For modern home rice cookers, the smallest single-person model cooks 1 rice cup (180 ml), whereas large models can cook 10 cups. Commercial models can cook 20 or more cups. As a possible source of confusion, model specifications and names may list either cooked or uncooked capacity. Rice roughly doubles in size during cooking; therefore, a 10 cup (uncooked) rice cooker can produce up to 20 cups of cooked rice. The prices vary greatly, depending on the capacity, features, materials used, and the country of origin.
The majority of modern electric rice cookers are equipped with a stay-warm or keep-warm feature, which keeps the rice at an optimal temperature for serving without over-cooking it. Some gas cookers also have electric stay-warm mechanism. However, the usefulness of this feature degrades over time, a microwave may be more energy efficient or better suited to reheat rice that will sit longer than four hours.