Breville Bambino Plus vs Breville Barista Pro
The Bambino Plus at $500 is the right pick if you already own a grinder (or want to buy one separately) and value the smallest possible footprint with automatic milk. The Barista Pro at $850 is the better all-in-one: it adds a built-in 30-setting conical burr grinder and an LCD shot timer, making it a complete grind-to-cup setup. The $350 gap is essentially the price of the integrated grinder plus the shot-timer interface — worth it only if you want one box instead of two.
Spec face-off
Bars scaled to the higher value. Coloured = wins that spec.
Full specifications
Strengths & weaknesses
Full comparison
Both machines share Breville's 3-second ThermoJet heating and a 54mm portafilter, so the espresso engines are closely related. The decisive difference is the grinder: the Barista Pro has an integrated 30-setting conical burr grinder, while the Bambino Plus has none. That single feature drives most of the price gap and most of the buying decision.
If you add a capable standalone grinder to the Bambino Plus, your total spend lands near or above the Barista Pro anyway — but you get a better grinder and a smaller machine on the counter, at the cost of two devices instead of one. A dedicated grinder also outperforms the Pro's built-in unit on very light roasts, where the integrated grinder shows more dose variance.
Milk and interface are the other contrasts. The Bambino Plus has an automatic steam wand (set temperature and texture, walk away), which is genuinely easier for a beginner. The Barista Pro uses a manual wand plus an LCD shot timer that actively teaches extraction — better for someone who wants to learn technique, less hands-off for someone who doesn't. The Pro is also a much larger machine; the Bambino fits where the Pro cannot.
Buy the Bambino Plus ($500) for a compact, automatic-milk setup when you already have a grinder or want to choose your own. Buy the Barista Pro ($850) if you want a single self-contained machine that grinds, brews, and times shots out of the box, and you're willing to give up counter space and automatic milk to get there.