Best Travel Coffee Makers: A Pro's 2026 Picks

I have been brewing coffee on the road for as long as I have been travelling full time, which is a good while now. I used a moka pot for a year when I lived out of a Toyota Landcruiser on a camping road trip around Australia, then a year in New Zealand.

These days the AeroPress in the photo below has been to more countries than I care to remember, and a little stainless steel coffee straw called the JoGo has come with me all around Europe because it weighs nothing and lives in a side pocket. I am a professional travel photographer, which mostly means I am up before sunrise standing in a field waiting for the light, long before any café is open. At that hour, decent coffee is the difference between getting the shot and going back to bed.

Our recommendations below are based on what Jess and I actually pack, what we tried (and given up on), and what has earned its place after years of being dropped, packed wet, and shoved in the bottom of a suitcase.

I have organised our recommendations two ways: a grid that matches a brewing method to how you are travelling, then a pick-by-pick rundown with current prices and weights. If you want one sentence to take away, it is this: for most travellers, most of the time, the AeroPress is the best travel coffee maker there is, and almost everything else here is about the cases where it isn’t.

The quick version, if you are in a hurry. Best all-rounder: the AeroPress. Best real espresso without a plug socket: the Wacaco Nanopresso. Lightest thing that makes coffee at all: the JoGo coffee straw. Best for a campervan or a campsite with a hob: the GROSCHE Milano moka pot. Best for a hotel room: an AeroPress and the kettle that is almost always already there. Everything below is the detail behind those calls.

Table of Contents:

The Best Travel Coffee Makers at a Glance

There are two usual ways to sort travel coffee makers, and each leaves you half-stuck. You can sort by brewing method (espresso, pour-over, French press) and ignore how you are actually travelling, or you can sort by trip type (backpacking, camping) and end up steered towards one brand. A real decision crosses both. You have usually settled on roughly what coffee you want and roughly how you are travelling, and you want the maker that sits where those two lines meet.

So here is the grid I wish someone had handed me years ago. Find your brewing method down the side, your kind of trip across the top, and the maker in that cell is the one I would pack.

Method	Backpacking	Hotel room	Campervan / road trip	Camping	Carry-on, no power
Espresso	Wacaco Nanopresso	Nanopresso	Nanopresso (or an electric maker if you have 12V)	Nanopresso	Nanopresso*
AeroPress / immersion	AeroPress Go	AeroPress Original or Clear	AeroPress Original	AeroPress Go	AeroPress Go*
Pour-over	Kuissential SlickDrip	Stanley Perfect-Brew set	Stanley Perfect-Brew set	Stanley Perfect-Brew set	SlickDrip + filters*
French press	Heavy, I’d skip it	Bodum Travel Press	Bodum Travel Press	Bodum Travel Press	Bodum Travel Press*
Moka pot	No (needs a stove)	No (no hob)	GROSCHE Milano	GROSCHE Milano	No
Instant / no kit	JoGo straw or instant	Instant	JoGo straw	JoGo straw	JoGo straw or instant

A note on the asterisks and the blanks, because they matter. Anything marked with a * still needs hot water from somewhere, a café, a plane galley, a kettle in the room, so on a long flight you are relying on cabin crew handing you a cup of hot water. The blanks are deliberate. A moka pot simply cannot work without a heat source, so it has no place in a hotel room or a carry-on. A French press is real glass-free coffee but it is bulky and heavy, so I leave it off the backpacking list on purpose. Showing you where a method does not fit is half the value of a guide like this.

Here is the same set of picks laid out by the numbers, so you can compare weight, what they need to run, and roughly what they cost as of 2026. Prices are in US dollars and I have not added conversions, because exchange rates move and the figures would be wrong by the time you read them.

Maker	Type	Power needed	Packed weight	Makes	Approx. price (2026)
AeroPress Original	Immersion	None (add hot water)	220 g (7.75 oz)	1 to 2 cups	$39.95
AeroPress Go	Immersion	None (add hot water)	323 g	1 cup	$49.95
Wacaco Nanopresso	Manual espresso	None (hand pump)	336 g	1 shot (80 ml)	$64.90
Bodum Travel Press	French press mug	None (add hot water)	Light, mug-sized	15 oz / 0.45 L	around $24
Stanley Perfect-Brew set	Pour-over + mug	None (add hot water)	1.46 lb (the set)	20 oz pour-over, 12 oz mug	around $20 to $25
GROSCHE Milano	Moka pot	Hob (not induction)	Aluminium, packs small	6 espresso cups	around $30
JoGo CoffeeStraw	Steep and sip	None (add hot water)	1 oz / 28 g	1 cup	$30
Kuissential SlickDrip	Pour-over cone	None (add hot water)	Collapses to under 1″	1 to 2 cups	Budget
Chulux travel maker	Single-serve pods	Mains power	Small but rigid	1 cup	around $30 to $40

AeroPress: The Best All-Round Travel Coffee Maker

If you make me pick one, it is the AeroPress, and it is not close. I have travelled with mine for years (the photos in this article are my own kit, not stock shots), and it does the thing no other maker on this page manages: it makes really good coffee, it is close to unbreakable, it weighs very little, and you clean it by pushing the puck into a bin and rinsing the rubber seal. That last point sounds minor until you have tried to clean a cafetière in a hostel bathroom with no sink plug.

The reason it gets its own section, rather than a line in the grid, is that the AeroPress is no longer one product. The line has grown a lot. It is easy to picture the AeroPress as it was back in 2019, when the Go was the only real travel option, but that is well out of date now. Here is the current line-up, with the specs straight from AeroPress, so you can see which one actually suits your trip.

Model	Brews	Material	Packed weight	Price	Best for
Original	10 oz, 1 to 2 cups	Polypropylene	7.75 oz	$39.95	The default. Cheap, light, proven
Original XL	20 oz (~591 ml), 2 to 4 cups	Polypropylene, Tritan carafe included	Not listed	$79.95	Two of you, or one big cup
Go	8 oz, 1 cup	Polypropylene + silicone	11.4 oz / 323 g	$49.95	Backpacking, packs into its 15 oz mug
Go Plus	10 oz, 1 to 2 cups	Tritan + insulated stainless tumbler	0.56 kg	$89.95	You want the coffee to stay hot
Clear & Colors	10 oz, 1 to 2 cups	Tritan (see-through)	Not listed	$49.95	The Original, in clear plastic
Clear XL	20 oz, 2 to 4 cups	Tritan	Not listed	~$89.95	The XL, in clear plastic
Steel	12 oz (360 ml), 1 to 2 cups	304 stainless, vacuum-insulated	Not listed	$169.95	Near-bulletproof and insulated
Premium	10 oz, 1 to 2 cups	Borosilicate glass + steel + aluminium	Not listed	$199.95	A handsome home brewer, not for travel

My advice on which to buy is short. For almost everyone reading a travel guide, the standard AeroPress Original is the one to get. It is the cheapest, the lightest of the full-size models, and it does everything. If you are counting grams for a long hike, the AeroPress Go packs down into its own mug, which is a lovely bit of design, though you give up a little brewing capacity for it. The Go Plus is worth the extra if you want your coffee to stay hot in a cold campervan.

The two I would steer most travellers away from are the ones the marketing pushes hardest. The Steel is a beautiful object and very nearly indestructible, but at $169.95 it costs more than four Originals, and I have never managed to actually break an Original in years of abuse. The Premium, despite the price, has a borosilicate glass chamber and is hand-wash only. It is a gorgeous thing for your kitchen and the wrong tool for a rucksack. I have not travelled with either the Steel or the Premium myself, so I am going on the specs and the design rather than lived experience there, and I would rather tell you that than pretend otherwise.

Because the AeroPress deserves more than I can give it here, I have written a full AeroPress review that goes model by model, covers the recipes I actually use on the road, and gets into the inverted-brew debate. If you have settled on an AeroPress and just want to know exactly which one and how to get the best out of it, start there.

The Best Manual Espresso Maker for Travel: Wacaco Nanopresso

If what you miss on the road is a proper short, thick espresso rather than a mug of filter coffee, the maker to get is the Wacaco Nanopresso (also on Amazon). It is a hand-pumped espresso maker about the size of a large pepper grinder, it weighs 336 g, holds 80 ml of water, and the redesigned pump pushes up to 18 bar of pressure, which is enough to pull a shot with real crema. It costs around $65.

I will be straight about the catch, because it tends to get glossed over. You still need hot water, and you need to grind fine and tamp properly, so it is more faff than dropping a pod in a machine. But it needs no power at all, it cleans up in seconds, and a Nanopresso plus a small hand grinder is the only way I know to get café-standard espresso in a tent. Wacaco make a confusing number of models now. The older Minipresso is fine but the Nanopresso superseded it, the Picopresso is a step up for enthusiasts who want a naked portafilter, and the Cuppamoka is a pour-over rather than an espresso maker, so do not get them muddled.

One question I get a lot is whether there is an electric version, for people who travel by campervan or car and have a 12V socket to play with. There is. Wacaco added the battery-powered Pixapresso to the range in 2025, and there are self-heating 12V machines from brands like Conqueco that both pump and boil from a battery. They are heavier and pricier and another thing to charge, so I would only bother if you have reliable power and really cannot face hand-pumping.

If you do travel with any battery-powered maker, pack the spare lithium battery in your carry-on rather than your checked bag, which is the airline rule for loose lithium cells.

The Best Travel Pour-Over: Stanley Perfect-Brew Set

Pour-over is my favourite way to make coffee when I have the space and a couple of spare minutes, because it is forgiving, easy to clean, and makes a clean cup. At home we have a Chemex pour over, but the all glass construction and size means this isn’t exactly a practical option for the road.

For a campervan, a road trip, or a campsite, the one I recommend is the Stanley Classic Perfect-Brew Pour Over Set. Stanley have shuffled the name around over the years (you will still see it listed as the Camp Pour Over Set), but it is the same idea: an 18/8 stainless steel pour-over cone with a built-in reusable filter that sits on top of a 12 oz camp mug with a lid. The whole set weighs about 1.46 lb and runs $20 to $25.

The reusable steel filter is the bit I like. No paper filters to remember, run out of, or bin, which is exactly the sort of small dependency that catches you out three days into a trip. It is too heavy and bulky for serious backpacking, but for any trip where weight is not the deciding factor, it is hard to beat for the money.

For backpacking, where every gram counts, I swap to a collapsible silicone dripper instead. The Kuissential SlickDrip folds flat to under an inch, costs very little, and makes one to two cups. You do need to carry paper filters for it, which is the trade-off against the Stanley’s built-in mesh, but it disappears into a pack in a way the Stanley never will. It is not a thing of beauty and it will not last a decade, but it is a clever bit of cheap kit.

The Best Travel French Press: Bodum Travel Press

If you like a fuller-bodied, French press style coffee, the Bodum Travel Press is the long-standing answer and still the one I would buy. It is a vacuum-insulated, double-walled stainless steel mug with a plunger built into the lid, it holds 15 oz (0.45 L), and it costs around $24. You spoon in grounds, add hot water, wait, plunge, and drink straight from the same vessel, which means there is nothing extra to wash up.

Two caveats. The lid is not fully leak-proof, so I would not throw it in the top of a bag mouth-down and expect to stay dry. And like any French press it puts a little sediment in the bottom of the cup, which some people love and some don’t. It is heavier than an AeroPress and makes a different, muddier style of coffee, so this is a pick for people who specifically want French press rather than a default recommendation. If that is you, it is excellent.

The Best Travel Moka Pot: GROSCHE Milano

There is something about a stovetop moka pot bubbling away that no plastic gadget quite matches, and if you are travelling somewhere with a hob, the GROSCHE Milano is a brilliant, cheap way to make strong, espresso-style coffee for more than one person. It is a classic aluminium moka pot, the 6-cup makes six small espresso-sized servings, and it costs around $30. For a campervan with a gas hob, a campsite with a camp stove, or a self-catering flat, it is easily my favourite way to make coffee for a group.

The important thing to know, and the question a reader asked me years ago that still comes up, is induction. The Milano is aluminium, and aluminium does not work on an induction hob. GROSCHE themselves are clear that it runs on gas, electric, propane, and glass stovetops but not induction. So if your campervan or holiday flat has an induction hob, you need either a stainless steel moka pot or a small magnetic induction adapter disc to sit underneath it. On a gas camp stove, which is what most campers actually have, you are fine.

The Lightest Option: JoGo CoffeeStraw and Instant

This is the one that surprises people. The JoGo CoffeeStraw (also direct from JoGo) is a stainless steel straw with a fine mesh filter on the end. You tip ground coffee straight into a cup, add hot water, let it steep, and then drink through the straw, which filters the grounds as you sip. It weighs 1 oz, costs $30, and is made of food-grade stainless steel and silicone. There is nothing to assemble and nothing to break.

I have carried mine all around Europe, precisely because it weighs nothing and takes up no room. It lives in a pocket of my camera bag and comes out on train journeys and in hotel rooms where I cannot be bothered to set anything up. Is the coffee as good as an AeroPress? No. You get a slightly heavier cup and the occasional fine grain through the mesh. But for the weight and the simplicity, nothing else comes close, and it is the answer to all those searches for the lightest or smallest travel coffee maker.

Worth saying plainly: the lightest option of all is good instant coffee and no equipment whatsoever. Instant has come a long way, the better freeze-dried sachets and the Starbucks Via-style sticks are perfectly drinkable, and on a fast-moving trip where I am changing location every day I will sometimes just take those and the JoGo straw and call it done. There is no shame in it.

The Best Single-Serve Maker: Chulux for Hotel Rooms

If you are the kind of traveller who wants to drop a pod in, press a button, and have coffee with zero technique, and you will be somewhere with a mains socket, a small single-serve maker like the Chulux travel coffee maker does the job. It takes standard K-Cup style pods, sits happily on a hotel desk, and asks nothing of you. Prices sit around $30 to $40 depending on the model, and the line rotates fairly often, so check you are buying a current version.

This is not how I travel. It only works where there is power, it is the bulkiest thing here for the coffee it makes, and pods generate a lot of waste for one cup. But I include it because plenty of readers just want the no-effort option, and for a work trip lived out of one hotel room it is a reasonable shout. If you go this route, you will also want a supply of coffee pods that fit it.

Coffee Accessories for Travel

The maker is only half of it. A few small extras make a real difference to the coffee you actually get, and these are the ones that travel with me.

A Hand Grinder

Coffee is best ground just before you brew it, and a small hand grinder lets you carry beans rather than a bag of grounds that goes stale. The JavaPresse manual grinder is the budget classic, cheap and reliable, with an adjustable ceramic burr. If you are already an AeroPress devotee and want to go further, AeroPress now make their own GP100 Manual Grinder, with 60-plus grind settings and burrs that store inside the plunger, though at $199.95 it is a serious purchase for serious coffee people only. For most travellers the JavaPresse is plenty.

An Insulated Travel Mug

If you are making coffee to take with you, a good insulated mug keeps it hot for hours. The Contigo Stainless Steel Travel Mug with its AUTOSEAL lid is the one I trust not to leak in a camera bag, which is high praise given what else is in there. Contigo have updated the line over the years, so the current West Loop is the model to look for.

A Milk Frother

If you cannot do without a flat white or a latte, a tiny battery-powered handheld milk frother like the Café Casa weighs almost nothing and froths warm milk in seconds. It is a small luxury, but for the size and price it is an easy one to justify.

A Way to Heat Water

Almost every maker here needs hot water, and you cannot always rely on the room having a kettle. A collapsible travel kettle folds down flat and boils a couple of cups, which is ideal for hotel rooms abroad. Check the voltage before you buy, as many are single-voltage and will not work or will be damaged on the wrong supply, so look for a dual-voltage model if you cross between regions. For the absolute minimalist, a small travel water heater (an immersion element you drop into a mug) takes up almost no space, though it needs a little care to use safely.

The Coffee Itself

Whatever you brew with, it is only as good as what goes in it. I tend to carry a small bag of whole beans and the hand grinder for trips where I have a bit of time, and switch to good instant sticks or pre-ground coffee for fast-moving trips. A great maker with stale supermarket grounds still makes mediocre coffee, so this is not the bit to skimp on.

How to Choose a Travel Coffee Maker

If you are still weighing things up, these are the factors that actually decide it, roughly in the order they matter on the road.

Power is the first question, not the last. If you cannot guarantee a socket or a hob, you need a manual maker, which rules out pod machines and electric espresso makers and leaves you the AeroPress, the Nanopresso, a pour-over, a French press, or the straw. Almost everyone overestimates how much reliable power they will have on a trip.

Weight and packed size come next, so be honest about how you are travelling. For backpacking, grams and pack space beat everything, and the Go, the SlickDrip, or the JoGo straw win. For a campervan or a car, you can carry a moka pot and a grinder and barely notice the difference.

Then there is the coffee you actually want, because a moka pot and a French press make very different drinks. Decide whether you are after espresso, filter, or immersion coffee first, as no single maker does all three well.

Ease of cleaning sounds trivial at home and becomes the whole game on the road, where you might be washing up in a campsite sink or a tiny hotel bathroom. The AeroPress and the straw win here by a mile, and a French press is the fiddliest of the lot.

Durability matters more than people expect, because glass and travel do not mix. That is why I steer people away from the glass AeroPress Premium for trips. Plastic and stainless steel shrug off being dropped, packed wet, and sat on, which they will be.

Price, finally, is rarely the problem. Most of the best options here are cheap, between roughly $25 and $65, and you do not need to spend $170 on a stainless AeroPress to get excellent coffee while travelling. Spend the difference on better beans.

What We’ve Learned Packing Coffee Gear on the Road

After years of carrying coffee kit through airports and into campsites, a few lessons have stuck, and they are mostly the opposite of what I assumed when I started.

The first is that the simplest thing usually wins. The maker I reach for most is the one I can use and clean without thinking, half asleep, before dawn, not the most capable one in the cupboard. That is the AeroPress most days and the JoGo straw when I am moving fast. The clever multi-function gadgets we tried over the years mostly stayed home after one or two trips because they were a hassle to clean.

The second is to plan around power, not assume it. The number of times we have arrived somewhere expecting a kettle or a working socket and found neither has taught us to default to manual makers and carry our own way to heat water. If your whole coffee setup falls apart without a plug, it is too fragile for travel.

The third is that glass and fussy parts do not belong in a bag. We have lost exactly one coffee maker to breakage, and it was glass, and that was the day I stopped travelling with anything breakable. Stainless steel and good plastic shrug off the abuse that travel hands out.

And the last, which matters more than any piece of kit, is that good coffee on a trip is worth the small effort. As a photographer I am up in the dark more often than not, and a proper cup made the way I like it, standing in the cold waiting for the sun, is one of the real pleasures of the job. That is reason enough to carry the gear.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best travel coffee maker overall?

For most travellers, the AeroPress is the best travel coffee maker. It makes really good coffee, weighs very little, is close to unbreakable, and cleans up in seconds, which is the combination that matters most on the road.

The main reasons to choose something else are specific: you want real espresso (the Wacaco Nanopresso), you are counting every gram (the JoGo straw or AeroPress Go), or you are brewing for a group with a hob to hand (the GROSCHE Milano moka pot).

What is the best travel coffee maker for backpacking?

For backpacking, weight and packed size decide it, so the best options are the AeroPress Go, the JoGo CoffeeStraw, or a collapsible silicone dripper like the Kuissential SlickDrip. All three are light, pack tiny, and need no power.

The AeroPress Go makes the best coffee of the three and packs into its own mug. The JoGo straw is the lightest thing that makes coffee at all, at 1 oz. If you want a true filter cup, the SlickDrip folds flat to under an inch, though you will need to carry paper filters for it.

Do you need electricity to make coffee while travelling?

No. Most of the best travel coffee makers need no power at all, only hot water. The AeroPress, Nanopresso, pour-overs, French presses, and the JoGo straw are all manual, which is exactly why they suit travel.

Electric and battery-powered makers do exist, such as self-heating 12V espresso machines and pod machines, but they only suit campervans, cars, or hotel rooms where you have reliable power. If you travel with any battery-powered maker, pack spare lithium batteries in your carry-on, not your checked luggage.

Can you take a coffee maker through airport security?

Yes. Coffee and espresso makers are allowed in both carry-on and checked bags, and a manual maker like an AeroPress, moka pot, or French press is simply inert hardware, so it passes security without trouble.

The real thing to watch is not the maker but liquids: any pre-brewed coffee or water over 100 ml is subject to the usual carry-on liquids rule. Ground coffee and beans are fine. For any electric or battery maker, keep spare lithium batteries in your carry-on. As always, the officer at the checkpoint has the final say.

What is the best travel coffee maker for a hotel room?

For a hotel room, the easiest setup is an AeroPress plus the kettle that is usually already in the room, which gives you good coffee with almost no kit. If there is no kettle, a small collapsible travel kettle solves it.

If you want zero technique and there is a mains socket, a single-serve pod machine like the Chulux is the no-effort option, at the cost of more bulk and more waste per cup.

Does a moka pot work on an induction hob?

Most classic moka pots, including the aluminium GROSCHE Milano, do not work on induction hobs, because aluminium is not magnetic. They are fine on gas, electric, propane, and glass stovetops, which covers most camp stoves and holiday kitchens.

If you specifically need induction, either buy a stainless steel moka pot, which is induction-compatible, or use a small magnetic induction adapter disc under an aluminium pot.

What is the best foldable or collapsible travel coffee maker?

For a collapsible maker, a silicone pour-over dripper like the Kuissential SlickDrip is the best option, folding flat to under an inch while still making a proper filter cup. Pair it with a collapsible travel kettle and your whole coffee setup packs down to almost nothing.

What is the best travel coffee maker for a photography trip?

For a photography trip, where you are often up before any café opens, I pack an AeroPress and an insulated mug. The AeroPress is quick and quiet to use in the dark, and the insulated mug keeps the coffee hot through a long blue-hour wait for the light.

If I am moving between locations fast and travelling light with camera gear, I drop to the JoGo straw and good instant, so coffee never costs me bag space I need for lenses.

The Best Travel Coffee Makers for 2026 (What We Actually Pack)