Like this site? Help us to make it better.

This article contains links to retailers. Purchases made after clicking on those links may help support road.cc by earning us a commission. Find out more about road.cc buyer's guides.

With an inexpensive multi tool, you're ready for anything that goes wrong with your bike. We've undertaken countless roadside and trailside repairs over the years, and tested well over a hundred of them. These are the best bike multi tools you can buy.

The best cycling multitools vary from simple folding hex key sets, to all-singing, all-dancing widgets that'll do everything but the washing up. But the best cycling multitool for you needs to have all bits you need to adjust every bolt on your bike, including obscure ones like the 8mm hex on some cranks; sooner or later you'll need them all.

Some cycling multitools have all the bits permanently attached, some use separate heads; the latter can be easier to use but there's always a risk of losing loose parts

Alternatives include the simple set of folding hex keys you can get at any hardware store; it's still worth buying quality though

The best cycling multitools start from about £12

Buy Now for £43.19 from Cycle Solutions

The Topeak Mini PT30 is a cracking little tool, bang up to date with modern bike needs. Including an excellent chain breaker and quick-link tool, disc pad spacer, tubeless tyre plug reamer and insertion fork, there are very few road/trailside tasks it won't master, all in a tiny package.

The Mini PT30 is a class bit of kit with a high-quality feel and finish. It looks the business – as you'd want it to, at £47.99 RRP. This is not a tool for those on a tight budget... but it is for those appreciating having everything to hand, in one compact package. Topeak offers a two-year warranty, and based on the longevity of my other Topeak tools you're pretty unlikely ever to need to call upon it.

If your bike has no Torx fittings, or if you don't use quick-links, or never break chains, then the PT30 is likely pricey overkill for your needs. But if you're running a modern disc-braked bike, with a quick-link'd chain, tubeless tyres, and want to as best possible minimise the risk of a long walk home, the Topeak Mini PT30 is well worth a look.

Tools: 2, 2.5, 3, 4 , 5, 6, 8, 10mm hex keys, T10, T15, T25 Torx, 14G, 15G, Mavic M7, Shimano 4.5mm spoke wrenches, chromoly steel chain tool, chain hook, master link tool, Phillips No 2 & flat head screw drivers, tubeless tyre reamer & plug insertion tool, serrated, disc spacer

Read our review of the Topeak Mini PT30 multitool Find a Topeak dealer

Buy Now for £14.00 from Amazon

The Topeak Hexus X multitool packs a lot of functionality into a pretty tight package. The chain tool is highly commended. Fitting 21 tools into a package that sits neatly on the palm of the hand is a commendable achievement from Topeak. While the overall finish may not be absolutely the best out there, everything worked well, nothing broke and it's hard to see why you would want anything more to get you out of any sticky situation on the road. It's only major downside is that the loose bits could go AWOL, so you'll just have to keep en eye on them.

Tools: 2, 2.5, 3, 4 , 5, 6, 8mm hex keys, T15, T25, T30 Torx, cross-head screwdriver, 14G, 15G spoke wrenches, steel wire chain hook, 2 tyre levers, presta valve core tool, chain tool

Read our review of the Topeak Hexus X Find a Topeak dealer

The Topeak Hexus was the clear winner in our People's Choice multitool survey

Buy Now for £31.20 from eBay

The Uniche Stepless Rachet multitool Wrench is a multitool that looks a bit like a CO2 inflator – compact enough to carry for beside-the-road adjustments, with an unusual ratchet giving instant engagement. It houses a good selection of durable bits, providing most of the tools you're likely to need while out on a ride. It's a pleasure to use, although its design means there's no chain tool.

Uniche says that the patented design of the ratchet mechanism is a key advantage for when you're working on hard-to-access parts of your bike.

A conventional ratchet has a certain number of engagement points (just like a freehub), and this means you can have a few degrees of rotation before you start to loosen or tighten the fastener you're working on. Here, a miniature clutch mechanism means there are effectively infinite starting positions. Compared with using a fold-out multitool, this makes it much less fiddly to access bottle cage bolts, for example. For any bolt where you've got a very limited space and hence less than 60 degrees of rotation, it's a real benefit.

Read our review of the Uniche Stepless Tool

Buy Now for £10.99 from Tredz

You get five essential tools here in a simple fold-out tool. It's nicely made, very easy to use and cheap enough that you won't get too upset if you lose it or it doesn't come back from being loaned to a friend.

Tools: 4, 5, 6mm hex keys, T25 Torx, cross-head screwdriver

Find a Birzman dealer Read our review of the Birzman E-Version Mini Tool 5 Function

Buy Now for £112.50 from Chain Reaction Cycles

The Silca T-Ratchet and Ti-Torque kit is a beautifully made, superlight, and multi-functional set of tools, made to the highest quality. Silca brand is renowned for making tools of the highest quality, with expertly finished components that are aesthetically and ergonomically pleasing. They're the type of things you might give as a gift, or treat yourself to, and keep in the cleanest part of your workspace, far away from the greasy rags and lubes that perform the grunt work on your drivetrain. The T-Ratchet and Ti-Torque kit very much continues this trend.

Read our review of the Silca T-Ratchet Kit + Ti-Torque Kit Find a Silca dealer

Buy Now for £27.99 from Tredz

Blackburn's Wayside 19 is a comprehensive multitool with a difference, namely that it packs five proper L-shaped, ball-ended individual Allen keys into a durable body, making usually hard to reach bolts easy to get to. It's durable and packed with features and it quickly became a go-to-multitool.

Read our review of the Blackburn Wayside 19 multitool Find a Blackburn dealer

Buy Now for £22.37 from Tweeks Cycles

The Granite Design RocknRoll tool is a ratchet tool contained in a Cordura fabric package. Inside the small roll up bundle is the ratchet tool itself, an extension rod and 9 bits including 7 Hex bits (2mm/2.5mm/3mm/4mm/5mm/6mm/8mm), Star bit (T25), and Philips bit (PH2). The tool is made from S2 alloy steel and will withstand 60NM at the gear.

The individual parts slot neatly into pockets, with two spare spaces for you to put the pieces of a quick link (not included). The whole thing rolls up (size: L130xW50xH30) and is secured closed with strong Velcro. At the rear is a loop to thread through a frame strap for extra security if you choose to attach this to your bike.

A ratchet style multitool is a great addition to any toolkit and the Granite Design RocknRoll tool is smart option, I popped this in my pack for big rides in case of emergencies in hard to reach places and also used it at home when anything from swapping stems, grips, saddle rail bolts, pedals and bottle cages. When the time calls to get it out then I much prefer using it to a regular bike multitool as its easier to manoeuvre in tight spaces and quicker to remove and install bolts too.

Read our review of the Granite Design RocknRoll Toolkit

Buy Now for £19.95 from VeloChampion

Previously known as the Gooj (for Get Out Of Jail), the MLT18 has a great selection of bits for dealing with on-road mechanical mishaps, the price is very decent and we're not sulking at all about no longer being able to make a silly joke about finding it in a cake.

Tools: Chain tool, spoke wrench sizes 1, 2, 4, 3 Shimano and Mavic, T25 Torx, Philips screwdriver, flat screwdriver, two tyre levers, 2, 2.5, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8mm hex.

Read our review of the VeloChampion MLT18

Buy Now for £25.99 from Tredz

The Crank Brothers M17 comes with the standard range of tools that you would expect. All of the tool bits are hi-ten steel, so they should last. They're fairly short too, which should reduce the chance of a tool bit twisting and snapping off. The downside is that they might be a little short for some fiddly operations but we've had no trouble.

Tools: chain tool; spoke wrench sizes #0, 1, 2, 3; 2, 2.5, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8mm hex; Phillips #2 screwdrivers; flat #2 screwdriver; 8mm & 10mm spanner, T25 Torx

Find a Crank Brothers dealer Read our review of the Crank Brothers M17

Buy Now for £25.99 from Bikester

A top quality bike multitool that packs a lot of features into a very small space, leaving more room in your pack or pocket for gels and energy bars. Good value too.

Tools: chain tool; tyre lever; 2, 2.5, 3, 4, 5, 6mm hex keys; T25 Torx; Phillips #1 screwdriver; flat screwdriver; 8, 9, 10mm box spanners; 3.2, 3.3, 3.5mm spoke keys

Read our review of the Cube RFR 19 Find a Cube dealer

Buy Now for £29.99 from Broadribb Cycles

Cycling multitools tend to be roughly the same design – think Swiss army knife but for bikes rather than camping. Fabric, though, has bucked the trend with its Chamber multitool, creating a ratchet tool that functions as a multitool – and does so very well. The heads sit inside the chamber of the tool. Imagine double-sided extended drill bits sat in a holder that roughly resembles a revolver barrel. These function through the ratchet element that sits at the top of the tool.

Tools: 2, 2.5, 3, 4, 5, 6 & 8mm hex keys; SL3, SL5, PH1, PH2 screwdriver; T10 & T25 Torx

Read our review of the Fabric Chamber Find a Fabric dealer

There are two schools of thought when it comes to bike multitools. You either go for one that has the absolute minimum of bits to fix things that are likely to go wrong with your own bike, or you carry as versatile a tool as possible so you can help out others too. But what bits are available?

Browse the road.cc multitool review archive.

Hex (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Heartlover1717:Flickr)

Also known as Allen keys, these hexagonal tools are the core of most cycling multitools. You usually need a minimum of 6, 5 and 4mm sizes, but it's worth carefully inspecting your bike for smaller ones in hard-to-find spots like brake lever and spring tension adjusters.

You may have an 8mm hex head lurking somewhere too, like the back of your pedals or the bolts holding your cranks on. Because an 8mm hex tool is large and heavy, bike multitools usually have a sleeve round a smaller bit to fit the larger size.

Check your derailleur adjustment screws and make sure your multitool has the right screwdriver bit, usually a small flat-head or cross-head driver.

Once only found holding disc brake rotors in place on mountain bikes, Torx screws are becoming more common on road bikes because they are harder to round out than Hex heads. The most common application is chainring bolts, which usually need a T30 tool, while brake rotor bolts are T25.

Few things can stop you dead in your tracks like a broken chain, rare though it is. We wouldn't try and repair a 10- or 11-speed chain in the field; it's a fiddly job that needs care and a good quality chain tool. Better to carry a joining link for field repairs, but you'll still need a chain tool to dismantle the old link.

Some bike multitools include tyre levers, either moulded into the body of the tool or as separate parts that clip together in your bag. These tend to be a bit shorter than standard levers, so make sure you can remove your tyres with them. It'd be a bit embarrassing to find they're not up to the job in the middle of nowhere.

If you ding a wheel or break a spoke you'll need a spoke key to set things right, especially with low-spoke-count wheels where a broken spoke can distort the wheel so much it won't pass through the frame. If you've got wheels with non-standard spokes like Mavic's or Shimano's, look for a tool with a matching spoke key

If you're taking off into the wilds for multiple days, then a knife is a handy thing to have, so some multitools come with short blades.

Explore the complete archive of reviews of multitools on road.cc

We’ve noticed you’re using an ad blocker. If you like road.cc, but you don’t like ads, please consider subscribing to the site to support us directly. As a subscriber you can read road.cc ad-free, from as little as £1.99. 

If you don’t want to subscribe, please turn your ad blocker off. The revenue from adverts helps to fund our site.

If you’ve enjoyed this article, then please consider subscribing to road.cc from as little as £1.99. Our mission is to bring you all the news that’s relevant to you as a cyclist, independent reviews, impartial buying advice and more. Your subscription will help us to do more.

The aim of road.cc buyer's guides is to give you the most, authoritative, objective and up-to-date buying advice. We continuously update and republish our guides, checking prices, availability and looking for the best deals.

Our guides include links to websites where you can buy the featured products. Like most sites we make a small amount of money if you buy something after clicking on one of those links. We want you to be happy with what you buy, so we only include a product if we think it's one of the best of its kind.

As far as possible that means recommending equipment that we have actually reviewed, but we also include products that are popular, highly-regarded benchmarks in their categories.

Here's some more information on how road.cc makes money.

You can also find further guides on our sister sites off.road.cc and ebiketips.

road.cc buyer's guides are maintained by the road.cc tech team. Email us with comments, corrections or queries.

John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.

He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.

Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.

John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.

He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.

Trek should fire him. If not, at his next race he's fair game.

What speed was the old dear riding at on the pavement, that a gesticulation caused her to crash onto the road? I suspect being 77 had a lot to do...

If he upsets the lefty/green contingent, they will not only not use his shop, they'll likely protest outside his shop to discourage others using him..

Shimano will continue to make existing groupsets for several years and if there is enough demand for sets like Deore Trekking, they will continue...

**pummels the living shit out of them with a 3 kg d lock in self defence of course**...

If you want them that is fine, that is your choice, but anyone who claims you can stop better with disc brakes, has either had crap rim brakes...

Agreed - although, funny enough, when that narrative suits them better, drivers will just as easlily call cyclist rich elitsts....

I guess it's better than a proprietary fitting, but why would anyone put microUSB on a new product in 2023?

Leaning towards Revolt currently, unless a good used Defy comes up. Giant are selling off 2021 models (which have basically identical riding geo to...

Editorial, general: info [at] road.cc Tech, reviews: tech [at] road.cc Fantasy Cycling: game [at] road.cc Advertising, commercial: sales [at] road.cc View our media pack

Report an advert on road.cc

All material © Farrelly Atkinson (F-At) Limited, Unit 7b Green Park Station BA11JB. Tel 01225 588855. © 2008–present unless otherwise stated. Terms and conditions of use.