Best Dog Crates 2026

The iCrate is the default for good reason, and the 36-inch double-door is its sweet spot. The divider is the killer feature: start it small so a puppy cannot soil one end and sleep in the other, then expand it as the dog grows, so a single crate sees you from eight weeks to full size. That one panel is what turns a crate from a six-month purchase into a lifelong one, and it is the main reason this model earns the top spot over cheaper or fancier rivals. Two doors let you place it against a wall or in a corner however the room demands, which sounds minor until you are trying to fit a crate into a small flat and discover the door opens onto the only free wall.

It folds flat in seconds for the car or the closet, sets up without tools, and the leak-proof slide-out tray turns the inevitable accident into a thirty-second clean rather than a job that puts you off crate training altogether. The trade-offs are honest ones. It is plain wire, so nobody will mistake it for furniture, the thin bars will yield to a truly determined chewer given enough time, and it is heavier to lug around than a soft crate.

None of that matters for the job it is bought to do. For a first-time owner crate-training a puppy, for a household that wants one reliable crate and no fuss, and for the overwhelming majority of dogs in between, this is exactly the right crate and the one we would put in our own homes before anything else.

Amazon's own crate quietly does almost everything the name brand does for less, and that is the entire point of it. You still get two doors, a growth divider, a fold-flat design with a carry handle and a removable plastic tray, which between them cover the real needs of crate training: sizing the space down for a puppy, placing the crate where the room allows, moving it without a struggle and cleaning up after the inevitable accidents.

None of those features is a luxury, and leaving any of them out would be a false economy, so it is genuinely useful that the cheapest sensible option still includes the lot. Put it next to the MidWest and the gap shows in the details rather than the design. The latches and finish feel a touch less solid in the hand, the tray is a little flimsier, and the thinner wire is happiest with a calm, settled dog rather than a committed escape artist who will lean on the bars and test the corners.

If your dog is the determined sort, spend the extra on the iCrate. But if you simply want the wire-crate basics done properly for the least money, perhaps for a second crate, a spare room or a budget that will not stretch to the badge, this is the smart buy and the reason it takes the value spot.

The Diggs Revol is what happens when someone redesigns the crate from scratch rather than tweaking the old wire box. It folds and unfolds in a single smooth motion like a pushchair, with no panels to clip together and no corners to wrestle into place, which is the difference between a crate you happily collapse for a weekend away and one that lives permanently in the same spot because taking it down is a chore. The diamond-pattern steel mesh is the other genuine advance: it is stronger than the thin bars of a budget crate and far kinder on paws and teeth, with no narrow gaps for a worried dog to catch a foot or a jaw.

Day to day it is a pleasure to use. A ceiling hatch lets you lower a puppy straight in without bending and twisting through a side opening, the side door handles everything else, and the removable tray and puppy divider mean it still does the unglamorous training jobs as well as the wire crates do. Above all it looks good enough to leave on show, so it does not have to be hidden in a utility room.

The catches are real and worth naming. It costs considerably more than a basic wire crate, it is heavier than its tidy looks suggest, and the range runs to fewer large sizes, so the biggest breeds may be left out. You are paying handsomely for the design and the engineering. For a dog-friendly home that also cares how its rooms look, and for an owner willing to spend once on something they will not want to apologise for, it earns the premium and its third-place ranking.

Once a dog is reliably crate-trained and past the chewing stage, a soft crate is often the nicer place to be, and the EliteField is the one we would reach for. It is light enough to carry one-handed and packs down into its own bag, which makes it the obvious choice for the car, a hotel room or a weekend at someone else's house where dragging a folded metal crate in from the boot would be a hassle. The zippered fabric walls make a snug, dark, den-like space that many dogs settle into faster than a bare metal box, and three doors mean you can get the dog in and out whatever way the room or the car seat allows.

It even comes with a washable fleece bed and a carry bag, so it is ready to use out of the box. In the car especially it is gentler company than a steel crate, with nothing hard for a dog to knock against on a sharp bend. The catch is not subtle and we will not pretend otherwise. A puppy or a determined chewer will be through the fabric in an afternoon, the soft sides offer nothing to an escape artist, and the material absorbs odours so it needs regular washing to stay pleasant.

This is strictly a crate for calm, trustworthy, already-trained dogs, and it should never be the place you leave an unsupervised puppy. Judge your dog honestly and buy for what it is today. For the settled, sensible dog it is meant for, it is comfortably the cosiest and most travel-friendly option on this list.

Not every dog needs a big box of steel, and buying one for a toy breed is a waste of money and floor space. The 24-inch iCrate is the right answer for small breeds and young puppies: the same dependable MidWest build and leak-proof slide-out tray as our top pick, shrunk into a compact, affordable single-door package that sets up tool-free and folds flat when it is not needed. Crucially it still includes the divider, so even here you can wall off the extra space for a tiny puppy and open it out as the pup fills the crate, which keeps house-training honest right from the start.

It does the same core job as its bigger sibling, just scaled to a smaller dog and a smaller budget. The compromises are exactly the ones you would expect at this price and size. It will only ever suit a small dog, so anything that is going to grow past a toy or small breed will outgrow it and need replacing, and the single door gives you less freedom over where the crate can sit in a room.

The styling is plain wire and makes no apology for it. But as a cheap, well-made first crate for a little dog, a puppy that will stay small, or a tight corner where a full-size crate simply will not fit, it does everything asked of it and nothing it does not need to, which is precisely why it earns the budget pick.