Road cycling long remained an outlier in its reticence to embrace tubeless tyre technology. Unlike other vehicles with pneumatic tyres, it took several years of persuasion for road bike tubeless tyres to make the switch from niche to mainstream.
Today tubeless is increasingly replacing conventional inner tube-based systems across the board, with the benefits of going tubeless including reduced weight and rolling resistance, improved comfort, and, when used with sealant, drastically reduced chances of getting a puncture. Sounds good, right?
Tubeless tyres are increasingly easy to fit at home, so if you’re keen, below you’ll find our favourite tubeless tyres for race-focussed riding. Scroll down further still and you’ll find our guide to the science behind their benefits along with how to get the tyres into place and airtight…
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Best tubeless road tyres: quick list
- Schwalbe Pro One TLE: RRP £77
- Goodyear Eagle F1 Tubeless: RRP £60
- Continental Grand Prix 5000 AS TR: RRP £100 – Read our full review
- IRC Formula RBCC: RRP £57 – Read our full review
- Specialized S-Works Mondo 2Bliss: RRP £55 – Read our full review
- Vittoria Corsa Nex.T: RRP £70 – Read our full review
- Hutchinson Fusion 5 11Storm Performance: RRP £50 – Read our full review
Why trust Cyclist’s advice?
Tubeless is really taking over on road bikes, with the best road bikes usually now ready to roll tubeless or arriving for testing ready set-up without tubes. Manufacturers appreciate the benefits of tubeless for their bikes’ ride quality, so it’s a natural step for them, but we’ll typically set up bikes tubeless if they do arrive with inner tubes.
The advantages of tubeless for Cyclist‘s reviewers are manifest. With so much time spent riding bikes year-round to bring you our expert opinion, the less down time fixing flats the better.
Best tubeless road tyres: Tech editor’s picks
Schwalbe Pro One TLR
For many, the Schwalbe Pro One is the gold standard for tubeless tyres. Schwalbe claims the tyre’s advantage hinges on its Microskin construction: a high-tensile fabric embedded within the rubber compound. Schwalbe says this allows the tyre to be supple and light yet tough.
Generally, Pro Ones are considered to be easy to mount, very supple and grippy. Yet they are expensive and do wear slightly quicker than their competitors.
- Read our full review of the Schwalbe One tubeless tyre
Goodyear Eagle F1 Tubeless
Not only are Goodyear’s Eagle F1 tyres incredibly fast and grippy, but they’re also incredibly easy to set up.
With a dual bead design, this additional section of rubber helps them seal with the rim bed. Easy to get on and likely to pop straight into place with just a floor pump, add a dash of sealant and you’ll be ready to go in around the time it takes to fix a puncture.
Rounded off by decent volume, respectable weight and not too outrageous pricing, they’ve fast become one of our favourites.
Continental Grand Prix 5000 AS TR
Continental has been gathering tubeless tyre steam with its GP5000 range, having been a slow starter in the tubeless tyre race. Alongside the summer-ready GP5000 S TR and the even lighter GP5000 TT TR, it now has the GP5000 AS TR, with AS signifying All Season, making the tyre an eventual replacement for the venerable (and tube-only) GP 4 Season.
The AS TR has a beefed up tread, casing and sidewalls to add extra protection In its narrowest 25mm width, the AS TR weighs 300g; there are 28mm, 32mm and 35mm offerings too. 28mm and wider tyres are hookless rim compatible. Conti has catered for all-weather riders with a dark reflective strip in the black sidewall version of the tyre.
- Read our full Continental GP5000 AS TR tyre review
IRC Formula RBCC
You may not have heard of this Asian manufacturer but it has been a reputable name in tubeless tyres for a while.
The ‘RBCC’ moniker stands for ‘Rice Bran Ceramic Compound’ which is a revised additive to IRC’s tyres that reportedly improves grip by 4% and rolling resistance by 10% over its previous designs.
The tread pattern extends way past the shoulder of the tyre in the name of grip and the weight of these is mid-table among competitors: a 25c tyre weighs 275g.
- Read our full IRC Formula Pro Tubeless X-Guard tyres review
- Buy the IRC Formula Pro tyre from The Cycle Clinic (£57)
Specialized S-Works Mondo 2Bliss
Claimed to be the brand's fastest ever training tyre the S-Works Mondo 2Bliss aims to square the circle between durability and speed. We found the tyres easy to seat and they felt fast and and grippy in mixed conditions. Wear rates look promising too.
They're available in 28mm, 32mm and 35mm widths, so they're a good match for modern performance and endurance road bikes. Their claimed 310g, 330g and 360g weights strike a good balance for all-season use too.
- Read our full Specialized S-Works Mondo 2Bliss tyre review
Vittoria Corsa Nex.T
The Vittoria Corsa range has grown, with the Pro (in its several variants) taking over as the Italian brand's top spec road racing tyre. But it's the Corsa Nex.T that offers Vittoria's tubeless tech at a more affordable price. While the Corsa Pro has a cotton casing, the Corsa Nex.T swaps this for nylon, but it keeps Vittoria's graphene-containing rubber.
We weighed a 28mm tyre at 302g and found the Corsa Nex.T every bit as supple as the pricier Pro, with great ride quality. Vittoria says that the grooves in the tread are there so that the tyre deforms when cornering to add to the contact area. It claims greater durability too.
- Read our full Vittoria Corsa Nex.T tyre review
Hutchinson Fusion 5 11Storm Performance
The Hutchinson Fusion 5 11Storm Performance tyres claim to be a true all-rounder, balancing grip with durability, comfort with puncture protection.
Hutchinson was the pioneer of road tubeless so its technology offers some unique advantages over its competition. The tyres challenge normal clinchers for weight and Hutchinson says the Fusion 5s can be used just as effectively on a wet winter ride as a long summer day, because the rubber compound is durable yet grippy.
Hutchinson launched the Blackbird tyre in March 2024 as an upgrade to the Fusion 5. Its new rubber compound, wider tread and redesigned casing are claimed to offer increased durability, a better ride on modern wide rims and lower weight.
- Read our full Hutchinson Fusion 5 tubeless tyres review
Why should I use tubeless tyres?
More speed
Tubeless tyres differ from clinchers in that they are designed to form an airtight seal with the rim of a tubeless-compatible wheel.
This means the inner tube can be done away with. In a clincher system, the friction between a tube and tyre moving against each other adds to the rolling resistance of the wheel.
Remove the tube and the tyre deforming against the road is the only form of meaningful rolling resistance. Thus, you can go faster.
Less weight
The weight-saving benefit is easily quantifiable. To iron-clad the seal between tubeless tyre and rim, it is recommended that tubeless sealant, or ‘milk’, is added into the tyre cavity.
An average tube weighs around 100g and the weight of 30ml of sealant, the generally agreed upon amount necessary to add, is 30g.
Over two wheels that is a 140g saving. Admittedly tubeless tyres are slightly heavier than their clincher counterparts – by around 30g per tyre, yet switching to tubeless still usually results in a net weight loss of around 100g.
Greater comfort
The tyres and tubes of a clincher system rubbing against each each other not only slow you down, they are also less able to cope with an imperfect road surface.
Tubeless tyres can deform around the micro-obstacles of tarmac more readily and as there is no risk of a pinch flat (because there is no tube to pinch) they can be run at a lower pressure, further smoothing out your ride.
Better puncture protection
A happy by-product of their heavier weight is tubeless tyres’ better resistance to punctures. However, further decreasing the chance of a flat is the second function of the sealant.
It not only prevents air leaking from the tyre, but in the event of a foreign object piercing the tyre (for example a sharp stone or thorn) some of the sealant is forced out of the hole created by the pressure differential between the inside of the tyre and the outside world.
The sealant contains solid flakes of material that act like the platelets in your blood: they clog up the hole, sealing the puncture usually before much pressure is lost from the tyre. If the tyre doesn't seal completely, which may be the case with larger piercings, a tubeless repair kit can help to plug the hole.
Bid farewell to those occasions by the side of a road on a grotty morning in February, trying to change a tube with numb hands.
How to go tubeless
Admittedly the tubeless systems of a few years past were tricky to set up, but thanks to the determined refinement of many wheel and tyre brands, modern systems really are no harder to get rolling than a regular clincher setup.
The first job is to fix the tubeless-specific valve through the wheel rim. These valves have a removable core that allows the sealant to be poured into the tyre once it is seated on the rim.
Next it is a case of mounting the tyre as you would a regular clincher. The necessity for an airtight seal might make the tyre harder to get onto the rim than usual, however it can usually be coaxed on with the help of some levers or a pair of particularly strong thumbs.
The tyre then needs to be inflated. Nowadays tubeless tyre and rim designs mean a regular track pump can be sufficient, but sometimes you may need to use a reservoir pump or an air compressor to achieve that initial burst of air to ‘pop’ the beads of the tyre up onto the special shoulders of the rim bed that are designed to hold the tyre beads in place.
Soaping the rim bed and tyre bead can help get the beads to slip into place.
The tyre has to be visually inspected to ensure it is evenly seated on the wheel. Look for the same depth of tyre wall visible around the entire wheel: any dips will highlight areas where the tyre bead hasn’t seated up against the rim properly.
Once this has been checked the tyre can be deflated – the design of the rim bed will hold the tyre beads against the rim walls.
Unscrew the valve core and squeeze/pour/inject sealant into the tyre cavity – the sealant manufacturer will provide guidelines on a suggested method.
Replace the valve and re-inflate the tyre. Holding the wheel in both hands tilt, shake and turn it for a few minutes to ensure the interior is coated in sealant.
Dribbles of sealant may escape the rim in this process but it can be easily cleaned up and will stop once the airtight seal is established.
Rest the wheel horizontally and leave for an hour or two. This will allow the sealant to settle and consolidate the coating within the tyre. Putting the wheel in your frame and riding up and down the road a few times can help firm up the seal between the tyre and the rim.
After that, you’re ready to roll.
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