Presto vs All American Pressure Canners: Which One Belongs on Your Stove?

Two brands own the pressure canner conversation, and they aren't really competing on the same thing. Short answer first.

If you cook on induction, buy the Presto. All American says plainly not to use their canners on induction cooktops, and Presto builds a 23-quart model with a stainless steel-clad base specifically for that burner. If you can once or twice a year and the sticker price is the deciding factor, the Presto 23-quart will do the job safely, and it has been doing it in American kitchens for decades. If you can year round and you want the pot to outlive you, the All American is the one. Both are real, tested, USDA-appropriate pressure canners. Neither one is a mistake!

The rest of this is about which one fits your stove, your calendar, and your back.

Presto vs All American, side by side before we get into the why

Yes, both companies are in Wisconsin. Two hours apart! Whichever way you go, you're buying from the same stretch of the Midwest, and we love that.

The gasket is the difference everyone leads with, and it really is a real one

A Presto canner seals with a rubber sealing ring seated in the rim of the lid. It works, and it has for generations. But rubber is rubber: it dries out, it takes a set, and eventually it quits sealing. Presto sells the replacement ring bundled with a fresh overpressure plug (part 09985) because they want both swapped together, and that's an every-few-years errand. Cheap. Just a thing you have to remember, usually on the exact evening the tomatoes are already sitting in the sink.

An All American has no gasket at all. The lid and the pot are precision machined so metal seats directly against metal, and six clamping wing nuts pull them together. There is nothing to buy, ever!

That machined bevel is the entire seal. No ring, no groove, nothing that ages out in a drawer.

There's an asterisk, and it's a big one: a metal-to-metal seal has a break-in period. Some units take several uses, occasionally up to ten, before the aluminum settles in and seals reliably. You also wipe a thin film of olive oil or Vaseline around the sealing edge before every batch, and tighten the wing nuts crisscross, same as lug nuts on a tire. More fuss than dropping a ring into a lid? Day one, absolutely. Over twenty years, dramatically less.

What actually holds the pressure: a dial you have to trust, or a weight you don't

Forget the price tag for a minute, because this is the difference that changes your yearly chore list.

The Presto 23-quart is a dial gauge canner. That needle is not a readout, it is the instrument. You hold 11 pounds by watching it and riding the burner knob. And because it's mechanical, it drifts. Every cooperative extension service says the same thing: get a dial gauge tested once a year, and replace it if it reads 2 or more pounds off either direction. A gauge reading low means under-processed jars, and under-processed low-acid food is how botulism gets into a pantry. This is not a nagging chore. It is the chore.

The All American works from the other end. It's a weighted-gauge canner: a solid chunk of metal preset to 5, 10 or 15 psi sits on the vent pipe and physics does the regulating. Too much pressure and it lifts and vents. You want it jiggling one to four times a minute, and if it chatters faster, turn the burner down. And the dial on the lid? All American says it straight: it's a reference, accurate to plus or minus 2 psi, there to tell you roughly when timing starts and definitively when the pot is back to zero. It does not require outside testing, because it isn't what's holding your pressure. A weight has no moving parts to drift!

So the yearly ritual splits cleanly. One canner sends you to the extension office every spring. The other one you take out of the cupboard and use.

A fair note in Presto's favor: you're not stuck with that dial. Presto's 3-piece weighted regulator (part 50332) drops onto most of their dial models and converts yours to a weighted-gauge canner, and you switch to the weighted-gauge processing charts. Under two hundred dollars all in, annual testing errand deleted. Not bad at all!

Your stove gets a vote, and on induction it has a veto

Your cooktop can disqualify a canner before price ever enters the conversation. Check this first!

• Induction: All American says do not use their canners on induction. Not the 910, not the 921, not any of them. Presto makes the 23-quart 01784 with a stainless steel-clad base built exactly for it, so if induction is your kitchen, the decision just got made for you.
• Glass and smooth tops: All American considers models 910, 915, 921 and 925 safe on most glass tops, with the caveat to confirm with your stove's manufacturer. The 930 and 941 are too heavy and can crack the glass. Also: never SLIDE a canner across glass. Lift it!
• BTUs matter more than people expect. All American wants 12,000 to 24,000 BTUs and says never exceed 24,000. Presto's induction model is specified for 12,000 BTUs or less. Those big outdoor turkey-fryer burners are not the shortcut they look like.
• Propane, honestly: All American allows it at your own risk, and cracks from propane burners aren't covered by the warranty. About as clear a hint as a manufacturer can give.

Plot twist: the $500 canner does not hold more jars

Ready for the number that surprises people at the counter? The Presto 23-quart holds 7 quarts, 20 pints, or 26 half-pints. The All American 921, at more than twice the money, holds 7 quarts and 19 pints.

All American's own numbers for the 921: 19 pints, 7 quarts. Counts shift a little with jar brand and shoulder shape.

Both pots run right around 12.25 inches of interior diameter, and the Presto is an inch taller inside. So if raw jars-per-dollar is your metric, Presto wins that round outright, and we won't pretend otherwise.

All American pulls ahead at the top of the range instead. Presto stops at 23 quarts. All American keeps going to the 930 and the 941, and a 941 runs 32 pints in one load. Putting up a hog, or a hundred pounds of green beans in a weekend? No Presto reaches that shelf.

Twenty-four pounds, empty. Where is this thing going to live?

The 921 weighs 24 pounds before you put anything in it. Add jars and water and you're hauling 45 to 55 pounds across a kitchen. The Presto is roughly half that empty. Cast aluminum is what buys the durability, and cast aluminum is heavy; you don't get one without the other. So think about the shelf it lives on, and who is lifting it down in fifteen years.

Our smaller 910 canner ($349.95) lands at 15 pounds and fits 7 pints or 4 quarts, which is exactly why it keeps ending up in apartment kitchens and with people who are done wrestling a full-size pot!

So when would we tell you to buy the Presto?

• You have an induction cooktop. Presto's 01784 exists, All American's canners don't go on induction, conversation over.
• You're finding out whether canning is a hobby or a phase. Anybody who picked up a hobby in 2020 knows how that can go! A couple hundred dollars answers the question honestly.
• You need one this week and you need it cheap. Tomatoes don't wait for your budget. A safe canner you own beats a better canner you're saving for.
• Pints are your whole life. Twenty pints a load for around $190 is a lot of canner for the money!

And when does the All American turn into the cheaper canner?

Run it out on cost per use, which is how we look at every tool in this store. A $190 canner you re-gasket a few times might give you fifteen good seasons. A $500 canner with no gasket, a lifetime warranty, and a sealing surface you can buff back to true with a Scotch-Brite pad is a different sort of object. There's a reason these get hunted down at estate sales: people find sixty-year-old ones and put them straight back to work!

Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry in Manitowoc, where All American canners have been cast since 1930. That's where the "1930" in the name comes from!

Can twenty quarts a year for thirty years and the All American costs you well under a dollar a batch. Can four quarts once, in 2027, and you spent five hundred dollars on a very handsome soup pot. The math only works if you actually can. Be honest with yourself about that before you spend, not after.

Which one do we sell? Only the All American

Kooi Housewares carries All American and does not carry Presto, so factor that in while you read. We keep a small, deep line instead of a wide one. All American is the canner our customers keep coming back for parts for, twenty and thirty years on, and that's the tell we trust.

Which is why the shelves look the way they do. We stock the tested steam pressure gauge ($26.49), the overpressure plug ($5.49), the wing nut and clamp bolt kit ($16.49), and the instruction and recipe booklet ($7.99). People buy those for canners older than we are! And the swaps are genuinely DIY: All American publishes step-by-step instructions showing the gauge comes out with a 9/16 inch wrench and goes back in with a few drops of olive oil on the threads, and the wing nut assembly needs a hammer and a 3/16 inch punch. That's the entire repair.

One timing note: most of our All American sizes are sitting at zero as this is written. That happens every single summer. It isn't a scarcity pitch, it's just what late July looks like in this category, and if you're reading this months later there's a good chance we've restocked, so go check rather than taking July's word for it.

Related reading: When to Buy a Pressure Canner, and Why August Is the Worst Time →
The sellout pattern, in order, and the months when everything is actually on the shelf.

Related reading: All American 921 vs 930 vs 941: Which Size You Actually Need →
Once you've settled the brand, this one settles the size.

FAQ: the questions we answer at the counter every canning season

Is the All American worth the extra money over a Presto?

It depends on how often you can. If you're canning year round, meat and stock in the winter as well as produce in the summer, and expect to keep doing it for decades, the metal-to-metal seal, the lifetime warranty, and the absence of gasket replacements make the All American cheaper per use. Can once a year and the Presto 23-quart does the same job safely for about a third of the price.

Can you use an All American pressure canner on an induction cooktop?

No. All American states their canners should not be used on induction cooktops, and that applies to every model. If your kitchen is induction, look at Presto's 23-quart 01784, built with a stainless steel-clad base for induction ranges.

Does an All American canner gauge need to be tested every year?

No. All American canners are weighted-gauge canners, and the regulator weight controls the pressure. The dial is a reference accurate to plus or minus 2 psi and does not require outside testing. Dial gauge canners like the Presto 23-quart are different: extension services recommend testing those annually and replacing any gauge that reads 2 or more pounds off.

Does a Presto pressure canner hold more jars than an All American?

The Presto 23-quart holds 7 quarts, 20 pints or 26 half-pints. The All American 921 holds 7 quarts and 19 pints, so in the size range where the two compete, the Presto holds one more pint jar. All American is the only one of the two making canners larger than 23 quarts.

Do I have to replace the gasket on a Presto canner?

Yes, eventually. The rubber sealing ring dries out and stops sealing, and Presto sells it together with a fresh overpressure plug so both get replaced at once. An All American has no gasket at all, though you do wipe a light film of olive oil or Vaseline on the metal-to-metal sealing edge before each use.

Still deciding?

Email us at support@kooihousewares.com with three things: what your stove is, how much you put up in a normal year, and where the pot will live. Those answers usually settle it in a paragraph, and sometimes the answer is the canner we don't stock. Want to see the whole All American line, parts and all?

See the full All American lineup

Shop All American pressure canners, racks, gauges and replacement parts →
Every size we carry plus the parts that keep older canners running. Live availability is shown on each product page.