Best puncture repair kits: Don’t waste tubes! Help your wallet and the environment

While you might not be able to prevent punctures entirely, having the right tools for the job can make it a far less painful job. Armed with some tyre levers and one of best puncture repair kits helps to speed up the process; when it’s pouring down with rain or the temperatures have dropped to single digits then time is of the essence. If you’re a little rusty then our guide to how to fix a puncture should help.

It should figure that the more you ride, the more punctures you get. It’s not always the case however. By equipping your bike with a set of quality tyres you’re reducing the odds. We’ve got guides to the best road bike tires , best winter tires and best puncture-proof tires to help you find the best tyre for you.

Similarly, you can help guard against punctures by switching to a tubeless set-up. Here the tubeless sealant should repair many little punctures before you even notice them and even larger holes can be encouraged to seal with a tubeless tire plug

Here are our picks of the best puncture repair kits for inner tubes and tubeless tires, and below that is our buyer's guide to help you choose which is best for you.

The Quick List

Tube repair

Tyre repair

Best puncture repair kits  

Inner Tube Repair Kits

Best glueless solution

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 tire.

If you get it right, a patch should see you home, although we found that it may not hold at higher pressures. It's also quite easy to get a wrinkle in the thin patches, leaving 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.

Best traditional puncture repair kit

The Rema Tip Top TT04 puncture repair kit is a classic with its little green box, and is a feature of many a bike shed. Inside, you get the usual rubber solution plus sandpaper combo to prep your tire, and we had no problems using the kit to patch up holes.

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.

Best compact option

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 vital to make sure that you've hit the hole centrally so that there's as much patch as possible on all sides, but as long as this was achieved we had no problems in patching the tube.

Rather than sandpaper, the kit comes with a metal scuffer that should prove more durable and less likely to lose its abrasive qualities. There's even a tire boot included in case your outer tire suffers significant damage.

Best value puncture repair kit

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. It was simple to achieve effective, safe repairs that allowed the inner tube to fight another day.

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 so it's easy to add this kit to your order to help bulk it up for free carriage.

Best for weatherproofing

The Topeak Rescue Box provides a compact, waterproof aluminium casing (in six colour options!) that helps keep your puncture repair goodies contamination-free. The shape of the box meant that it slipped easily into our pockets or saddlebags.

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.

Long-lasting repair solution

Slime Skabs come in a case slightly larger than some of the others, but measuring 52mm x 38mm x 12mm and weighing 10 grams they still slipped easily into our jersey pocket. The patches are really tacky to the touch and the metal scuffer will undoubtedly last the life of the pack too.

The patches measure 25mm in diameter and applied nicely. After testing it was still stuck firmly and hadn't moved or wrinkled. It felt like a pretty permanent repair. One of the best on test but it is still an unpleasant product name!

Best for patch size

The Rehook Gooeys patches came in a pack that was very similar in size and weight to the Park GP-2's and they were the largest square patches on test (just) measuring 26mmx26mm. This gives more glued area to contact with however, on a narrow 20-28mm width road inner tube, the patch overhung the tube edges. I needed to roll the patch around the tube to get it to stick on fully.

The patch held pressure throughout the test but on checking the inner tube afterwards the edges of the patch hadn't stayed glued. The central section (over the hole) had though, so it did get me home, but would've probably needed another repair to keep it reliable.

Tire Repair Patches / Tire Boots

Sometimes the body of the tyre gets a hole which needs fixing to get you home, and this is where a tire boot can help out. They are applied inside the tyre between the tire and inner tube (if used) and can stop that hole or slash from allowing other road debris into the tire causing further problems.

If you have any tubeless sealant inside the tyre carcass it must be thoroughly cleaned off first as the glue won't stick otherwise. I used a Clean Streak aerosol cleaner which worked well and all 3 patches stayed put during the test.

Largest tyre repair patch

The Park Tool TB-2 are quite large at 45mm x 75mm but I cut one down to roughly 45mm x 30mm to fit it into a 25c tire. It stuck well (after thoroughly preparing the tire) and it held well throughout the test.

It would certainly be a useful thing to carry with your spares while out riding and leave the other two at home. Park Tools say that the "TB-2 is designed for emergency use. A patched tire should be replaced as soon as possible", which is sensible advice.

Best traditional glued tire repair

The Velox Tubeless Repair Kit uses vulcanising glue and patches to repair the tire. You'll need to ensure that the tire is well prepared and clean before gluing but the patch went on easily and stayed in place for the ride. It worked well.

The pack is quite big so it's more of a stay-at-home repair set I'd say. I would've liked to have had some chalk in the kit as you'll need to dust the repair afterwards to stop the inner tube from sticking to the glue/patch.

Best pre-glued tire boot

The Lezyne Smart kit (inner tube repair mentioned above) also includes a tire repair patch. It was the only kit on test to do this. The patch measured c. 50mm x 30mm and it applied to the tire well. It was reassuringly sticky and stayed in place for the ride. As with the others on test you must ensure that the tire is prepared well and is clean for the best adhesion to occur.

As the Lezyne kit has both a tire boot and inner tube patches, both of which are the match for anything on test, it comes highly recommended.

Buyer's guide to the best puncture repair kits

How we test

The puncture repair kits on test were evaluated for their value (in terms of what they included), their effectiveness and ease of use when repairing punctures and the packaging, as that dictates how easy they are to carry. Any issues we discovered fixing tubes at home will be exacerbated when trying to effect a repair sat by the side of a cold, wet road, so it is well worth choosing wisely.