SPD vs SPD-SL: Which Clipless System?

Buy SPD. Two bolts, a recessed cleat, and shoes you can walk to the counter in. For a first drop-bar bike — and for essentially all gravel riding, commuting and touring — it is the right system and it is not close.

SPD-SL is not worse. It is a road-racing system optimized for a rider who gets on the bike, rides hard for three hours, and gets off at the same place. If that is not your riding, its advantages cost you more than they give.

The difference, in eight rows

The recessed cleat is the whole argument

Park Tool describe the two families clearly: performance road systems use a cleat that sits on the outside of a smooth sole, while off-road and touring systems recess the cleat into a softer rubber sole designed to flex for walking.

That single design choice decides almost everything you will actually experience:

• You can walk. Into a shop, across a car park, up the steps of a bridge. In SPD-SL you are walking on plastic, on your toes, on slick shop floors.
• The cleat lasts. SPD cleats are metal and recessed, so the shoe takes the abrasion rather than the cleat. SPD-SL cleats are plastic and exposed, and they wear every time you walk in them.
• You can put a foot down anywhere. On gravel, on a wet curb, on a steep pitch you have to walk. This is not a small thing on unpaved riding.

What SPD-SL genuinely gives you

Two real things, both of which matter more the harder and longer you ride on tarmac:

• A bigger platform. Your pedaling force is spread over a much wider area of the sole. On a four-hour road ride at intensity, that is the difference between comfortable feet and hot spots under the ball of the foot.
• A more precise connection. Less rocking, less flex, a stiffer feel underfoot — which some riders find genuinely nicer and others cannot detect.

Neither is worth a walkability penalty on a bike you will stop and start on. That is why gravel riders, tourers, commuters and most bike-shop staff ride SPD even on their road bikes.

Setting the cleat up, which matters more than the system

Whichever system you choose, the cleat position is what decides whether clipless pedals are comfortable or a knee injury. Park Tool publish the adjustment in detail; the shape of it:

1. Fore and aft: start with the ball of your foot — the joint of the big toe — roughly over the pedal axle.
2. Rotation: set it to match how your feet naturally point when you walk. Forcing your feet parallel is a common beginner mistake and it is exactly what stresses knees.
3. Side to side: if your heel hits the crank, slide the cleat outward rather than rotating it.
4. Float: pick a cleat with some. Park Tool note that float keeps the leg joints unlocked so alignment need not be perfect — and for a first set of cleats, that forgiveness is exactly what you want.

Then set the pedal release tension to its loosest setting for the first month. You will still fall over at a junction once. Everyone does, it happens at zero miles an hour, and it is over quickly.

Buying order that works

Buy the shoes first, then the pedals. Many gravel and touring shoes are drilled for both two-bolt and three-bolt patterns, which keeps your options open; our shoe page notes which pattern each pair takes.

If you are not sure clipless is for you at all, buy a dual-sided pedal with a flat face on one side and an SPD mechanism on the other. Ride flat for a month, clip in when you feel ready, and you have not bought anything twice.