The Best 9-Inch Round Cake Pans

This nonstick-coated, light-colored pan produced tall, level, evenly baked golden-brown cakes. Pizza made in our winning pan also baked evenly and developed nice browning. Delicate and sticky food released easily, leaving nothing behind.

Solidly built, with light gold nonstick coating, this pan produced tall, fluffy, level cakes that were just a hair less evenly browned than our winner. Layers shaped up perfectly, no matter how the pan was greased. Upside-down cake and pizza released and browned well, but cinnamon buns were too pale. At half the price of our winner, this pan is a great option.

This pan’s wide handles made it easy to securely grip, even with oven mitts on. Its slick nonstick surface made cakes and pizza easy to remove. While the cake and pizza baked in this pan were evenly baked, we docked it slightly because cakes baked in it darkened a little more than we would have liked.

We loved this pan’s nonstick coating, which easily released all food baked in it. Plus, its wide handles made moving the pan around and out of the oven easy. Cake in this pan was evenly baked, though it was a bit darker than cake baked in the lighter pans in our lineup and domed ever so slightly in the middle. Still, it's a fantastic, ultra-affordable option.

This sturdy light-toned pan with a corrugated bottom browned consistently and produced level, tall cake layers, though they weren’t quite as tall as those baked in our winner (and were slightly less attractive when we used baking spray). Pan pizza browned well but not as deeply as it did in darker pans.

This pan released perfectly but its dark finish radiated a lot of heat, setting the edges of the cake too quickly, which let the center rise to a dome. Layers were slightly less attractive when we used baking spray. But the dark finish browned pizza and cinnamon buns nicely.

Early on we admired this uncoated shiny aluminum pan for its tall, level cake layers with straight sides, which emerged evenly light brown, not overly dark. Cake released well, but pizza stuck firmly despite greasing; we had to chisel it out.

This thick, sturdy pan with a light, uncoated, matte finish produced mostly uniform cake layers with only slightly sloping edges. Cakes released fine, but with pizza, the lack of a nonstick coating was a big problem: Testers could hardly hack the pizza out of the pan.

The dark finish on this sturdy, heavyweight pan overbrowned cake. Layers were sloped and visibly squat; one tester described the cake as “homely.” The bottom of the pizza was a nice golden brown; unfortunately, a few pieces stuck and burned on the sides.

The cakes baked in this dark pan were some of the darkest and least risen among all the pans we tested, and their edges shrank from the sides, making them slope. The manufacturer does not recommend baking spray, so we used shortening, which overcrisped the edges. Grease and flour are imperatives.