In the developing countries, energy required for cooking often has the biggest share in the total national energy demand and is normally met mostly by biomass. This paper presents the results of experimental studies on emission conducted on a number of traditional and improved cookstoves collected from different Asian countries using wood and charcoal as fuel. The emission factors from this study are comparable to those reported in the literature. In the case of wood combustion, CO₂ emission factor is in the range of 1560–1620 g kg ⁻¹. The emission factors for pollutants CO, CH₄, TNMOC and NO_x were in the ranges 19–136, 6–10, 6–9 and 0.05–0.2 g kg ⁻¹, respectively. In the case of charcoal combustion, CO₂ emission factor is in the range of 2155–2567 g kg ⁻¹. The emission factors for pollutants CO, CH₄, TNMOC were in the ranges 35–198, 6.7–7.8, 6–10 g kg ⁻¹, respectively. Comparison between wood and charcoal fired stoves shows that, CO₂ and CO emission factor values for wood are lower as compared to charcoal. CH₄ and TNMOC emission factors for wood are with the same range as compared to charcoal. Emission factors for NO_x using wood is slightly lower than charcoal. The emission of all the pollutants per unit of useful heat was found to decrease with increasing stove efficiency for both wood and charcoal fired stoves.