundant.

$89.99on Amazon

$94.995% off

Price last checked Aug 5, 2026. Prices move constantly — Amazon's at checkout is the one that counts.

#ad · we may earn a commission from this link to Crock-Pot 6-Quart Cook & Carry Programmable Slow Cooker

How we picked

Machines we claim to have tested: 0

Everyone in this category tells you they tested twenty cookers. We have tested none, and we say so. Here is what we do instead: read the manufacturer's manual and spec page, record the published wattage, capacity, pressure or temperature figure and warranty term, work out what the machine costs to run per hour, show the arithmetic so you can redo it with your own electricity rate, and cite all of it. Where a brand publishes no wattage, we print no running cost rather than borrowing a number from a similar model. Prices come live from Amazon's API and disappear rather than go stale.

The scores above are judgments from that documented research — not test results. One of the five metrics is Documentation: whether the manufacturer will tell you what its cooker draws at all. The full rubric, including what disqualifies a pick, is published in full.

Questions

Frequently asked

What is the difference between an Instant Pot and a Crock-Pot?

An Instant Pot is an electric pressure cooker that also slow-cooks, sautés, steams and cooks rice; a Crock-Pot is a slow cooker that does that one job. The Instant Pot is faster and far more versatile; the Crock-Pot is simpler, cheaper and draws far less power.

Can an Instant Pot replace a Crock-Pot?

Yes. An Instant Pot has a slow-cook function that does everything a Crock-Pot does, plus pressure cooking. The main thing a dedicated Crock-Pot still offers is a travel-safe locking lid and dead-simple operation. More on that trade-off here.

Which is cheaper to run, an Instant Pot or a Crock-Pot?

The Crock-Pot draws only 240 watts against the Instant Pot's 1,000, but it runs for hours where the Instant Pot runs for minutes, so total energy per meal is closer than the nameplate wattage suggests. Both are inexpensive to run; the per-hour figures are on each product card.

Keep reading

Receipts

Sources

We have not tested these machines in a lab and we do not pretend to have. Specifications come from the manufacturer's own published documents; electricity rates come from the US Energy Information Administration; prices come from the live Amazon API. Where a figure is not published, the page says “not published” rather than guessing. Read the full method.