single speed gear ratios

[Brent Eastman]

I am toying with the idea of making one of my bikes a SS. I fount an eccentric eno hub for a great deal and thus I will be on the hunt for a freewheel soon. I'd rather be able to climb a hill than pedal down one. I'm decently strong. I don't pay attention much at all to what gear I'm in on my 3x9 bikes, but I could start.

What gear ratios do y'all run, or tried, and why? 

[Patrick Moore]

When I started riding ss/fixed 30 years ago, I, as one would expect, erred on the side of low gearing, thinking of hills. IIRC, for my first experiment with ss I chose a 63” gear. All this for pavement riding.

I very quickly learned that twiddling too low a gear on tailwind flats or downhill is at least as annoying as pushing too high a gear uphill. I progressed to 65” and to 67”, and I rode a 67’ gear for a number of years in all conditions.

But for reasons I can’t now recall, I began to find sub-70” too low, so up it went to 70” and higher for commuting and loaded errands, and 75” for my light gofast. I found that pushing a slightly higher gear uphill is less tiresome than twiddling a slightly too low gear on flats or downhill.

Presently, my loaded errand bike has a fixed 72”cruising gear, a 65” headwind and long, shallow incline gear, and a 54” hill gear. SA ASC hub. My much lighter gofast has a 75”  cruising gear with a 17/19 Dingle with 67” low gear. Again, all fixed.

My impression from all of this is that a good all-round fixed gear is in the range of 67” to 75”, depending on terrain and rider strength and pedaling style. Note that the old Raleigh rod-braked roadsters were geared surprisingly high, ~92”, 72”, 54”. (That 92” gear is very puzzling; I always regeared my AW roadsters to ~54” direct, 72” cruising overdrivehigh, and 41” underdrive/low.

Point, at least as it was in my case, is that you very quickly develop the ability to climb in gears much higher than you’d imagine if limited to multispeed freewheel drivetrains. You also quickly discover the annoyance of descending or flailing along the flats in gears that are too low.

Worst case: 175 cranks and 60” fixed gear on ss mountain bike. Uphills were fine, downhills and tailwind flats were purgatory. That lasted about a week until I converted it to 170s, freewheel, and a 65” gear.

As always, YMMV.

On Sun, Oct 5, 2025 at 8:40 PM Brent Eastman <brenton...@gmail.com> wrote:

I am toying with the idea of making one of my bikes a SS. I fount an eccentric eno hub for a great deal and thus I will be on the hunt for a freewheel soon. I'd rather be able to climb a hill than pedal down one. I'm decently strong. I don't pay attention much at all to what gear I'm in on my 3x9 bikes, but I could start.

What gear ratios do y'all run, or tried, and why? 

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Patrick Moore

Alburquerque, Nuevo Mexico, Etats Unis d'Amerique, Orbis Terrarum

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[Tom M]

When I first rode single speed, I started with 46/17. As I aged, I went down to 42/17, then 38/17. I don't mind coasting on the downhills, and the lower ratio is easier on my knees. I have a White Industries freewheel, pricey but serviceable and durable. The chainrings were far less expensive to replace.

Tom in Alexandria, VA

[Jason Fuller]

It'll depend massively on the bike itself, and how you plan to ride it.  For a sporty bike with a roadish position, Patrick has you well covered.  My single speed bike is a Crust Wombat which has 2.2" knobby tires and riser bars - on that, I run a 55" gear and it's perfect for me. I ride it on hilly terrain and in the city, where I can cruise along at 22-26 kph comfortably but can't go much faster.  On a drop bar, slick tire bike I would run 65-70" personally.  I ran a 76" gear on my fixed bike years back. 

Worth noting: foot retention makes a difference when it comes to single speed gearing selection. It's a lot easier to push a big gear up any amount of incline if you can pull and push on the cranks vs just push. If you're running flat pedals, you may wish to err on the side of easier gearing   

[John Johnson]

I run a 38/15 on my fixed 26er (the city commuter bike that I leave at the train station and I'm not too worried if it ever gets stolen). I think it's about 65 gear inches. For riding around a city with not so many hills (Paris), it's just right. 

If I were running a freewheel, I'd probably go with a slightly lower gear. But it also depends a lot on what type of riding you'll be doing, I suppose. 

cheers,

John (who lives pretty far outside of Paris, but takes the train in a few times a week)

[Eric Daume]

I usually aim for about 70” (44/17) for flat Central Ohio.  

Eric

On Sunday, October 5, 2025, Brent Eastman <brenton...@gmail.com> wrote:

I am toying with the idea of making one of my bikes a SS. I fount an eccentric eno hub for a great deal and thus I will be on the hunt for a freewheel soon. I'd rather be able to climb a hill than pedal down one. I'm decently strong. I don't pay attention much at all to what gear I'm in on my 3x9 bikes, but I could start.

What gear ratios do y'all run, or tried, and why? 

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[Paul Richardson]

i had a ten year brake from riding a singlespeed, and agonized over this question before jumping back in about a year ago.  i like 42/17 for fixed gear and 42/16 freewheel, riding around the suburbs of washington dc.  some moderate hills but nothing too wild.  this on a roaduno with 45mm tires and mks sylvan touring pedals (not clip-ins).

paul

takoma park, md.

[Laing Conley]

I ride slow so my single speeds tend to be in the low 60”s, even here in flat Florida. I don’t give the chainring - freewheel cog combinations here because I have single speeds that use different size wheels, including 20” up to old English Westwood rim wheels - 28” (635 ISO). 

Laing Conley 

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[Patrick Moore]

Paul: the universal 69” to 74” single speed gears. Like 170 mm cranks and a ~45* torso bend to the bar, I think that there’s something inherently natural about this range, for most riders; or, let’s say, 65” to 75” with outliers perfectly justified in their choices.

Curious: why a higher instead of a slightly lower gear with a freewheel? I thought that generally people use a slightly lower gear with a freewheel since you can coast downhill and don’t have to worry about keeping your cadence up to the descent.

I like a ~70” gear for everyday road errand ridings that often involves 25-30 lb loads, occasionally up to 50 lb, as long as things are flat (72” actual direct drive on the ASC errand bike I just had a very nice Fall ride on, but then this gives me a 65” #1 underdrive/second gear), and about 75” for a light gofast, but one very nice fixed gear that I regret not keeping was a top-line Diamond Back* from the very early 1990s that I built with 60 mm Big Apples, a 170 crank with 42 t ring and 17 t cog for a 64” or 65” gear, lower than I prefer for road bikes but just right for those fat, heavy (800 grams each for the “Lite” version!) slicks. Of course, being a NORBA-type mountain bike, the bike handled impeccably with the 60+ mm tires it was designed for, and the high bb let me pedal confidently through corners at speeds that, on a road fixed gear, would have me banging pedals. I used an ENO hub.

*Funny: this was DB’s top of the line mtb back then (and it had the most perfectly elegant slender, tapered straight fork; steel allows that; don’t tell me that straight forks are ugly!) but it had fender and rack bosses, IIRC; certainly one pair at each end; and so much clearance that I installed 60+ mm Big Apples under SKS fenders and had sufficient air  between tires and fenders.

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[Paul Richardson]

before i even had the frameset in hand, i bought a fixed/free flipflop wheelset that came with a now-extinct white industries 16/19 double freewheel installed.  so that was my starting point for the drivetrain.  i decided to try a 42t crank after approximating that gear on my geared bikes, and reading about what ratio other singlespeed riders like.  i enjoyed riding the 42x16 free.  i had (have) a 15t cog i was going to try on the fixed side of the hub, but at the 11th hour i found a surly dingle cog in 17/19, and i liked the idea of options, so i installed that instead.  so i have 42x16/19 free, and 42x17/19 fixed.  i guess i favor the harder freewheel gear because it's what i'm used to at this point.  still never have tried out the 19t cogs, on either side.

paul

tkpk