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BUYER'S GUIDE

6 of the best bike locks — stop your bike getting stolen with our selection

Your buyers guide to the top-rated locks from £30

The '80s and '90s saw an arms race between bike lock makers and thieves that eventually settled down when manufacturers figured out how to make locks that would resist everything but portable power tools. Here's our selection of bike locks that have the right stuff.

  • Good bike locks are heavy and expensive, but they're not as inconvenient as having your bike stolen

  • We recommend you go for a bike lock that's marked Diamond or Gold on Sold Secure's bicycle rating system, especially if you're parking in a theft hotspot like a train station or university campus

  • Carry two keys for your lock in separate places so you can still get moving if you lose one

  • Many insurance policies require you to use a high-quality lock or your claim will be denied

  • Prices for good bike locks start around £40

6 of the best bike locks for 2021

A sufficiently determined thief can breach anything. However, for the best bike locks 'sufficiently determined' means 'carrying a portable angle grinder'. While that's standard equipment for serious thieves an angle grinder is sufficiently noisy and conspicuous that most thieves don't use them on, say, a crowded high street.

One technique of your professional thief is therefore to damage the lock so you can't open it, and then come back late at night with the big guns. If you find your lock mechanism made unusable — filled with glue, for example — break the lock yourself. Hiring an angle grinder will cost you about £20 for the day.

That's about the only way you'll quickly get through most of our selection here. The more you pay, on the whole, the longer it takes to breach a lock with unpowered brute force attacks, to the point where a thief won't bother with the best bike locks, but move on to easier pickings. It's a sad truth that the basis of on-street bike security is to make your bike too much trouble so a thief will nick someone else's.

One simple way to do that is to use two locks, preferably of different design and manufacturer. It's unlikely both will be vulnerable to the same non-grinder attack and even a thief equipped with a grinder should decide to find easier pickings.

To help you protect your bike, take a look at our Bike Locking Bible.

Lock standards: Sold Secure

Sold Secure is the dominant certifying body for locking and other security products in the UK, and its remit includes awarding ratings to bike locks.

The Sold Secure standards go from Bronze to Diamond. According to Sold Secure, this is what they mean:

  • Diamond rated products provide the highest level of security in the bicycle category, aimed at very high value bicycles and e-bikes.
  • Gold rated products offer the next highest level of security, aimed at mid-to-high value bicycles.
  • Silver  rated  products  offer  a  compromise  between security and cost.
  • Bronze rated products typically offer defence against the opportunist thief.

Diamond is a relatively new level introduced in response to the rise of e-bikes, according to Sold Secure managing director Dr Steffan George. In the introduction to Sold Secure's 2020 Approved Products list, George says the Diamond standard "is aimed at the increasing popular phenomenon of e-bikes (electric or electrically assisted bikes). Due to their value (which can be significant) we felt that a higher level than Gold was required and hence SS104 Diamond level is being launched in Q1 this year."

Previously, Sold Secure said that the standard levels indicated how long a lock had to resist attack with a range of tools. Gold meant a lock lasted “five minutes with a sophisticated array of tools”. Those descriptions have been dropped, probably because the advent of portable angle grinders renders them moot. An angle grinder will get through most locks in well under five minutes.

That said, Sold Secure ratings are still useful, with the caveat that some quite poor locks still achieve the Bronze rating. If you're going to leave your bike out of sight for any length of time, get a lock that's rated at least Gold, and preferably Diamond. 

The following are locks that we've subjected to our own destructive testing using methods commonly employed by bike thieves, and that were sufficiently hard to breach that we'd trust them with our own bikes.

Master Lock 8274EURDPRO Large, with cable — £36.47

Master Lock Street Fortum bonus pack

For under 40 quid with a cable to help secure your front wheel the Master Lock Street Fortum is very good value in a lock that meets the Sold Secure Bicycle Gold standard. When we tested it, it resisted bolt-croppers and our persuader test, and the lock mechanism is well-protected from assault. For this price you get the larger version with a 28cm shackle instead of the standard 21cm, which will make it easier to find a suitable place to lock your bike up.

It can be broken, of course, but if you want a decent level of security at a sensible price for a round-town bike, it's a good choice.

The Master Lock 8274EURDPRO is rated Sold Secure Gold (for the lock only).

Weight: 1,084g (lock only)

Read our review of the Master Lock 8274EURDPRO

OnGuard Brute LS — £35.99

OnGuad Brute U lock

Its RRP is over £40, but the price above is more typical, which makes this tough cookie great value.

The Brute mates a 16mm hardened shackle with a bar made from a single piece of steel, and the locking mechanism is protected against drilling and picking.

In testing it resisted our standard armoury of 3ft bolt croppers, persuader, hammer, cold chisel, screwdriver and hacksaw. The 16mm shackle was too big for the jaws of our croppers so we went after it with the persuader and hammer but after five minutes the damage was pretty cosmetic, and the lock – with a slightly bent shackle – still worked fine.

The OnGuard Brute is rated Sold Secure Diamond.

Weight: 2,042g

Read our review of the OnGuard Brute
Find an OnGuard dealer

Kryptonite New York — £73.99

Kryptonite New York 3000 U lock

The Kryptonite New York is plenty tough enough to repel most criminals and is a good choice for everyday use where bike security is a necessity.

It's not cheap, and it's heavy, but the New York pointed and laughed at our standard armoury. Nothing short of some quality power tools would make a dent in this lock.

The Kryptonite New York is rated Sold Secure Diamond.

Weight: 1,800g

Read our review of the Kryptonite New York
Find a Kryptonite dealer

Abus Granit X-Plus — £75.95

abus granit xplus lock crop.jpeg

The Abus Granit X-Plus has long been among the best and most popular D locks on the market and it's not hard to see why.

We couldn't break this one with our standard thieves' armoury. The shackle is super stiff and no amount of cropping, twisting or thwacking would do any serious damage. the plastic sleeve got a bit mangled, but that was about it. Some meaty blows to the base broke off the plastic covering, but only to reveal a serious-looking steel plate construction that does a very good job of protecting the lock mechanism and was dismissive of our efforts. After all the violence was over the lock was still in perfect working order; even the plastic cover just snapped back on.

The Abus Granit X-Plus is rated Sold Secure Diamond.

Weight: 1,525g

Read our review of the Abus Granit X-Plus
Find an Abus dealer

Squire SS50CS Stronghold Padlock — £69.95

Squire Stronghold padlock

In combination with a hefty chain, a good padlock will provide high-level security for home bike storage, though the substantial total weight makes it a bit impractical as carry-along theft prevention.

The Squire SS50CS is a well-designed, heavily armoured bike lock that's an excellent partner to some heavy-duty chain.

At 650g it certainly feels the part. It's engineered from a hardened steel billet with a 10mm shackle that's almost fully enclosed. The barrel is protected by another steel plate to protect against drilling, with the key turning just an eighth of a rotation to allow the protective sheet to cover more of the mechanism.

It doesn't have a rating on its own, but the Squire SS50CS Stronghold Padlock is included with lock and chain combinations rated Sold Secure Motorcycle Gold, a higher standard than Bicycle Gold.

Weight: 650g

Read our review of the Squire SS50CS Stronghold Padlock
Find a Squire dealer

Pragmasis Protector 13mm security chain 2.0m — £78.75

Protector 13mm chain

Two metres of Protector 13mm chain weighs 6.95kg so you're not going to be carrying it around, but it's a great last line of defence for your home bike storage.

We couldn't touch it with bolt croppers, and a chain is inherently resistant to prying and hammering, especially a hardened steel chain like this.

Pragmasis offers a package of a 2m Protector with the Squire SS50CS Stronghold padlock above for £138.70.

The Pragmasis Protector 13mm chain is rated Sold Secure Diamond.

Weight: 6,950g

Read our review of the Pragmasis Protector 13mm security chain 2.0m

Explore the complete archive of reviews of bike locks and security devices on road.cc

About road.cc Buyer's Guides

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.

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72 comments

Avatar
luke.lon replied to hawkinspeter | 4 years ago
0 likes

Sure but they still can't just ride off with the bike

Avatar
hawkinspeter replied to luke.lon | 4 years ago
1 like
luke.lon wrote:

Sure but they still can't just ride off with the bike

But they can drive off in a van with your bike in the back.

Avatar
CaliRider replied to luke.lon | 4 years ago
0 likes

They are fairly easy to remove with a ratchet and bolt extractor

Link goes to LockPickingLawyer doing same

Avatar
Aggress | 4 years ago
2 likes

Cordless angle grinders are where it's at. I had a bike stolen from outside a train station and the parting gift was the two halves of my kryptonite cleanly sliced through. 

Avatar
ktache | 4 years ago
2 likes

I have been waiting for this to come back again.

So I was looking for alternatives to the HexLox and I came across IXOW, their security skewers and seatpost looked good.  Then I found this, an alternative to their stem that allows easy parking in hallways.  Almost temping to get for it's hilarious consequences. 

Avatar
Sriracha replied to ktache | 4 years ago
1 like
ktache wrote:

I have been waiting for this to come back again.

So I was looking for alternatives to the HexLox and I came across IXOW, their security skewers and seatpost looked good.  Then I found this, an alternative to their stem that allows easy parking in hallways.  Almost temping to get for it's hilarious consequences. 

Ouch, I hope it is engineered to fail safe. Imagine if that deployed on a downhill alpine bend!

Avatar
Dangerous Dan | 4 years ago
4 likes

Take a look at what "The lockpicking lawyer" did to the "new and improved" OTTOLOCK Hexband.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D15QH72xfPA

Me? I have a Pewag 3/8ths inch chain and Viro Panzer lock. Yes, it weighs a lot. It does not go on club rides. It does come along when I ride to work. That and the security camera should deter theft at work.

Avatar
hawkinspeter replied to Dangerous Dan | 4 years ago
0 likes
Dangerous Dan wrote:

Take a look at what "The lockpicking lawyer" did to the "new and improved" OTTOLOCK Hexband.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D15QH72xfPA

Me? I have a Pewag 3/8ths inch chain and Viro Panzer lock. Yes, it weighs a lot. It does not go on club rides. It does come along when I ride to work. That and the security camera should deter theft at work.

Wow - I didn't expect the tin snips attack to work so easily.

I'm also curious whether a shim attack would work but I'm not going to buy one just to test that out.

Avatar
taberesc replied to Dangerous Dan | 4 years ago
0 likes
Dangerous Dan wrote:

Take a look at what "The lockpicking lawyer" did to the "new and improved" OTTOLOCK Hexband.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D15QH72xfPA

Me? I have a Pewag 3/8ths inch chain and Viro Panzer lock. Yes, it weighs a lot. It does not go on club rides. It does come along when I ride to work. That and the security camera should deter theft at work.

There you have it...Forget the bad reviews...the OTTOLOCK product should not even be allowed for sale.

Avatar
Butty replied to taberesc | 4 years ago
0 likes
taberesc wrote:
Dangerous Dan wrote:

Take a look at what "The lockpicking lawyer" did to the "new and improved" OTTOLOCK Hexband.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D15QH72xfPA

Me? I have a Pewag 3/8ths inch chain and Viro Panzer lock. Yes, it weighs a lot. It does not go on club rides. It does come along when I ride to work. That and the security camera should deter theft at work.

There you have it...Forget the bad reviews...the OTTOLOCK product should not even be allowed for sale.

 

yet after all the bad press on the Ottolock, this comes out from offroad.cc in June:

https://off.road.cc/content/review/locks/ottolock-cinch-lock-review-3613

Surely a review of a lock should include its ability to withstand attack, rather than a vacuous and non-contentious info-ad aimed at pleasing the manufacturer?

 

Avatar
caw35ride replied to Butty | 3 years ago
0 likes

It's called Advertorial.

Avatar
grOg replied to caw35ride | 3 years ago
0 likes

you mean that road cc gets paid for these reviews? the shame..

Avatar
LastBoyScout | 4 years ago
1 like

There's a comment on my local Facebook mountain biking page this week from someone who left their bike securely locked, but came back to find various components stolen from it instead.

On a high-end bike you could, with very little effort or tools, walk away with some high-value parts stuffed in a bag without having to worry about locks.

Will seriously think about those hex-bolt locks I've seen...

Avatar
Team EPO | 4 years ago
1 like

I find it interesting how they never talk about how easy it was to pick the lock.  Bought a lockpick set to unlock one of the kids bikes and is sooo easy it is scary.  Check out the lcokpicking lawyer on Youtube  

Avatar
hawkinspeter replied to Team EPO | 4 years ago
1 like
Team EPO wrote:

I find it interesting how they never talk about how easy it was to pick the lock.  Bought a lockpick set to unlock one of the kids bikes and is sooo easy it is scary.  Check out the lcokpicking lawyer on Youtube  

That's because making a lock difficult to pick is expensive as it usually involves much tighter tolerances for the parts.

I'd imagine that most thieves won't bother with lock-picks as it takes some practise to get proficient and it's usually a lot quicker and easier to cut through the lock instead.

Avatar
peted76 | 4 years ago
0 likes

No Hiploks, UK company making wearable bike locks.

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ktache | 5 years ago
0 likes

I was actually thinking of getting their own roundlock.  It's small size and elegance, to me, makes it look just as secure than something big and imposing.  The chain will do that.

Avatar
Strathbean | 5 years ago
1 like

You’re welcome. If you are looking for a suitable padlock, i use an abloy PL362, they pop up on ebay occasionally, it is a truly massive lock.

Avatar
ktache | 5 years ago
0 likes

Thanks Strathbean, I know it will be tight, 32 spoke on a 27.5 inch rim, but it is the smallest that cannot be cropped.  If it's too big then sending it back will be shockingly expensive.

Avatar
ktache | 5 years ago
0 likes

Does anyone use a 16mm pragmasis chain?

I'm thinking of getting one as a leave at work lock, but I need it to lock the back wheel and frame, is it too big to fit between the spokes neat the rim?

Avatar
Strathbean replied to ktache | 5 years ago
1 like
ktache wrote:

Does anyone use a 16mm pragmasis chain?

I'm thinking of getting one as a leave at work lock, but I need it to lock the back wheel and frame, is it too big to fit between the spokes neat the rim?

you need to be fairly careful threading it through the spokes as its obviously very big heavy chain, but it fits through my wheels (24 spoke on 50mm deep rims) easily enough.

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hamiltonian42 | 5 years ago
0 likes

the Abus locks come with a frame fitting holder that the lock locks to, making a completely secure mount.

Avatar
Oranj | 5 years ago
1 like

It would be good to hear how easy it is to attach these locks (particularly the D-locks) to the frame for carrying around.

My present lock choice is based entirely on the security and easy of use of the mounts, some of them just aren't up to the business of carrying a +1kg D-lock on the frame without it bouncing around or fouling something rotating (the chainset, your knees, etc.)

Avatar
roadmanshaq replied to Oranj | 5 years ago
0 likes
Oranj wrote:

It would be good to hear how easy it is to attach these locks (particularly the D-locks) to the frame for carrying around.

My present lock choice is based entirely on the security and easy of use of the mounts, some of them just aren't up to the business of carrying a +1kg D-lock on the frame without it bouncing around or fouling something rotating (the chainset, your knees, etc.)

 

This is definitely a problem for me. I use a kryptonite evolution and an auxiliary cable, and the thing rattles around like made when you try to hang it off the frame. Not a problem when doing 1 km down the road to the shops but I certainly wouldn't have it on the frame on a tour. I usually stick it in a rucksack or giant saddlebag. 

Avatar
Steve Garratt | 5 years ago
0 likes

I only ride a relatively unattractive 3 speed Kaldi Mongoose bike around town or to go shopping, secured with the Abus D lock featured in this article..

Learnt from bitter experience, back on Boxing Day 2011 of trusting bike security to even a thick cable type lock... Came out of WH Smiths in Croydon after just 5 minutes to see the chopped lock on the ground and my Marin San Alselmo gone..

Avatar
kraut replied to Steve Garratt | 4 years ago
1 like

Riding a shitty looking bike is definitely part of the strategy for keeping your bike safe.

My London bike is an '80s Raleigh that cost less than the lock I use on it. I'm happy to leave it most places in London.

My nice bikes...no way.

 

Avatar
StraelGuy | 5 years ago
2 likes

Completely agree Darren. All three of mine live indoors chained to 56 lb weights with gold secured chains.

Avatar
darrenleroy | 5 years ago
5 likes

I wouldn't dream of leaving my roadbike out of sight in public. Ever. I keep it in my home at all times I'm not using it (and it's only worth around a grand but you know, sentimental/practical value). If it is stolen I can claim on the insurance.

My commuter bike is covered in stickers (collected from bike shows) because it makes the bike idiosyncratic (harder to sell online without being recognised) and also a big ugly thus less appealing to criminals and unscrupulous purchasers alike. I do lock it up as well but any search on Youtube will show criminals brazenly grinding locks apart in broad daylight. Make it ugly. 

Avatar
kraut replied to darrenleroy | 4 years ago
1 like

This is is not a bad approach..

Image: 
Avatar
Username | 6 years ago
0 likes

"However, for the best locks 'sufficiently determined' means 'carrying a portable angle grinder'. That's not a cheap tool in itself, and while it's quick, it's also very conspicuous."

 

Sadly this is not true. Angle-grinders are very cheap these days, and of course the scum doing the nicking have been known to nick the tools of the trade in the first place.

While they are conspicous, nobody gives a damn. Bikes are being stolen in broad daylight, on busy streets, by thieves who arrive two-up on a scooter without number plates, both keep their full-face helmets on to thwart CCTV, one hops off and angle-grinds through a lock quicker than reading this post. Both ride off.

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