Air fryer temperature conversion: oven recipes, adjusted
Lower the heat and shorten the time — the working rule for turning an oven recipe into an air fryer one, with starting points in both scales, and the foods where the rule stops working.
By Akash Yadav Updated 11 October 2026
The rule
The rule, in one line
Take the oven temperature down by about 25 °F — about 15 °C — and take the cooking time down by about 20%. That is the whole rule, and it is the same advice appliance makers and recipe sites give.
The reason is the appliance rather than the food. An air fryer is a small chamber with a powerful fan sitting close to the food. The fan drives hot air hard across the surface, so the surface dries and browns sooner than it would in a full oven, and the small chamber keeps that heat close to the food instead of filling an oven's worth of air. A lower setting and a shorter time together land a similar result.
Treat it as a starting point. It is a cooking instruction, not a guarantee, and it describes a method rather than a property of your machine. The arithmetic underneath it is exact, though: the Celsius to Fahrenheit converter turns any oven setting into its Celsius equivalent.
Working from a recipe written in Celsius, Fahrenheit to Celsius does the same step in the other direction. Neither converter can tell you how your air fryer behaves, which is what the rest of this page is about.
Starting points
Oven to air fryer: starting temperatures
These are the oven settings recipes call for and the air-fryer start each one becomes. Both Celsius columns are computed exactly, so you can see the figure a dial is being asked for before it rounds.
| Oven °F | Oven °C | Air fryer °F | Air fryer °C |
|---|---|---|---|
| 300 °F | 149 °C | 275 °F | 135 °C |
| 325 °F | 163 °C | 300 °F | 149 °C |
| 350 °F | 177 °C | 325 °F | 163 °C |
| 375 °F | 191 °C | 350 °F | 177 °C |
| 400 °F | 204 °C | 375 °F | 191 °C |
| 425 °F | 218 °C | 400 °F | 204 °C |
| 450 °F | 232 °C | 425 °F | 218 °C |
The Celsius column is the exact conversion of the Fahrenheit figure beside it, which is why it is not a round number: 350 °F is really 177 °C. Celsius dials are marked in 10 °C steps, so the figure you set is a dial mark rather than the exact value — 350 °F is set as 180 °C. The same happens on the right-hand side, where the start for that recipe is 325 °F, which is 163 °C, set as 160 °C. The exact step behind both columns is the ordinary one, worked through in the formula guide.
The rule's two halves are one instruction at two precisions. 25 °F of change is 14 °C of change, and cooks say "about 15 °C" because a figure rounded to a five is easier to hold in the head. Neither version is more correct than the other: both are about, and both are meant to be a starting point.
Timing
The time: cut it by about a fifth
The second half of the rule is a fraction, so it moves with whatever the recipe says. An oven time of 30 minutes becomes 24 minutes in the air fryer — about 20% less, which is the fifth the rule asks for.
That figure is the least reliable half of the rule, because time depends on the food rather than on the dial. Thickness comes first: a thin cutlet is cooked through long before a thick joint, so the same 20% is a small correction on one and a large one on the other. Batch size comes second, and it is where an air fryer differs most from an oven. The chamber is small and the fan has to move air across the surface of every piece, so anything piled up or stacked cooks unevenly and can take as long as it would have in the oven — the appliance only does what the rule promises when the food sits in a single layer with room around it.
So the first time you cook something, set the shorter time and then check earlier than the rule says. Opening the drawer early costs a minute; overcooking costs the meal. Once you know how your machine behaves with that food, the percentage is a sound guide for next time.
Reverse
Going the other way: air fryer to oven
An air-fryer recipe can be cooked in an oven by inverting both halves: add about 25 °F — about 15 °C — and give it about 25% more time. The arithmetic is tidy because it is the same rule read backwards: 24 minutes at the shorter setting becomes 30 minutes, which is where the example started.
This direction is the less reliable of the two, and it is worth saying why. An air-fryer recipe was written for one machine — its capacity, its fan, the size of its drawer — so the times in it already carry an adjustment that nobody wrote down. Going oven to air fryer, you are adjusting a recipe written for a large chamber. Going back, you are guessing at an adjustment that has already been applied, and there is nothing in the recipe to check the guess against.
Limits
Where the rule stops working
The rule is a good guide to roasting, reheating and anything cooked in a single layer. It is a poor guide to three things.
Baking. Cakes, bread and soufflés want gentle, even heat for a long time, and they want a large body of still air around them. An air fryer gives the opposite: a small chamber, a strong fan and an element close to the food. Lowering the temperature does not change the shape of that, so most baking belongs in the oven — or in an air-fryer recipe written for the appliance.
Large items and loose batters. A big roast or a whole bird needs air moving around all sides of it, which a small chamber cannot provide; a batter that has not set behaves differently again. In both cases what the food needs is not less heat but a different kind of heat, so the percentage stops being a useful guide.
The appliance itself. The rule assumes the number on your air fryer is the temperature inside it. Thermostats switch on and off and let the temperature swing, dials drift, and models differ from one another — the same setting can be meaningfully hotter in one machine than in another. That is not a fault in the arithmetic; it is the limit of any rule written as a number on a dial. A full oven has the same problem at a larger scale, and the oven temperature guide covers it, gas marks included.
A unit conversion has one right answer: a pound is a fixed number of kilograms, and no appliance can make it otherwise. This rule is not that. It is a starting adjustment that measures your equipment as much as it measures the food, and the first cooking run is how you find your version of it.
Common questions
Common questions
Can I put an oven recipe straight into an air fryer?
Not without both adjustments. Drop the temperature by about 25 °F — about 15 °C — and cut the time by about 20%, then check earlier than the new time the first time you cook it. Putting the recipe in unchanged is the commonest reason an air-fryer result comes out dark on the outside.
What is 180 °C in an air fryer?
About 165 °C: the rule's step taken off, so 180 minus 15. A Celsius dial is graduated in tens, so that is set as 160 °C.
Why is my air fryer faster than the oven?
Because the chamber is small and the fan is strong. A full oven heats a large volume of air and much of the heat reaches the food slowly; an air fryer keeps the hot air close to the food and drives it across the surface continuously, so the surface browns sooner and the middle catches up. It is the principle a fan oven uses, in a much smaller box.
Does the rule work for baking?
Rarely, and never well. Baking is where the rule stops working rather than merely needing judgement; the section on its limits above says why, and points to the oven temperatures a cake or a loaf actually wants.
Use it
Converters in this guide
Every figure in this guide is computed at build time from the same conversion engine as the converters it links to, and the factors behind it are the defining standards listed on the methodology page. Nothing here is typed by hand from a template.
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