Over the years we've clocked up hundreds of thousands of miles in all weathers, reviewing almost 300 of the best road bike tyres. With an eclectic selection of everything from sturdy commuting tyres to super-fast race rubber, these are our picks of the best road bike tyres you can buy.
Best road bike tyre overall: Continental Grand Prix 5000 Clincher
Best tubeless road bike tyre: Continental Grand Prix 5000 S TR
Best value road bike tyre: Hutchinson Challenger
Best road bike tyre for fast riding and racing: Vittoria Corsa Speed Tubeless Ready
Best road bike tyre for commuting: Schwalbe Marathon Plus Tyre
Best 650B road bike tyre: Compass 650B x 48 Switchback Hill Extralight TC
Best road bike tyre for bad roads: Panaracer GravelKing Slick TLC
Best tube-type clincher tyre for winter: Pirelli P Zero Race 4S
Best tubeless road bike tyre for winter: Vittoria Corsa Control TLR G2.0
Best money-no-object tyre: Challenge Criterium RS Handmade Tubeless Ready Road Tyre
Best road bike tyre for endurance rides: Bontrager R3 Hard-Case Lite TLR tyre
As Specialized famously said: "Whether you're riding a 2000-mile route of Le Tour de France or 40 miles on a Saturday, only one inch really matters—your contact patch".
Here at road.cc we reckon tyres are one of the most cost-effective upgrades you can make to a bike, whether you're searching for "free" speed, more grip, increased durability or just fewer of those dreaded punctures.
Even the very best bike wheels can be let down when clad in poor rubber, but before purchasing there is a couple of things to check:
Firstly, will you be fitting your tyres to tubeless wheels? Most will require special rim tape to stop the sealant and air from escaping. Secondly, how much clearance does your frame have? Many bikes designed for racing, especially models with rim brakes, will be limited to 28mm; but as the trend for wider rubber really accelerated in the 2020s, we've found that more and more of the best road bikes have space for 30mm or more nowadays.
If you've already decided on your next tyres and want to take your upgrading even further, then read on to check out our recommendations of the best road bike wheels, plus some handy tips underneath them...
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39 comments
Hutchinson tires are probably worse than Bell tires that Walmart sells!
I bought a pair of Fusion All Season tires and the tread ply came unglued from the carcass after about 200 miles on the rear and 300 on the front, I contacted Hutchinson at least 24 times thinking the squeaking wheel gets the grease, and they never responded.
Over the past few years, I've heard of a lot of people who had the same problem, and they can't get any responses from Hutchinson either.
I will never buy another pair of Hutchinson tires.
*duplicate comment*
I've done well over 1000km on my Hutchinson challengers.. Absolutely love them. 1 puncture (riding on London streets) but so much more grip and feel than the gaterskin hardshells they replaced. Feel much faster too as a bonus they're much cheaper too. Definitely recommend them.
The article mentions tyre clearance in the frame as well as "leave room for mudguards" with tyres fitted to bikes able to take them. I have long-standing questions about these aspects of tyre fitting that I never seem able to find a fully convincing answer to.
1) How much of what kind of tyre clearance is minimum and what determines those figures. The article mentions 3mm but is this all round the tyre or just to the sidewalls?
What particular factors determine the figure? Is it just the possible side-to-side flex of the wheels or are there other factors as well?
2) Some all-terrain bikes come with not just wide and slightly knobbled tyres but mudguards to fit. Such bikes are meant for both roads and tracks like canal paths or those in forests. But many argue that mudguards + track detritus such as branch bits risk a wheel jam and crash.
How much risk is there in practice? What methods are there for preventing track detritus getting between wheel and mudguard enough to cause a jam?
Does anyone recall the small wire devices attached to the brake bridge bolt that were set to a fag paper clearance to the tyre, to push off detritus so jams didn't occur? Is there such a device for disc frames without brake bridge bolt holes?
*********
I have two racey style bikes that have no guards but tyre clearances to the top of the tyre at a fag paper gap. You can see a hairline of light if you look through the fork top (at the front) or stay-bridge bottom (at the back). I've ridden one of these bikes for 11 years now without incident, other than a bit of tar from a hot road getting in the gap and causing a noise, once. Bits of gravel or branch picked up by the tyres just get shoved off by the frame.
Any others with close-fitting typre clearance experiences? Or mudguard-jam experiences?
Get your fender-mounted tire-wipers here: https://www.renehersecycles.com/shop/equipment/fenders/tire-wipers/
As for clearance, it's all about risk tolerance and margin for error, and personally I'd want to leave a healthy amount of space all around the tire and stick to paved roads. Absent fenders, detritus on or in the tire is likely to be knocked off by the rigid frame/fork if contact is made (I too have run tight frame clearances without major incident). Fenders, even good metal ones, are far less sturdy than frames and forks, and so for them there's the additional risk that they'll break/buckle and really jam you up.
Many mudguards are also engineered so as to release from the stays in the event of a jam.
Conti 5000s 23mm on the front, 25mm on the back with latex tubes, pump up before each ride.
or Conti 5000 s tr tubeless (23/25mm) if you enjoy messing about with sealant
Continental 5000 TR is the tire to beat in terms of rolling resistance. But on everything else is very poor. Puncture resistance is a joke, just check BRR review, as it is the tread thickness. Grip is also a little subpar when compared to Pirelli P Zero TLR speedcore.
I'll take puncture protection, durability and grip over a minor difference in rolling resistance every day of the week. Still some sites worship this tire. I cannot understand why...
"The best ...." a fatal and ancient flaw in our culture, propagating the notion that every little thing can be arranged with the other things in linear hierarchies-of-worth. A class system of the classic British ilk, based in the ancient religious nonsense of theocracies (from whence we emerged) of the monotheistic kind, with their Great Chain of Beings, the ultimate hierarchy of worth.
This article does mention the notion that there can be horses for courses; and for the riders. Just so. Tyre A may be very good for some parts of the country (e.g. the flint-free parts) and for use on some kinds of roads (e.g. not the main routes full of broken beer bottle shards cast by car-yob).
Racers will put up with a certain fragility in exchange for low rolling resistance and high grip; consumers want another permutation of tyre qualities.
Etcetera.
Personally I have tyres that don't major on puncture protection as the roads I ride are not full of sharps. Some are good at not wasting my energy or sliding me into the ditches, although they can wear fast. On the other hand, I also have some Marathons with the ice-studs that are heavy, ponderous and noisy - but probably allow me out in the frosts without risk of a broken hip.
Etcetera.
In all events, being a fan of some tyre or other isn't necessary, especially the aspect that seems to require the fan to diss all the rivals. Before long, there's foolish regurgitation of PR pap about "goes 10 seconds faster in a 40k TT at 50Kph; or "my personal experience with one tyre" anecdotes pushed as a general case that'll apply worldwide.
I've been holding off on the tubeless revolution - just cause my wheels are mostly old. Also, the tales of compatibility earlier, and the tales of sealant mess give me pause. Recently did a long gravel ride with a friend... Here's my data-point:
- He was on 35c gravel tyres, I was on (cheapish) Kenda SB8 54c MTB tyres.
- I was running at min pressure (35 psi or so). He was at 40 or 50 I think. Allowing for the different volumes, his tyres felt harder to press than mine.
- We did about 129km over gravel forestry roads, lot of loose chunky gravel.
- He got a puncture that both put a hole in his tyre and unseated a section of tyre from the rim
- The sealant didn't plug the hole. He stopped to put a plug in, but that wouldn't stay in the hole either. Eventually had to put a tube in (borrowed from another rider - blew the first tube with a CO2 canister, didn't have another tube... cause tubeless doesn't puncture of course).
- Back of his bike was an absolute mess with sealant, from the BB all the way up to the seat. As were his bibs. The sealant pealed easily off the bike next day, but not off his bibs.
My punctures: 0
If I had gotten a puncture, I wouldn't have been sprayed in sealant. Also, I had 3 tubes cause I didn't have the false hope of tubeless.
Not hugely convinced by tubeless, have to say.
I'd say that's a combination of luck and tyre choice! I'm sure there are plenty of tubeless users who could report similar stories but in reverse. I'm about to jinx myself here, but I haven't had a tubeless puncture in well over a year and when I do it's usually because I've forgotten to top up sealant or have left the tyre wear past it's use-by date, as it were!
I'd say that's a combination of luck and tyre choice! I'm sure there are plenty of tubeless users who could report similar stories but in reverse. I'm about to jinx myself here, but I haven't had a tubeless puncture in well over a year and when I do it's usually because I've forgotten to top up sealant or have left the tyre wear past it's use-by date, as it were!
"tyre wear past it's use-by date"
Are there "Use-by dates" for tyres now? Really
"tyre wear past it's use-by date"
Are there "Use-by dates" for tyres now? Really
I assume it is more ... the tyre is so worn I should have replaced it before now.
No need to assume. The OP's full phrase was: " ..... left the tyre wear past it's use-by date, as it were!"
The dangers of partial quoting (or reading) eh!?
I've never used actual tubeless, but have been running tubeless 35mm GravelKing slicks with inner tubes (that's how the bike was spec'd by Fairlight) - mainly for round town, but also a couple of 200km audaxes. I was hoping for the promised "higher volume, lower pressure, fewer punctures" experience, but it's been the most puncture-prone tyre I've ever used, and the first time I punctured, in the middle of nowhere 100km from home, I really struggled to get the tyre off (worse than my experiences with Marathon Plus). Granted, it's possible that if I actually ran them tubeless as intended, these punctures might have self sealed without me noticing, but the apparent fragility of the tyres (compared to 28mm GP4S on other bike) doesn't really encourage me to spend the extra money trying it out. I've wondered if I misunderstood the what 'TLC' on the sidewall stands for, and if it's actually a care label.
No tubeless option for Pirelli P Zero Race 4S? Really?
If you're going to regurgitate old reviews, at least check for updates before publishing again.
This and the 5000 TR is the best tubeless tire clearly states the age of this article...
They even reviewed it last month lol
It'a not as if the tubeless version has only just come out either. I've had them on my bike for nearly three months and they had already been in the shops for a while. A cycling journalist should know that (or at least check the 11-12 month old review before publishing again).
It'a not as if the tubeless version has only just come out either. I've had them on my bike for nearly three months and they had already been in the shops for a while. A cycling journalist should know that (or at least check the 11-12 month old review before publishing again).
Marathon Plus.
That "Stubborn" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in the cons sentence.
I recall getting it to a point where I could not get it off or get it on.
I think there may have been a small amount of swearing at that juncture.
Use the strap method. Get 3 little velcro straps (keep them in your saddle bag). Tie 3 straps, one after another in series, fairly close together and tight to compress AND HOLD the M+ tyre into the wheel. Remove the middle strap, and retie it a little further past next strap. Working the slack outwards. Repeat again, till you have a segment of maybe 1/4 to 1/3 of the tyre tied off and held compressed into the wheel. See YouTube for some demonstrations.
This is a quick and easy way to get the slack to let you easily lever the tyre off the rim on the opposite side.
It isn't often you need to remove Marathon+ tyres from a rim (they wear out before ever puncturing, as often as not!), but when you do, this trick is essential.
Use the strap method. Get 3 little velcro straps (keep them in your saddle bag). Tie 3 straps, one after another in series, fairly close together and tight to compress AND HOLD the M+ tyre into the wheel. Remove the middle strap, and retie it a little further past next strap. Working the slack outwards. Repeat again, till you have a segment of maybe 1/4 to 1/3 of the tyre tied off and held compressed into the wheel. See YouTube for some demonstrations.
This is a quick and easy way to get the slack to let you easily lever the tyre off the rim on the opposite side.
It isn't often you need to remove Marathon+ tyres from a rim (they wear out before ever puncturing, as often as not!), but when you do, this trick is essential.
Use the strap method. Get 3 little velcro straps (keep them in your saddle bag). Tie 3 straps, one after another in series, fairly close together and tight to compress AND HOLD the M+ tyre into the wheel. Remove the middle strap, and retie it a little further past next strap. Working the slack outwards. Repeat again, till you have a segment of maybe 1/4 to 1/3 of the tyre tied off and held compressed into the wheel. See YouTube for some demonstrations.
This is a quick and easy way to get the slack to let you easily lever the tyre off the rim on the opposite side.
It isn't often you need to remove Marathon+ tyres from a rim (they wear out before ever puncturing, as often as not!), but when you do, this trick is essential.
Use the strap method. Get 3 little velcro straps (keep them in your saddle bag). Tie 3 straps, one after another in series, fairly close together and tight to compress AND HOLD the M+ tyre into the wheel. Remove the middle strap, and retie it a little further past next strap. Working the slack outwards. Repeat again, till you have a segment of maybe 1/4 to 1/3 of the tyre tied off and held compressed into the wheel. See YouTube for some demonstrations.
This is a quick and easy way to get the slack to let you easily lever the tyre off the rim on the opposite side.
It isn't often you need to remove Marathon+ tyres from a rim (they wear out before ever puncturing, as often as not!), but when you do, this trick is essential.
That new editor box is very unresponsive when posting. But apparently the 'save' button posts every time you click it while waiting! I have no way to delete posts.
That new editor box is very unresponsive when posting. But apparently the 'save' button posts every time you click it while waiting! I have no way to delete posts.
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