The Best Men’s & Women’s Spin Shoes You Can Buy Right Now

Spin shoes are essential to having a great ride whether you’re in a studio or on an at-home bike. Over the past two years, the at-home riding experience has taken the world by (pandemic-necessitated) storm with leaders in the industry like Peloton, SoulCycle, and many others releasing new stationary bikes. Whether you’ve invested in your own bike or are back in person at your favorite studio, picking the right spin shoe can be the difference between getting lost in the music and energy of your class or being distracted by a shoe that is not secure to your pedal or a shoe that just doesn’t feel good.

With so many options and styles, it can be overwhelming to know where to start. Here, we’ve included ten of our top recommendations for men’s and women’s indoor cycling shoes, as well as what you should know before purchasing your next pair.

What to Look for in a Spin Shoe

Although some road cycling shoes are indoor-compatible, spinning shoes are optimized for hot, sweaty workouts devoid of a natural breeze to cool you down. Look for an ultra-breathable shoe with a stiff sole; the stiffer the shoe, the more power you’ll transfer to the pedals to crank up your on-the-bike intensity. For some people, the ideal indoor cycling shoe is more walkable than a traditional outdoor option (think: smaller, inset cleat), so that when you’re moving from bike to locker room (or to your own bathroom at home), you’re not slipping around or risking injury. Some brands make options with more flexible soles (including rubber), but with those, you could lose some of the power transfer on the bike, which is worth keeping in mind.

You should also consider cleat and pedal compatibility. Depending on what bike you’re clipping into, there are two common cleat-pedal combinations: SPD (two-bolt) and Delta (three-bolt). Popular bikes like the Peloton come stock with Delta-compatible clip-in pedals. You could swap the pedals if you’d rather use an SPD-friendly shoe, but that’s another conversation. When shopping for Delta cleats, you should avoid zero-float options. Float allows a little bit of movement when the cleat is clicked into the pedal, which is better for indoor riding especially when clipping in and out of the bike. The float cleats from Look are colored red (good), and the zero-float cleats are black (bad). Most knockoff cleats follow the same color scheme.

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Check your bike’s specs before purchasing shoes and cleats, which are not typically included in your shoe purchase. For example, the SoulCycle at-home bike comes stock with one pedal that’s both SPD- and Delta-compatible. Delta cleats are larger and might be harder to walk around in off the bike, whereas SPD cleats are a little smaller and are often inset on the shoe, making them easier to walk on. You can get more info on clipless pedals and cleats here.

A note on sex-specific spin shoes: Some indoor cycling shoes are marketed specifically toward men and women, but in our experience, you can wear any shoe that suits your needs and style. Just be sure to adjust your sizing, especially if the shoe lists European sizing (this handy shoe size calculator can help).

How We Evaluated

As the indoor cycling industry continues to grow at home and in-person, the need for a great spin shoe grows too. The differentiators in shoe quality and shoe type are vast. As an indoor cycling instructor with Mad Dogg, CycleBar, and Spinning certifications, I have worn many spin shoes in assorted styles, with different functionalities, and at various price points. In addition to relying on my personal experiences, I sought recommendations from other instructors, such as Angela Manuel-Davis, co-founder of spinning and fitness studio AARMY, and Katie Breathitt, operations director of Union Three Studio in Tampa, Florida.