Best Grill Gloves for Barbecue? Here’s our take.

The best grill gloves would be able to handle any amount of heat that a grill would put out, have the dexterity of a pair of nitrile exam gloves, be able to go through the washer and dryer to clean and... I think we all know that those grill gloves don't exist.

There are limits to what a grill glove can do. When they excel at heat resistance, they lose dexterity as a trade off. Easy to clean often means slippery exteriors and things get dropped.

The majority of us who live behind the grill have settled on a specific style of grill glove, but are they the best? Today we're rounding them all up and putting them to the test to figure out if one type is better than the others to do the actual tasks of barbecue like move hot grill grates, transfer hot foods, and even handle lit charcoal. 

What gloves do people use for barbecue?

Today we're looking at 6 different styles of gloves that are often used in outdoor cooking, though they each have pros and cons.

Quick Disclaimer

We purchased all of these gloves except the Breeo, which clearly have been used a lot over the past couple of years. This selection of gloves are best sellers on Amazon, but none of the manufacturers have been notified that they're included in this content, and we aren't being paid by anyone to make it.

What follows is our honest experience testing these, and our thoughts are our own. If you find this article helpful, the way you can help us continue to create content like this is to use our links whenever you're shopping and we'll earn a small commission. That's how we get paid and we can keep making more comparison content so you can skip buyers remorse and only get the proven winners.

The Right Fit

Let's start with one of the biggest challenges we all face in grilling gloves, and that's SIZING. The thing is, most grill gloves are marketed as one size fits all, and to translate that in reality-speak means one size barely fits anybody very well.

There are a few that come in multiple sizes, but my hands and David's hands are very differently sized and we both grill every day. So, we tried on each pair of gloves to show you how well each fit on both men's and women's hands. 

Size To Order:

There are 2 glove options that can be purchased for a specific size.

First are the cotton glove liners with Nitrile gloves layered on top. While the cotton gloves are one size fits all, the Nitrile gloves are available in multiple sizes and the ones we have here are XL. They're a little tight getting the Nitrile gloves over the liners on David, but I had no problem. Both of us are able to get our hands all the way to the ends of the gloves, and they are a fit for both of us. At home, we have a box of Medium Nitrile for the kids and myself to use, and they provide a much better fit.

These HeyGrillHey Pitmaster Gloves are a size Medium because I ordered them specifically for my size. There's a guide on their website and Amazon to help you, but based on the Amazon reviews, I decided to size up and just got the Medium instead of a small. Turns out, I probably could have done just fine with a small since these had a little extra room. Based on the sizing chart and my experience, we later ordered David a size large and they fit him perfectly.

One Size Fit All (or None)

The silicone gloves on the other hand (get it... glove humor) are HUGE on my hands, and there's all kinds of room I can't use in the fingers. They fit David ok, but there's still extra room in the fingers for him, so still a little big for both of us. 

The neoprene BBQ Gloves are also huge for my hands, but they work ok if I can keep them from falling off. They fit David better, but there's still extra room in the fingers, so they're not snug, which affects control, but more on that later.

The Suede gloves fit both of us, but they are very large for myself and even a bit large for David.

The Aramid weave gloves are very large for myself, but fit "ok" since it's designed to be more snug than the previously mentioned gloves. They're pretty much a perfect fit for David.

Of course, the more tight fitting the gloves are, the more difficult they are to pull off when you're done, and that can be a frustration for some users. I don't know that I can relate since I have small hands and am used to using all of David's oversized gloves.

Does Dexterity Matter?

To test the dexterity and control that we had with these gloves, we set up a series of tests, and the first was the lighter test. This is the lighter we use around the Lab, and there's a tiny toggle switch on the side to allow the larger switch to ignite the lighter.

We tested both switches with each pair of gloves, and we didn't have any problem with the Cotton Liners, Pitmaster Gloves, Aramid style, or the neoprene gloves. 

The Silicone gave us the hardest time, simply because there's so much extra room in the fingers to have much control. The suede gloves were less difficult than the Silicone, but still weren't as easy as the others.

Next we grabbed a bottle of our Pork Protocol BBQ Rub and tried to open it with each style of glove. All of them were able to open the shaker lid, but it was the hardest to grab and shake the bottle with the silicone gloves. (and shameless plug, we have 4 bbq rub blends that we sell out of our shop in Indiana, and you can get them on our website. It's a delicious way to support us making more testing videos in the future.) 

Next, since Uno is here with us most days at The Lab, we knew that we needed a test he could be a part of, so we grabbed some tongs and a few dog treats to see if we could control the tongs well enough to be able to flip them over like they were a chicken leg on the grill. Each pair of gloves had no difficulty with this test, but it was admittedly the easiest on the Cotton Glove liners and the Pitmaster Gloves. In the end, Uno got his well-deserved rewards. 

David wanted to come up with a test that was almost impossible for these gloves, so meet the Washer Test. These are 4 small washers laid flat on our table, and he wanted to see if we could pick them up and stack them while wearing each pair of gloves.

As you might expect, the suede gloves didn't have a chance. The silicone gloves also said "no way, José". The Aramid couldn't get a single washer picked up with the same results on the PVC style glove. The PitMaster gloves weren't able to pick up a washer, but they were able to get some stacking done, so the best of the bunch so far, but the true winner of the washer test is the cotton glove liners which were able to pick up and stack the washers with ease.

Best Waterproof Grill Gloves

There are plenty of barbecue tasks that require waterproof gloves. I think of all the times I've pulled a hot brisket or pork butt off a grill to wrap it. It's too hot to handle with my bare hands, but I'm not about to handle meat directly with something that's not waterproof. Of the 6 styles we're looking at today, the only gloves that are NOT waterproof are the leather gloves and the aramid gloves. The cotton glove liners are not waterproof by themselves, but when layered under nitrile gloves, they are.

Best High Heat Gloves

We find that there are some times when a higher level of heat resistance is in order. Anytime we're working with an offset smoker, reaching into a fire box to add wood or move burning logs, removing or moving hot grill grates, or adding or removing accessories from a fire pit, an extra layer of protection is needed. 

Hot grill grates

We lit up the Huntsman grill from Spider Grills and set it to get our charcoal fire up to 500°. This is the top end that most of our gloves are rated for, and we wanted to see if we could move hot grill grates with our competitors. The suede, aramid, and neoprene gloves all performed wonderfully with almost no heat detected from inside the gloves. 

The silicone and Pitmaster gloves were both able to perform the task without issue, though heat was felt from the inside.

The pair that failed the hot grate test was the cotton glove liners. I got halfway through the move, and got too nervous to continue because I was feeling significantly more heat than I had with the previous gloves.

Handling lit charcoal

I know that when David cooks on one of his offset smokers, he has charcoal fall out of the firebox from time to time, which he needs to get back in the pit. He successfully picked up and held a lit briquette for 10 seconds with three pairs of gloves, including the suede, neoprene, and aramid fiber. The Pitmaster gloves, silicone gloves and the cotton glove liners don't have a high enough heat rating for this kind of heat, and we can't recommend them for this application.

The Barbecue Lab Top Picks

It's time to tabulate the results and name a winner for the best bbq gloves of 2026, but these results are very difficult to tabulate unless you determine what kind of result you're after. So, allow me to break down the results based on use cases, which I think is the most fair way to do it.

Food handling

If I was moving a hot brisket or a pork butt around on the grill before wrapping or after wrapping in foil or butcher paper:

1. Pitmaster
2. Cotton Liners/Nitrile
3. Neoprene

If I were ranking them for their ability to pick up a lit piece of charcoal or a split of wood that was on fire, or needed to carry a hot cast iron skillet inside to the kitchen, I'd rank them like this:

1. Suede
2. Aramid
3. Neoprene 

Here's how I'd go if I were grilling kebabs and wanted to turn things with my hands instead of using tongs:

1. Pitmaster
2. Cotton Liners/Nitrile
   

If I wanted the easiest cleanup between segments of a BBQ cook, I'd order them like this:

1. Pitmaster
2. Neoprene
3. Cotton Liners/Nitrile

Now, I realize that all of that is very non-committal and doesn't pick a true winner, and we could be fine with that, but we've read the comments, and you, the people want a winner, so we're going to give you one.