Bike hire in Mallorca: check the gearing before you book

Choose a hire bike by its gearing first. Where the shop is barely matters.

13 of the 18 operators we checked will bring the bike to you, and 8 of them say “anywhere in Mallorca” in so many words. So you can ignore the shop’s address. The gearing is another matter: 8 of the same 18 print no cassette anywhere on their page, and on this island the cassette is the one specification that decides whether you ride a climb or walk it.

So instead of asking which hire company, ask two questions, in this order. What gearing will the bike have, and what does it cost to deliver it to where you are staying? Ask the second one outright, because 5 of the 13 operators that promise delivery say nothing at all about what it costs.

Three things to check on a hire shop’s website

There are three tests, and each one is something the operator has written on its own page. You can check all three yourself in a browser in five minutes, and none of them takes any account of commercial partnerships.

None of the tests covers service, mechanical care or whether the bike arrives clean, and they never will. Those questions matter, but an operator’s page cannot answer them, so we give no verdict on them rather than make one up.

How we got this An operator counts as publishing gearing when a chainring pair and a cassette range can be extracted from its page by a stated pattern. It counts as stating a delivery term when a sentence naming a delivery and a place it goes to can be. The other flags (island-wide, free, charged) are patterns run over the operator’s own quoted sentence. Every quotation is stored with its source and checked again at every re-check, and a missing one is flagged.Computed from 18 operators' own fleet and delivery pages, read on 2026-10-20.Computed 20 October 2026.

Which hire shop to start with

There are four answers for four kinds of rider, and only one of them is the operator with the lowest gear.

Every operator we checked: lowest gear and delivery terms

The table is sorted by the lowest gear each operator publishes. The delivery column repeats what the operator’s own page says and nothing more.

Look at the dashes in that table. 5 operators state no delivery terms at all, which is worth knowing before you book, given that 8 of their competitors promise to deliver anywhere on the island. And 8 publish no gearing, so with those you will have to ask by email.

The one delivery radius, and which towns it covers

Exactly 1 operator we checked gives a number for how far it will deliver. Pro Cycling Mallorca states 45 km from Port d'Alcúdia: free inside that distance, with a surcharge outside it.

We measured that radius against the 18 base towns in the base guide, both by road and in a straight line. 7 fall inside it either way and 9 fall outside it either way. Two are inside only in a straight line.

Those two are Sóller and Port de Sóller, and the Serra is the reason. Sóller is 36.7 km from Port d'Alcúdia in a straight line and 64.7 km by road, because the van has to drive round the mountains. The operator does not say which distance it means, so if you are staying in either town, ask whether delivery is free. It is worth asking, because from Sóller you will spend the week on the steep climbs where the cassette matters most.

How we got this Road distance from Port d'Alcúdia over the routes graph — no motorway, cycleways in — and great-circle distance between the two towns’ OpenStreetMap place nodes. A town is inside when both readings put it inside, outside when both put it outside, and borderline when they disagree, because the operator states a number and not which distance it means.Computed from 18 published base towns against Pro Cycling Mallorca's published 45 km radius.Computed 6 August 2026.

Which climbs need a low gear on a hire bike

Between the easiest lowest gear any operator publishes (34×40) and the hardest (36×28) there is a difference of 51.3%. On the road, that difference shows up on a particular set of climbs.

The famous climbs are not the ones that matter here. For a rider at 200 W and 82 kg, the big Tramuntana climbs are rideable on any gearing we found, because they are long rather than steep. The 13 climbs below (counting each direction up a pass separately) are short and steep, and on them some of the published gears keep you turning the pedals and some do not.

Think of a low gear as insurance, wherever you ride. With the easiest gear on offer, that rider grinds on 2 of the 75 climbs; with the hardest, on 15. Same island, same rider, same power, and both bikes are for hire this season. A bigger sprocket costs nothing to ask for, and it covers the days you did not plan: the wrong side of a hill on the way home, a fourth morning in a row, a headwind on a ramp you would otherwise have shrugged at.

The full table, the physics behind it and a calculator for your own weight and power are on the hire-gearing page. For your booking email it comes down to one line: what is the smallest chainring and the largest sprocket on the bike I will get?

How we got this For each climb-side, the speed a 82 kg rider holds at 200 W up its steepest kilometre, then the cadence that speed implies in the gear. A climb counts as grinding when that cadence is below 60 rpm. The physics is the same the gearing calculator on this site runs on.Computed from 12 distinct low gears extracted from 10 operators’ own fleet pages, against 75 climb-sides measured by this site.Computed 7 August 2026.

Know before you book

What goes wrong with hire bikes here is the booking, and each problem comes with a date.

The last week of April

Book your frame size early

In season, the hard part is getting a bike in your size. radverleih-mallorca.com says so directly: “In der Hauptsaison (März bis Mai und September bis Oktober) sind gängige Größen zwischen 54 und 58 oft Wochen im Voraus weg.” The common sizes go weeks ahead in March to May and September to October, which are exactly the months a first trip is booked for. Love Velo, a hire operator writing about its own trade, is firmer still about the peak weeks: “Book road bike hire in Mallorca early if you’re travelling in peak cycling season, especially Spring and Autumn.”

Ask what the delivery costs, in writing

These operators promise delivery but show no price next to the promise: Cycling Mallorca, Active Mallorca, 54eleven, Elite Sports Mallorca, Mallorca Bike Hire. Some of them have a separate price page, and most will quote you a figure by email within the hour. Either way, get the figure before you book: on a two-week hire, the delivery fee is a real part of the bill.

Epic Road Rides lists the two conditions that operators’ headlines tend to leave out: “For rentals for more than three days, they will deliver. Delivery is free to certain areas.” A minimum hire length and a delivery area smaller than the whole island are both normal, so ask about both.

Ask what the cassette is, in writing

These operators publish no gearing at all: Bike Island Mallorca, 54eleven, Huerzeler Bicycle Holidays, Ultimate Bike Hire Mallorca, Can Velo Mallorca, Berganti Bikes, Elite Sports Mallorca, Mallorca Bike Hire. Any of them may have a good 34×34 ready for you; their pages just do not say. One line in an email settles it: what is the smallest chainring and the largest sprocket on the bike I will get? The answer matters more than the frame brand.

Bring your own pedals, saddle and shoes

Fitting your own pedals is normal here and usually free, and the pedals that come with the bike may not take your cleats. An unfamiliar saddle is a hard way to start the fourth long morning in a row. Send your saddle height and setback when you book rather than giving them at the counter: several operators ask for exactly those measurements in advance, which tells you they set the bike up with them.

What riders and independent writers say

This section draws on 8 articles from 4 publishers, 5 of them in German. That matters, because riders from Germany are the largest single group hiring bikes on this island.

There are far more hire shops than the ones in our table. radverleih-mallorca.com, an independent comparison site, counts them: “Auf Mallorca kannst Du bei über 90 Radvermietungen ein Rennrad mieten” Our table covers the 18 operators whose fleet pages we could read. It shows the shops that publish their details, and it is not a list of every shop on the island.

Delivering to your hotel is how bike hire works here. radverleih-mallorca.com, which is not a hire operator, says so: “viele Radvermieter liefern Dein Rennrad auch direkt ins Hotel oder zur Finca.” Epic Road Rides says the same, with a condition attached: “there are plenty of cycle hire shops in all the main resorts and some companies will deliver to you wherever you are staying”

On a longer trip, bringing your own bike can make more sense than hiring. speed-ville.de, a German rider who has been hiring here since 2014, puts the break-even at a fortnight: “Ab 2 Wochen lohnt es sich aktuell, das eigene Rennrad mitzubringen!” Under two weeks, hire; at two weeks or more, that writer’s arithmetic says fly your own bike out. The same article has the most useful booking advice we found: “Wer im Oktober für März bucht, spart oft bis zu 15 %” In other words, book in October for March.

Where to stay, getting there and damage cover

Where to stay, if the bike is coming to you. Because most operators deliver, you can choose where to stay without worrying about where the hire shop is. Pick the town for the riding. The base guide ranks the towns by measured approach distance: Port de Pollença, Sóller, Alcúdia and Valldemossa are the four closest contenders in its tables.

Comparing fleets and specifications. Once you know to ask about the sprocket rather than the groupset, compare hire bikes and their published specifications across operators, then send the email above to the two that suit you best.

Getting yourself there. A hire bike delivered to the door removes the bike bag, which removes the oversize-baggage problem and usually the hire car with it — a transfer from the airport is enough if the bike is meeting you at the hotel. If you would rather have the car, compare car hire before the spring weeks fill.

One thing your travel policy probably does not cover. A hire bike is somebody else’s property and damage to it is usually outside a standard travel policy; several operators sell their own damage waiver at the counter, and a travel policy with a sports extension is the other way people handle it. Read what yours excludes before you sign the counter form, not after.

Everything above comes from the operators’ own pages and from our own measurements; how we make those is explained in one place.

Last verified 7 August 2026 — past its 45-day review window, so confirm the current status with the surveyed hire operators and the pieces read for this guide.