What percent of the inside lining of the Instant Pot is actually stainless steel?

Instant Pot does not publish a percentage for how much of the inside lining is stainless steel, and this site has not compared an Instant Pot in any of its guides. The inner pot is described by the maker as stainless steel, but no published figure breaks that lining down into a share of the surface or a share of the metal.

What follows is what the makers of the cookware this site has compared do publish about their stainless steel, so you can see how a stainless figure is normally stated. None of those figures transfer to an Instant Pot, and none of them is a percentage of a lining.

What the maker states about the inner pot

The Instant Pot inner pot is sold as a stainless steel pot, and that is the whole of the published description. There is no figure for the thickness of the steel, no figure for the grade in the product name, and no percentage split between a steel layer and any other layer. A percentage would need two published numbers to divide, and the maker publishes neither.

This matters because a percentage question usually comes from a worry about a coating. Where a maker does use a coating, the coating is named in the published features. Where a maker uses bare stainless steel, the features say stainless steel and stop there. The absence of a percentage is not a hidden number. It is simply a figure the maker does not put in print.

How stainless steel is stated on cookware this site has compared

The pasta pots guide is the closest comparison on this site, because those pots are the same kind of vessel: a tall pot for boiling. In Best Pasta Pots for Draining Without a Colander, the Cooler Concepts pot is listed as food grade 304 stainless steel, and the Oster Sangerfield set is listed as polished stainless steel with an encapsulated aluminum base. Those are grade and construction statements, not percentages.

The Oster entry is the useful one for understanding the structure. The maker describes a stainless steel exterior and an encapsulated aluminum base, which means the pot is a stainless shell over an aluminum disc rather than solid stainless throughout. Even there, the maker gives no percentage for either material. The Cuisinart 766S-22 in the same guide states stainless steel construction and nothing more specific about the lining.

So the pattern across published cookware specs is a named grade or a named construction, not a ratio. A shopper who wants to know what touches the food reads the grade and the construction line. A shopper who wants a percentage is asking for a figure the category does not usually publish.

Coated interiors versus bare stainless interiors

Where a pot has a coating, the maker says so plainly, and that is the case where a percentage question has a real answer. The Bialetti 5.5 quart pasta pot in the pasta pots guide is described as aluminum with a PFOA free nonstick interior, so the cooking surface is a coating over aluminum, not stainless steel at all. The Gotham Steel 5 quart pot is described as a ceramic cooking surface, triple coated and reinforced with titanium, over a solid aluminum body.

Those two entries show the difference. A coated pot has a surface layer that is not the base metal, and the maker names the layer. A stainless pot has a surface that is the metal itself, and the maker names the grade. Neither kind of entry comes with a percentage, which is why the Instant Pot question cannot be answered from published figures.

Stainless and steel figures elsewhere on this site

The pizza steels guide deals in solid steel plates, where thickness is the published figure rather than a percentage. In Best Pizza Steels for Home Ovens and Grills, the ThermiChef is listed at 16 by 16 inches and 1/4 inch thick, and the Baking Steel is listed at 14 by 16 by 0.25 inches. Those are dimensions of a single piece of steel, and the makers state them directly.

The honing steels guide shows the same habit for a different product. In Best Honing Steels for Daily Knife Maintenance, the Wüsthof rod is described as forged from a single block of high carbon stainless steel and tempered to 58 degree HRC, and the Shun Premier rod is described as a stainless steel rod with a smooth side and a micro-ribbed side. Hardness and construction are published. A percentage of stainless content is not.

The moka pots guide adds one more example. In Best Moka Pots for Stovetop and Electric Brewing, the Waldwerk pot is described as 304 stainless steel and the Easyworkz pot as 18/8 stainless steel. Both are grade statements. Neither maker publishes a percentage for the steel in the pot.

What to check instead of a percentage

If the concern behind the question is what contacts the food, the published grade is the figure to look for. A 304 or 18/8 statement tells you the alloy family the maker names. A coating statement tells you the surface is not bare metal. Both appear in the features of the products this site has compared, and both are more useful than a percentage would be, because a percentage of a lining does not tell you which alloy is on the inside.

If the concern is thickness or weight, those figures are published for some products and not others. The Oster set in the pasta pots guide is listed at 3.6 lbs, and the Cooler Concepts pot at 3.33 lbs. The Instant Pot maker does not publish an equivalent figure for its inner pot in the material this site has reviewed, so this site cannot compare it.

The honest answer to the percentage question is that no published figure exists to divide. Read the grade and the construction line on the product you are considering, and treat a missing percentage as a missing figure rather than a concealed one.