Small ice makers, ranked by footprint

45 of the 57 bench machines we sourced publish their dimensions, and those are the only ones that can honestly be ranked on size. Sorted by the bench space they occupy, the smallest is 205 x 285 x 315 mm. The largest bench machine we measured covers 2.7 times that area, which sounds like a lot and amounts to a difference of centimetres in each direction.

Dimensions and prices checked 9 September 2026

Every machine we could measure

Smallest bench footprint first. The median machine here is 243 mm wide, 300 mm deep and 320 mm tall, which is a useful thing to hold in your head: half of the category is smaller than that in each dimension and half is larger, and the whole spread is narrow.

A warning about these figures. Retailers sometimes publish the same machine's width and depth the other way around, and you can see it in the table above where near-identical units appear with the two numbers swapped. Read width and depth as a pair. Height is the number that is consistently reported and, for most people, the number that decides the purchase.

These machines are all roughly the same size

That is the honest headline, and it is not what the category names suggest. They share a compressor, a set of chilled spikes and a water tank, and there is a limit to how differently you can package those. The spread between the smallest and the largest bench machine here is real but modest, and shopping hard for the last two centimetres of bench width is usually not worth the compromise it costs elsewhere.

Height is the exception, and it is the one that actually stops a purchase. Published heights here run from 240 mm on the Rule Lie 12KG Ice Maker Machine Countertop Portable, Fast Ice Cube Maker with Handle to 530 mm on the Devanti Ice Maker Machine with Water Dispenser 2.5L. If the machine is going under an overhead cupboard, that difference is the difference between fitting and not fitting, and width barely matters by comparison. Then add the lid. These are top-loading machines: the lid hinges up to fill the tank and to lift ice out, and no listing we sourced publishes how much room that needs. Measure the gap you have, not the gap the machine occupies when it is closed.

If you want machines that are small in all three directions rather than small in one, 11 of the 45 we measured sit at or below the median on width, depth and height at once. Those are the ones to shortlist for a genuinely tight bench.

What a small machine costs you

Here is the trade-off nobody selling these puts on the box. A smaller cabinet holds a smaller water tank and a smaller ice basket, and both of those are things you have to attend to by hand. A small ice maker does not ask less of you. It asks more, more often.

• The tank is the run time. 45 of 57 bench machines publish a tank volume. The smallest machine on this page that publishes one carries 2 litres. The largest tank on any bench machine we found is 3.2 litres, on the Devanti Ice Maker Machine, 18KG 3.2L Stainless Steel Countertop Icemaker at $214.95, and that machine is nowhere near the small end of the table. When the water is gone the machine stops, so a small tank means standing there with a jug.
• The basket is the interruption. Only 24 of 57 publish a basket capacity, which is unhelpful of them, because it is the specification that decides how often you have to walk over. The Kenmore Crunchy Chewable Nugget Ice Maker, 18kg/24hr, Front-Load Portable Ice Machine pairs a 1 kg basket with a rating of 18 kg per 24 hours, so at the rated speed the basket is full in about 1.3 hours and the machine stops. That is our arithmetic on two published figures, and it is the number that tells you what owning one is actually like.
• Nothing here keeps ice frozen. The basket is insulated at best and never refrigerated. Ice left in it melts back down to the tank and gets frozen again, which costs power. A small machine gets you no closer to a bucket of ice at the end of the day than a large one; it just gets you there in smaller instalments.
• Output does not shrink with the box. Most machines here publish the same rated kilograms per 24 hours whatever their size, so you are not trading ice for bench space. You are trading unattended running time for bench space.

Which small machine, for which space

• The tightest bench. The YOPOWER 2L Ice Maker Machine, Self-Cleaning Ice Cube Maker, Portable Ice Maker at $99.90 has the smallest measured footprint here at 205 x 285 mm, standing 315 mm tall. It is sold by Amazon AU, which pays us nothing.
• Under an overhead cupboard. Buy on height, and the lowest published here is 240 mm on the Rule Lie 12KG Ice Maker Machine Countertop Portable, Fast Ice Cube Maker with Handle at $89.99. Then allow for the lid, which is not in that figure.
• A home bar where refilling would spoil it. If you have the depth, spending it on tank volume rather than on a smaller box is the better trade. The Devanti Ice Maker Machine, 18KG 3.2L Stainless Steel Countertop Icemaker at $214.95 carries 3.2 litres.
• A caravan or a boat. Size is not your constraint, power is. No machine we could source runs on 12V, so read the portable page before you buy on dimensions alone.
• An apartment where noise carries. Almost nothing in this category publishes a decibel figure, small machines included, and a compressor in a studio is a compressor in a studio. The noise register records what little is published.

Once you have a size that fits, the rest of the decision is the ordinary one: output, tank, basket and price, compared on the countertop page. What the machine actually costs to run is in the running cost register, the shape of the ice is in what each machine makes, and everything sits together on the main comparison.

Common questions

What is the smallest ice maker sold in Australia?

Of the machines whose dimensions we could read off a retailer listing, the smallest bench footprint is a little over 200mm wide by a little under 300mm deep. That is roughly the space a large kettle takes. It is worth saying that the difference between the smallest machine in the category and a typical one is a few centimetres in each direction, not a different class of appliance, and a lot of listings publish no dimensions at all, so a smaller machine may exist and simply not be measurable from what sellers publish.

Will an ice maker fit under my overhead cupboards?

Height is the specification to check, and it is the one most likely to catch you out, because the published height is the machine closed. Nearly all of these are top-loading: the lid hinges upward to fill the tank and to reach the basket, and no listing we sourced publishes how much clearance that needs. Measure your gap, subtract the published height, and if what is left is not enough to swing a lid and get a hand in, the machine will technically fit and be miserable to use.

Does a smaller ice maker make less ice?

Usually not, which is the surprising part. The great majority of these machines carry the same rated output and the same first cycle time regardless of how big the box is, because they use the same compressor and the same set of chilled spikes. What a smaller machine actually gives up is tank volume and basket volume, so it holds less water and less finished ice. It makes ice at the same speed and needs your attention more often.

Is a small ice maker good for a caravan?

For a caravan on a powered site, yes, and the small ones travel well. For a caravan running off batteries, no, and not because of the size: no machine we could source accepts 12V DC input, so every one of them needs mains power or an inverter. That is covered in full on the portable ice maker page, including what the published wattage figures imply for inverter sizing.