In this guide
Start with the food that must fit on the lower grate during an ordinary cook. Then account for upper-rack food, two-zone space, pans and room to turn things. Advertised totals are useful only after you know which racks they include. A larger cooker also takes more patio, more cleaning and potentially more fuel to heat. Then there is the second size decision: hopper margin.
Four grills anchor those classes here. The Pit Boss 500 FB2 and 700 FB2, the Traeger Westwood and the Woodridge Pro. Two makers, two ways of counting, and no visible interest in agreeing.
Total square inches and main grate are two different numbers
Traeger breaks out each rack and then adds them up. The Westwood is 428 square inches on Rack 1 plus 225 on Rack 2 for 653. The Woodridge Pro is 585 plus 385 for 970. Pit Boss gives one figure across both tiers: 518 on the 500 FB2, 747 on the 700 FB2.
As totals, the four line up honestly. 518, 653, 747, 970. For the grate your burgers actually sit on, Traeger prints the split, and on a Pit Boss the referee is a tape measure on a floor model.
The main grate is the number that limits anything you flip. Upper racks are real cooking space and they earn their keep on a smoke day, holding ribs, thighs and sausage up out of the heat. What they will not do is help you turn twenty burgers at once, because nobody has ever flipped anything gracefully at chest height. Every maker in this guide counts that upper shelf in the headline figure. Read a total as a total, then go find the grate underneath it.
Map the lower grate to a real cook
The Westwood publishes 428 square inches for Rack 1. That gives you a comparable area, not a promised number of burgers, chickens or rib racks. Food shape, spacing, pans and the hot spots of a particular grill all change what fits. Lay out the food or cookware from a typical meal on a surface at home, measure the rectangle it occupies with working room, and compare that footprint with the grate dimensions when the maker provides them. The Westwood review covers the rest of that grill's tradeoffs.
The Pit Boss 500 FB2 lands in the same class on 518 across two tiers. The grate is not its problem. The 5 pound hopper is, and that is the next section.
When the batch is the point
The larger classes make sense when batch cooking is a regular job rather than an imagined holiday. The 700 FB2 publishes 747 square inches across two tiers; because Pit Boss does not split that total here, confirm the lower-rack dimensions before planning around a particular pan or cut. The 700FB2 vs 500FB2 comparison covers the choice inside the line.
The Woodridge Pro publishes 970 square inches in total, with 585 on Rack 1. That is meaningfully more lower-rack room than the Westwood, and it earns its footprint only when your regular cooks use it. The Woodridge Pro review covers the larger grill on its own terms.
The hopper is the size number buyers skip
A controller holds temperature only while pellets keep reaching the fire. An empty hopper turns the cleverest board on the market into a barrel of cold air. So the hopper, not the grate, decides how long a cook runs without you standing next to it. The four here: 5 pounds on the 500 FB2, 18 on the Westwood, 21 on the 700 FB2, 24 on the Woodridge Pro.
Burn rate moves with the set point, the weather and how dry the pellets have stayed, which is why no hours appear in this guide: a number that swings that hard is a number nobody should print under any logo. Read hopper pounds as margin, not as hours.
A large grate paired with a small hopper deserves extra thought when long cooks are the point. Five pounds provides less reserve than 18, 21 or 24, but none of those figures promises a number of hours. Burn rate changes with temperature, weather, grill design and fuel condition. During the first few long cooks, check consumption while you are awake and build a refill plan from what the grill actually uses.
What the extra size asks of you after delivery
Pellets, first. A bigger barrel is more steel to bring up to temperature and more volume to hold there, fed out of the same bag. Buying a size up means buying pellets faster for as long as you own the thing, and it means somewhere dry to keep them, because damp pellets swell and jam augers. A sealed bin under cover is the accessory nobody adds to the cart and everybody buys eventually.
Then ash and grease. A pellet cook leaves a fire pot to vacuum and a drip tray to scrape, and a wider barrel is more of both, every time.
Settle footprint with a tape. Measure the outdoor location, required clearances and the gate on the way, then verify that every dimension describes the assembled grill rather than its carton. Weight confirms that none of these is casual to reposition: Traeger publishes 116 pounds for the Westwood and conflicting Woodridge Pro figures of 174 and 190, so plan conservatively and use help for the move.
Get it wrong small and you pay twice: a second batch on every party cook, then a replacement grill two seasons in. Get it wrong big and you pay once up front, then keep paying.
The shortlist by size
For a compact shortlist, start with the Westwood or 500 FB2 and compare the lower grate and hopper with your ordinary cook. Move to the 700 FB2 when the additional rack area and hopper margin solve a regular problem. Consider the Woodridge Pro when its larger lower rack, connected features and extra hopper margin justify the footprint. The Woodridge Pro vs 700FB2 comparison covers the closest cross-brand choice.
Size for the cook you do most weekends, not the one you did once. Better to run a full grate than to heat an empty one.
Every model here, plus the cabinet smokers this guide skipped, sits in pellet grills and smokers.