The best puncture repair kits will give you a speedy, durable fix to a punctured inner tube that will save you from having to throw it away, maybe letting you get years more use from it. Even if you just fit a new tube while out on the road, you can make a repair when you get home.
With flats being a constant threat to cyclists - although they actually occur relatively infrequently if you've fitted the best road bike tyres, best winter tyres or best puncture-proof tyres to your bike - we've loads of advice on how to keep moving.
If you're not sure how to repair an inner tube, read our piece on how to fix a puncture. We've also got the lowdown on bike inner tubes to make sure you get what you need if you do need to buy a replacement.
Finally don't forget the option to go tubeless if you have a tubeless-ready rim and tyre combo; we've detailed advice on how to set up tubeless tyres properly. Dispensing with your tubes and using the best tubeless sealant will protect you from many flats, but if you do get one our guide to the best tubeless tyre puncture repair tools will help you to sort it quickly and easily.
Here are our picks of the best puncture repair kits and below that is our buyer's guide to help you choose.
Our pick of the best puncture repair kits
The Park Tool Super Patch kit is really compact and comes in a neat plastic box, so it's easy to stash away. There are six patches included, along with a sandpaper square to pre-roughen your tyre.
If you get it right, a patch should see you home, although it may not hold at higher pressures. It's also quite easy to get a wrinkle in the thin patches, so you leave an instant conduit for the air in the tube to escape to the outside world. They're quite expensive per fix, although with luck you may not have to use many.
Lifeline offers a classic glued puncture repair kit with two different patch sizes and the usual glue and sandpaper in a handy rectangular plastic box that's easy to stash away and carry with you. As with all glued kits, you need to look out for the glue drying up, or you could end up stranded. The small number of patches means that you may need to buy extra - fortunately Lifeline will sell you another 10 of the more useful round patches for next-to-nothing.
Lifeline accessories are sold through Chain Reaction Cycles and Wiggle, so it's easy to add this kit to your order to help bulk it up for free carriage.
The Rema Tip Top puncture repair kit is a classic, with its little green box a feature of many a bike shed. Inside, you get the usual rubber solution plus sandpaper combo to prep your tyre.
Rather than an assortment of different shapes, there are six round patches - certainly the most useful shape. The Rema kit is a bit more expensive than Lifeline's but you get more useful patches and the box is a little more compact.
Even more diminutive than the Park Tool kit, the Lezyne Smart puncture repair kit packs six glueless patches into a thin, wallet-like plastic sleeve, making it super-easy to carry with you.
Like the Park Tool patches, the Lezyne ones are quite thin and you need to take care not to get a wrinkle, which is even more important here as the Lezyne patches are smaller. That also makes it even more important to make sure that you've hit the hole centrally so that there's as much patch as possible on all sides.
Rather than sandpaper, the kit comes with a metal scuffer which should prove more durable and less likely to lose its abrasive qualities. There's even a tyre boot included in case your outer tyre suffers significant damage.
The Topeak Rescue Box provides a compact, waterproof aluminium casing (in six colour options!) that helps keep your puncture repair goodies contamination-free.
Open it up and there are six glueless patches and a small abrasive sheet. The box also has a divider that gives you space to keep a spare chain link and a couple of chain pins, so you can make running repairs to your chain too if you're carrying one of the best multitools with a chain tool attachment. At 18g it won't weigh you down excessively either.
Buyer's guide to the best puncture repair kits
Glue or glueless?
The main choice with the best puncture repair kits is whether to go for the traditional patches that need a separate tube of rubber solution or the newer glueless patches.
In our experience, patches which need to be glued on give a more durable repair than glueless patches. But for on-the-road repairs it means more to take with you, while the rubber solution itself is emblazoned with Harmful notices in big letters. It probably won't hurt you much the amount most cyclists will be using it, but it's something to bear in mind.
The other consideration is that the solvent in rubber solution will dry up quickly. A sealed tube has more longevity, but once opened you may find that it's either a viscous liquid or solid by the time you want to use it again. Even a sealed tube can dry out, particularly if you let it get hot.
Most glueless patches, on the other hand, have almost limitless longevity, so they'll be there for you when you do get that puncture. They're also a lot more compact than kits with glue, so they're much easier to carry around.
What shape patches work best?
Most patches are round, but glued kits often contain oval patches too. These tend to be of limited use - almost all punctures are point piercings of your tube, so a round patch will work just fine.
You shouldn't need a large patch either, provided you get a good seal, although glueless patches tend to be less airtight than glued ones, so some extra material around the point of piercing may be helpful. A larger patch will also help if you don't aim well and the actual hole is off-centre from the patch.
One case where a larger, oval patch might be better is a "snakebite" puncture, caused by the tyre bottoming out on the wheel rim. You'll see two parallel cuts a few millimetres apart. Here, a slightly larger patch should work better.
Do I need to abrade the inner tube before fitting a patch?
Almost all repair kits contain either sandpaper or a metal scuffer to roughen the tube around the puncture before you try to stick a patch onto it. Use it, as it will remove any contaminants on the surface of the tube and the rough surface will adhere much better to the patch. Just don't abrade so hard that you make another hole in the tube.