How to Tell If Your $10,000 Gas Range Is Worth It

In the same way that a Honda gets you to the grocery store just as well as a Porsche, every stove on the market can boil water, roast vegetables, and bake brownies. This is doubly true when it comes to the top end of the market, where 36-inch ranges start at about $5,000.

But while the best stoves—Wolf, Thermador, Viking, Aga, and La Cornue, among others—might have similar specifications, they have very different prices. A 36-inch range from Wolf retails for $9,395; a $5,599 one from Aga has a burner with 15,000 BTUs (the measure of how much heat its burners can generate), 5,000 fewer than the Wolf version. A similarly outfitted stove from La Cornue is $7,500. Even on the lower end, Consumer Reports recommends a $699 Kenmore range, which has more than 18,000 BTUs.