Air Fryer Conversion Calculator: Oven to Air Fryer Time and Temp

How to convert an oven recipe to an air fryer

That rule is a decent average and it is where the calculator starts. But an air fryer is really a small, aggressive convection oven. The fan strips away the thin layer of cooler air that normally sits against your food, so the outside browns much faster than the middle cooks through. How much faster depends on what you are cooking and which machine you own, which is why one flat rule leaves so many bakes raw in the center or scorched on top.

Oven to air fryer conversion, step by step

1. Drop the temperature

   Take 25F off the oven temperature for most foods. For cakes, cookies, brownies and pastry, take off 30F instead. The extra five degrees buys the crumb enough time to set before the top does.

2. Cut the time

   Multiply the oven time by 0.8. Thirty minutes becomes 24. For frozen foods multiply by 0.92 instead, because the times printed on the bag already assume some fan assistance.

3. Adjust for your machine

   Compact baskets cook fastest. Oven style and toaster oven air fryers have a larger cavity, so cut the time by 12 to 15 percent rather than 20. High wattage baskets like the Cosori TurboBlaze and Ninja MAX run hot, so trim a few extra degrees.

4. Check early, every time

   Open the basket at about 85 percent of the converted time and look. Air fryers brown the outside fast enough that color alone will fool you, so confirm doneness with a probe thermometer on anything with meat in it.

5. Give the food room

   Hot air has to circulate. A crowded basket steams instead of crisping, and no conversion math fixes that. Cook two batches rather than one crowded one.

Three adjustments the flat 25F rule ignores

Why air fryers vary, and how to calibrate yours

Oven to air fryer conversion chart

Bookmark or print this for the most common oven temperatures. Times assume a basket style air fryer. For oven style units, cut the oven time by 15 percent instead of 20.

*Most air fryers top out between 400F and 450F. When the converted temperature is above your unit's maximum, use the maximum and add 1 to 2 minutes for every 20F you could not reach.

Converting from a fan oven or convection oven

This is where most conversion tools get it wrong, because nearly all of them assume an American conventional oven. A fan oven already circulates air, so at the same dial setting it runs about 25F hotter in effect than a conventional oven. The gap to an air fryer is therefore much smaller.

Keep the temperature roughly the same as your fan setting and trim the time by about 10 percent. Do not take another 25F off, or you will underbake. Switch the calculator to fan oven mode and it applies the correct math automatically. Cooking from an old recipe card in gas marks? Select gas marks directly and the calculator handles both steps.

Converting from a toaster oven or a deep fryer

Toaster oven recipes convert exactly like conventional oven recipes: drop 25F and cut the time by 20 percent, because a toaster oven is just a small still-air oven. One check first: if yours has a convection or air fry button and the recipe was written for that mode, use the fan oven setting in the calculator instead, since the air is already moving.

Deep fryer recipes are the one direction where the time changes more than the temperature. Keep the frying temperature, usually 350F to 375F, and expect roughly double the time, because hot oil moves heat into food far faster than hot air ever can. Wings that deep fry in 10 minutes take about 20 in a basket. The trade is worth it for most people: no quart of oil, a fraction of the fat, and nothing to strain and store afterward. The spread between foods is wider than in any other conversion, so treat the number as a starting point and check early. Battered wet coatings do not survive the switch, but breaded and floured coatings crisp well with a light spray of oil, and the right high smoke point oil matters more here than anywhere else on the site.

Air fryer to oven conversion

Flip the rule around. Add 25F (15C) to the air fryer temperature and add about 25 percent to the time. An air fryer recipe at 375F for 20 minutes becomes roughly 400F for 25 min in the oven. Bake on a preheated tray, or set a wire rack inside a sheet pan, to get back some of the crispness the basket gave you. The calculator has an air fryer to oven mode for exact numbers.

Tested air fryer settings from our recipes

For the recipes below, skip the math. We baked and cooked each one in our own basket, so the temperature and time are the exact numbers on the recipe card.

Fudgy Brownies

330F · 16 min

Chocolate Chip Cookies

325F · 8 min

Chocolate Lava Cake

375F · 7 min

Carrot Cake

320F · 30 min

Frozen Chicken Wings

400F · 22 to 25 min

Frozen Salmon

375F · 12 to 15 min

Browse all air fryer recipes

Air fryer cooking times for popular foods

Ready made settings for the foods people convert most often, with the USDA safe internal temperature where it applies. Flip or shake at the halfway mark unless the table says otherwise.

Baking something not listed? The full baking times and temperatures chart covers every bake on the site, and what you can and cannot bake will save you a couple of messy experiments.

Air fryer baking, the conversion nobody gets right

Baking is the hardest thing to convert and the reason this site exists. Three rules on top of the standard math. Drop the temperature about 30F below the oven setting rather than 25F, so the top does not set before the middle. Keep the drawer closed for the first two thirds of the bake, because opening it early collapses anything with a delicate rise. Tent wet batters loosely with foil for the first half, then uncover to brown.

Two things the calculator cannot adjust for, because you decide them before any heat is involved. The first is the tin. A recipe written for a 9 by 13 will not fit a basket, and moving to a smaller pan makes the batter deeper, which needs longer at a lower temperature on top of the conversion. Our pan size calculator works out what actually fits. The second is quantity: once the pan is smaller you need less batter, and the recipe scaler gives you the amounts, including the awkward business of halving an egg.

If a bake comes out dry or scorched, our guides on avoiding dry bakes and preventing burning cover the usual causes.

Air fryer internal temperatures

Temperature and time both change when a recipe moves between appliances. The internal temperature at which a thing is actually cooked does not, because it is a property of the food rather than the oven. Egg protein sets where egg protein sets. So if you convert the dial and then finish on a thermometer rather than a clock, the conversion no longer has to be exactly right.

This is the step every other conversion calculator leaves out, and it is the one that stops a near miss becoming a ruined dinner.

The four meat rows are USDA safe minimums and are not negotiable. The baking rows are quality targets: a few degrees either side changes texture rather than safety. An instant-read thermometer costs about the same as two coffees and it is the single accessory that makes converting recipes reliable.

How these conversion numbers were built

Every temperature and time on this page came out of a real basket. We bake and cook each recipe in our own kitchen, record the setting that actually worked, and publish that number on the recipe card rather than a calculated estimate. The calculator's food type multipliers come from those results, cross checked against the manufacturer guidance published by Ninja, Cosori, Philips and Instant. Internal temperature targets follow USDA minimums, not eyeballed doneness.

Where we are uncertain, we say so. The model adjustments are the least precise part of the tool, because unit to unit variation within a single model is larger than the variation between models. That is exactly why the calibration test exists.

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