Best Whole-House Generators
You'll pay a premium, but a home standby generator can provide endless power for your needs
When you shop through retailer links on our site, we may earn affiliate commissions. 100% of the fees we collect are used to support our nonprofit mission. Learn more.
A whole-house generator ensures that you’ll always be able to use your appliances, a necessity especially if the power goes out often where you live.
Skip Ahead
• Best Whole-House Generators for Small Homes and Large Homes
• How CR Tests Generators
Also called home standby generators, the largest ones we test deliver at least 10,000 watts of electricity, enough to power everything under the average roof. Smaller standby models provide at least 5,000 watts, enough to power most key household appliances, electronics, and systems in your home. For instance, they’ll power your refrigerator, air conditioning system, and well pump.
Among the benefits of home standby generators:
- They start automatically, so there’s no futzing in the dark with flashlights to get things going.
- They run a self-diagnosis and let you know when maintenance is needed.
- You have your choice of fuel: propane, which is less risky to store than the gasoline required for portable generators, or natural gas, which provides an unlimited supply of power.
- Because they’re professionally installed—outdoors, with the exhaust properly diverted away from your house—they don’t present the same potential safety issues posed by portable generators.
Best Small Home Standby Generators
The best small whole-house generators in our ratings put out less than 10,000 watts of power but often run longer than larger standby generators.
Best Large Home Standby Generators
Large whole-house generators output 10,000 watts or more, which means enough power for all your appliances. On average, they run from 140 to 200 hours, a shorter range than their smaller counterparts.
How CR Tests Generators
To test how a generator will perform when you need it most, our engineers load up every model with a variety of essentials you might want to power during an outage, such as a space heater, refrigerator, or window air conditioner.
We make sure the generator can handle the load it promises, and we also determine what happens when a sudden spike in voltage hits, such as when your fridge’s compressor kicks on when the generator is already close to capacity. The best models take that in stride, while others bog down or even stall. We also look at how efficiently a generator uses fuel and how long it runs on a single tank of propane or gas. Check out our generator buying guide for more details on our testing.
