11 best bicycle repair stands — get the right workstand for you

A workstand aka bicycle repair stand holds your bike firmly and off the floor so you can do repair and maintenance work more easily. You don’t have to spend a fortune to get a perfectly decent one.

• Even a basic bike repair stand gets your bike of the floor so you don't have lean over to work on it; your back will thank you

• Gear and brake adjustments in particular are made a lot easier by a workstand allowing things to move while you fettle them

• While most workstands will accommodate most bikes, owners of carbon fibre bikes should shop carefully for one that will lift a bike clamped by the seatpost to working height, or use a race-style repair stand

• If you can afford it, don't skimp — more expensive bike repair stands are easier to use thanks to their better fit and finish

11 of the best bicycle repair stands

• Park Tool PRS-25 Team Issue — £299.00
• Tacx Spider Team — £129.99
• Park Tool PRS-22 Team Issue — £299.oo
• Unior Bikegater+ — ~£215.00
• Silca Hirobel Carbon Frame Clamp — £180
• Var PR-90100 — £660.00
• Feedback Sports Pro Elite — ~£230.00
• Feedback Sports Sprint Workstand — £211.72
• Park Tool PCS-10.2 — £199
• Raleigh Folding workstand — £97.99
• Ultrasport Bike Stand Expert — £49.99

Eventually you get fed up of trying to work on a bike that’s leaning against the kitchen bench or — the horror! — upside down in the shed. You’ve seen the beefy static workstands shop mechanics use and want some of that action at home. It’s time to take your mechanic-fu up a step and get  your own bicycle repair stand.

Very broadly speaking, there are two types: a pro shop style fixed stand with a heavy base — or even bolted to the floor — that lives in your dedicated bike repair space, or a folding stand that can be packed away when not in use and taken to events. Few of us have the space for a dedicated workshop, so bicycle repair stands that fold away are far more common.

There are two common ways that workstands hold bikes, either with a clamp that grabs a frame tube or the seat post, or with a combination of a quick release fork clamp and a bottom bracket cradle. Race mechanics like the latter type because they’re very stable and handy for cleaning bikes, but a stand with a clamp works with a wider range of bikes.

There’s a caveat with clamp-style bicycle repair stands though: they can easily crush light frame tubes. Carbon fiber and very light aluminium frames are the most fragile and must be clamped by the seat post if it’s beefy enough. We’re not aware of any seatpost makers that warn against clamping, but if you have a very light seat post and you’re worried about it, then get an el cheapo aluminium post to use with your workstand.

Your typical folding stand has three points of contacts with the ground on legs that fold out from the body, some sort of adjustment of the clamp height usually through a telescoping vertical member and a clamp that may or may not fold away depending on the design. Within that outline there’s a lot of variation in detail and quality, so let’s take a look at 11 of the best workstands.

Park Tool PRS-25 Team Issue — £299.00

The Park Tool PRS-25 Team Issue Repair Stand has the added bonus of folding down reasonably small so you can stick it in the back of the car or van and take to races or events. It holds bikes firmly and has an easy-to-use clamp, but it is a bit expensive.

You can quickly and easily collapse the stand so you can take it on trips with you. It folds down to 47 inches long (119cm) and the clamping height adjusts up to 60 inches (152cm), which I found plenty for working on a bike.

Getting it out of the box and assembled is an easy task, and within minutes it is ready to be put to work. The legs slide out smoothly and provide a large platform – you need a reasonable amount of space to set it up – and once opened, quick release levers tighten everything securely to place.

The Micro-Adjust clamp is the star of the show. It's both easy to use and versatile and provides easy one-handed operation, a good thing because your other hand will be holding the bike up to the stand. The clamp is operated by a cam-actuated quick release mechanism, making it quick to attach and release the bike, but it can be rotated for fine adjustments. At the back of the stand is a large handle that allows rotational adjustment.

Read our review of the Park Tool PRS-25 Team Issue Repair Stand
Find a Park Tool dealer

Tacx Spider Team — £129.99

The Tacx Spider Team workstand is aimed more at fettling your bike pre- and post-race rather than as a full-on workshop tool, and thanks to its lightweight aluminium alloy/plastic construction it's easy to transport and simple to set up.

It's been designed in collaboration with pro team mechanics for the type of jobs likely to be carried out in the pit area or back of a lorry: cleaning jobs, gear fettling like replacing cables or new chains, plus general adjustments, with that ability to quickly spin through 360 degrees making it very useful for confined spaces.

At just 4.25kg the Spider Team is ideal for travel and is easy to fling in the back of your team van or boot of the car. It folds down quickly and without fuss, which makes it easy to carry to the pit area if you're at a race with no vehicular access.

Read our review of the Tacx Spider Team workstand
Find a Tacx dealer

Park Tool PRS-22 Team Issue — £299.oo

The Park Tool PRS-22 is a professional-level bicycle repair stand that's strong and stable, the beam design allowing it to support the bottom bracket and hold either the front or rear dropouts so there's no need to clamp either the frame or seatpost.

Most repair stands feature a clamp that you tighten around the seatpost but the PRS-22 is an entirely different design in that your bike is supported by a central beam. You whip one of the wheels off, rest the bottom bracket shell on its support on that beam, and then secure the dropouts on the quick release axle.

Once your bike is fixed in place, the PRS-22 holds it firm and secure, although bikes with sloping bottom bracket shells aren't as stable as others. Whether you're adjusting the gears or brakes or doing something that requires a bit more force, the PRS-22 is more than strong enough. The wide base is really steady on a flat floor, each of the three aluminium legs extending outwards 60cm from the centre.

Read our review of the Park Tool PRS-22
Find a Park Tool dealer

Unior Bikegater+ — ~£215.00

The Bikegater+ Repair Stand from Slovenian company Unior is a practical, tough and stable tool for home and shop mechanics alike, though the clamp unit will need upgrading if you work with a lot of different bikes.

If a stand ain't stable it ain't worth having. Some seem OK until you load the bike in, at which point the whole thing becomes top heavy. That's a danger to you and your bike. Well, the Unior Bikegater+ passes that particular test with aplomb. Though only a two-leg design, the geometry is sorted so that a bike clamped by the seat tube sits squarely over the centre of gravity. No amount of leaning on foot-long bottom-bracket wrenches threatened to topple it. This was true even at maximum extension – a very generous 155cm, I might add, which made it the first stand I've used that was actually a bit too tall!

Read our review of the Unior Bikegator+
Find a Unior dealer

Silca Hirobel Carbon Frame Clamp — £180

With a delivery price well in excess of what most people are prepared to pay for an entire bicycle repair stand, the Hirobel Carbon Frame Clamp is going to remain pretty rare even among diehard home workshop fettlers. But if you have a fleet of bikes, strange carbon aero shapes, or very short exposed lengths of seatpost, this may well be the workstand accessory you've been looking for all these years.

Clamping a bike by the seatpost can mean having to move the post to secure enough 'real estate' for the clamp – risking misalignment of the saddle, returning it to the wrong height or ultimately stripping the clamp bolts through repeated tightening/loosening. With modern bike-fit principles setting seat height to within fractions of a millimetre, you don't want to be getting this wrong...

Combine this with the difficulty of clamping increasingly thinner-walled and strangely shaped hydroformed alloy tubing or complex 3D carbon layups, and what's an honest fettler to do? Enter the Hirobel Carbon Frame Clamp.

Read our review of the Hirobel Carbon Frame Clamp

Var PR-90100 — £660.00

Many manufacturers make a professional workshop stand along these lines, with a heavy steel base and a simple but robust clamp that slides up and down the upright so you can place the bike at exactly the right height. The base of Var’s stand weighs 28kg, so it really isn’t intended to be portable, unless you're the Incredible Hulk of bike mechanics.

Var says the tacky rubber used for the jaws of the clamp means you don’t have to tighten it as hard and illustrates it holding a Look carbon frame by the seat tube. If the Feedback Sports Pro Elite (below) is the Rolls Royce of bicycle repair stands, this is the John Deere 9560RT.

Feedback Sports Pro Elite — ~£230.00

The Rolls Royce of folding/portable stands, Feedback Sports’ Pro-Elite stand is superbly made and a joy to use thanks to a brilliant, beefy clamp that opens and closes in a jiffy but holds your seatpost securely whatever its size or shape.

It’s made from aluminium and stainless steel so you don’t mind getting it wet when using it as a bike wash stand and when it’s not in use it folds tidily into the optional tote bag. Our man Mike Stead concluded in his review: “The last workstand you'll ever need to buy, and you'll love using it, every time.” He’s not wrong — I’ve had a Pro Elite for years and can’t think of any reason to replace it.

Read our review of the Feedback Sports Pro-Elite

Feedback Sports Sprint Workstand — £211.72

This is Feedback Sports’ take on the fork-end-and-cradle supported stand popular with race mechanics. The Sprint is easy to use, with a simple clamp that can hold either the front or rear dropouts. Mike Stead again: “The Feedback Sports Sprint Workstand is a great-looking top-class bit of kit that you'll look forward to getting out to use. If you can bring yourself to put it away, that is.”

Read our review of the Feedback Sports Sprint Workstand

Park Tool PCS-10.2 — £199

The more expensive of Park Tool’s pair of folding stands, the PCS-10 is worth the extra over the PCS-9 for its easier folding and unfolding, and quicker, nicer to use clamp. The adjustable, cam-action clamp fits tubes from 24 to 76mm and it takes Park Tool’s handy accessories like the tool bucket and paper towel holder.

Read our review of the Park Tool PCS-10
Find a Park Tool dealer

Raleigh Folding workstand — £97.99

This is a simple and sturdy stand at a good price, with lots of positive reviews on Amazon, where it can sometimes be found for a bargain price. It has quick releases so it’s easy to put up and down and a simple cam-action clamp.

Find a Raleigh dealer

Ultrasport Bike Stand Expert — £49.99

This appears to be the same as the four-legged stand that sometimes pops up as a Lidl seasonal offer for £25-30, and is available on Amazon under a multitude of other brand names. Amazon reviewers report that it’s plenty stable and sturdy, and the Lidl stand is a forum favourite, usually described as far better than you’d expect for the modest price.

Explore the complete archive of reviews of workshop tools and workstands on road.cc