Gas Cooktop vs Induction: Why I'd Choose Induction Every Time

This is Part 2 of the Design Pitfalls in Australian Homes series. If you missed the intro, it explains why I’m writing about all the design choices that look great in theory and fall apart in real life.

Today: the cooktop debate.

A Quick Confession: I’ve Never Been a Gas Convert

Let me start with where I’m coming from. I grew up in Germany, where gas cooking is barely a thing in domestic kitchens. Most German households cook on electric — and to be clear, electric is not the same as induction. They are completely different appliances.

A traditional electric cooktop (solid plate or radiant ceramic) heats up slowly, holds heat for ages after you turn it off, and has very imprecise control. A pot of pasta that’s about to boil over will keep boiling for two minutes after you’ve turned the dial down. It’s the kind of cooktop most Australians compare gas to when they say “but electric is rubbish for cooking.” On that front, they’re right.

Induction is something else entirely. It’s electric in name only — the technology, the speed, the precision, the feel of it is closer to gas than to a traditional electric element. The first time you cook on a good induction cooktop, after years of either old electric or gas, it’s a small revelation.

So I’m not someone who used to be firmly in the gas camp and switched. I never bought into gas cooking in the first place. What I’ve come to appreciate is just how much better induction is than any of the alternatives — including, on almost every measure, gas.

But Australia has a strong gas-cooking tradition. Chefs love it. Plenty of home cooks love it. The visible flame, the instant control, the wok burner — there’s an emotional attachment to gas that’s hard to shift.

I understand the appeal. I just don’t think it stands up when you weigh it against a good induction cooktop on safety, cleaning, indoor air quality, and long-term running cost.

Let me walk you through why.

Induction Is Easier Than People Expect

The first thing worth saying: cooking on a good induction cooktop is not the compromise that “electric” used to be.

If your reference point is the traditional electric cooktops most of us in Germany grew up with (or the old coil-element cooktops still found in some Australian rentals), please don’t judge induction by that. They have almost nothing in common. Induction is faster than gas at boiling water, more precise than gas on the low settings, and recovers from a temperature change in seconds.

You do need to spend a bit of money. The cheapest induction on the market will frustrate you — slow response, weak power on the low settings, finicky pan detection. That’s where induction gets its bad reputation.

But a decent induction cooktop is genuinely lovely to cook on. The response is fast. The control is precise. You can go from a hard boil to a slow simmer in a few seconds. You can boil a litre of water in less time than a gas burner takes to get started.

There is a learning curve. The first week feels strange. After a month, you stop noticing. After six months, gas feels slow and finicky by comparison.

The Safety Difference Is Huge

This is the one that really shifted my thinking, especially as a parent.

A gas cooktop is genuinely dangerous in ways we don’t talk about enough:

• The flame is exposed. A tea towel left a bit too close, a sleeve drifting over the burner, paper towel near the cooktop — all can ignite in seconds.
• Cooking oil can flare badly when it contacts the flame. Anyone who has had an oil spit catch in a gas flame knows that moment of panic.
• Kids reaching for a pan handle can put their hands directly over an open flame.
• Gas leaks are a quiet hazard. Faulty fittings, ageing seals or a loose connection can vent gas into the kitchen.

An induction cooktop has none of those risks. The cooktop surface itself doesn’t get hot — only the pan does. You can put your hand on the glass next to a pan that’s mid-boil and not get burnt. The cooktop knows when there’s no pan on it and turns itself off.

In my own Passive House, my kids used the cooktop a lot. I was comfortable with them using the cooktop unsupervised because I knew the worst case was a burnt pan, not a burnt house.

In my current rental, which has a gas cooktop, I’m much more cautious. I don’t really want them using it unless I’m there. And honestly, even I am more careful around it.

That tells you something.

Indoor Air Quality — The Childhood Asthma Connection

For me, this is the most important argument of all, and the one that has the least to do with personal cooking preference. It’s about the people in the kitchen — particularly children.

When you burn gas indoors, you release nitrogen dioxide (NO₂), carbon monoxide, fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and trace amounts of other combustion by-products directly into your kitchen. These are the same pollutants we worry about in outdoor air quality — they’re just being emitted, unfiltered, a metre away from where your family is breathing.

The research on this is now substantial and consistent.

A 2023 Australian study by the Climate Council and Asthma Australia found that cooking with gas in Australian homes is associated with around 12% of the childhood asthma burden — meaning roughly 1 in 8 cases of childhood asthma in Australia is linked to gas cooking. To put that in context, that’s a similar level of risk attribution as exposure to second-hand tobacco smoke.

International research lines up:

• A widely cited international meta-analysis found that children living in homes with gas cooking have around a 42% higher risk of current asthma symptoms and a 24% higher lifetime risk of being diagnosed with asthma compared to children in homes cooking on electricity.
• US studies have measured NO₂ concentrations in kitchens during gas cooking that regularly exceed both WHO and EPA outdoor air quality guidelines — and those guidelines are for outdoor exposure, where you can walk away. In your kitchen, you can’t.
• A growing body of work links gas cooking to higher rates of respiratory symptoms in adults too, particularly in homes with poor ventilation.

The mechanism isn’t mysterious. NO₂ is a known respiratory irritant. Chronic, low-level exposure during childhood — when lungs are still developing — increases the risk of asthma onset and worsens symptoms in children who already have it.

“But I Have a Rangehood”

The standard defence is: “We have a rangehood, so it’s fine.”

Two problems with that.

First, most Australian rangehoods are not actually capturing very much. Many domestic rangehoods are undersized for the cooktop. Most are mounted too high. A significant proportion are recirculating rather than ducted — meaning the air goes through a filter and back into the room, with the combustion gases largely unchanged.

Second, even a good ducted rangehood doesn’t capture everything. Studies measuring NO₂ in real kitchens find that even with the rangehood running on high during cooking, NO₂ levels in the room rise significantly and stay elevated for hours afterwards. The pollutants don’t stay over the cooktop — they spread through the open-plan space, into the living area, into the bedrooms.

If you’ve got young kids playing on the rug behind the kitchen island while dinner is cooking, they’re being exposed.

Induction Has No Combustion

This is what tips the balance for me, especially as a parent and as a Passive House designer where indoor air quality is one of the central design principles.

Induction doesn’t burn anything. There is no flame, no combustion, no NO₂, no CO, no fuel-related fine particulates. The only cooking emissions are the ones that come from the food itself — steam, oil aerosols, smoke from a burnt piece of toast — and those are well within what a normal ducted rangehood can manage.

In the Heat, Health and Housing post, I talked about how much indoor air quality matters, especially for anyone with allergies, asthma or young children. Removing combustion from the kitchen is one of the simplest, highest-impact things you can do for the air your family breathes.

If you have a child with asthma, the case for replacing gas with induction is — frankly — overwhelming.

And Now, Cleaning. Let’s Talk About Cleaning.

If safety and air quality aren’t enough to convince you, this might be.

Have you ever cleaned a gas cooktop properly?

You have to lift off the trivets. The cast-iron pan supports are heavy, awkward, and grease sticks to them. You have to scrub between the burner caps and the burner rings, where food and oil collect. You have to clean each little gap, each cast-iron edge, each spot where a sauce has spilled and baked on. The trivets often don’t fit in a normal sink. The burner caps slide around in the dishwasher. The actual surface beneath the trivets is rarely cleaned thoroughly, because nobody can be bothered.

Multiply that by the number of times a week you cook a proper meal. It’s relentless.

Now compare that with induction:

• Wipe the entire surface with a damp cloth.
• For stuck-on bits, a quick scrape with a ceramic cooktop scraper.
• A spray of cooktop cleaner once a week for a polished finish.

That’s it. The whole top is one flat sheet of glass. There are no trivets, no caps, no nooks, no rings. A spill that lands next to the pan rather than on it doesn’t bake on, because the surface around the pan isn’t hot. You can wipe up while you cook.

I’d estimate I spend a tenth of the time cleaning an induction cooktop compared to a gas one. Over the life of a kitchen, that’s hundreds of hours of your life back.

What About the Wok? And the Power Cuts?

The two most common arguments for keeping gas:

“I need the wok flame.” A high-powered induction cooktop can deliver more useful heat into the pan than most domestic gas burners, because the energy transfer is so much more efficient. If you’re a serious wok cook, dedicated induction wok burners or induction-compatible flat-bottom woks work beautifully. The visible flame is a habit, not a requirement.

“What if the power goes out?” Honestly, in a power cut, you probably have bigger problems than dinner — no fridge, no lights, no hot water. A camping stove or BBQ covers the rare blackout. Designing your kitchen around a few hours a year of inconvenience is the tail wagging the dog.

What About the Cost of Going All Electric?

Switching to induction is the first step in an all-electric home, which is increasingly the smart long-term choice in Australia. Once your home runs on electricity only, you can offset the load with solar PV. You eliminate the gas connection fee. You remove combustion from inside the house.

The cooktop itself isn’t dramatically more expensive than a comparable gas unit. The savings come over time — lower running costs, cheaper maintenance, no gas supply charge, healthier air, less cleaning, fewer safety risks.

My Take

If you’re designing or renovating a kitchen in Australia in 2026, the case for gas is weak and getting weaker. The case for a good induction cooktop is strong on safety, strong on cleaning, strong on health and strong on long-term running costs.

You don’t have to take my word for it. Borrow a friend’s induction. Cook a few meals on it. See how it feels.

Just don’t judge induction by the cheapest model in the showroom. That’s like judging electric cars by a 2015 budget hatchback.

Up Next

Next in the series: sinks on kitchen islands — pretty in photos, splashy in life. All the reasons your beautiful island bench might be working against you.

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This is Part 2 of the Design Pitfalls in Australian Homes series. Browse the full series to see all the design choices that look great in theory and fall over in real life.