The gearing you get on a hire bike here, and the climbs it decides

A hire fleet page tells you the frame, the groupset and the price. On these climbs what matters is the cassette at the back, and across the island’s own fleet pages the lowest gear on offer runs from 34×40 to 36×28, a spread of 51.3%. That is the difference between riding the wall above Gènova and pushing up it.

The climbs here are steep more than long, and the steepest part often comes late. So below, every gear combination the island’s hire shops publish is set against the steepest kilometre of every climb we have measured, counting each direction up a pass separately. Pick the gear first, then the shop that rents it.

Spread across the island’s fleets

51.3%

From 34×40 at the easy end to 36×28 at the hard end.

Climbs the choice decides

13

Of 75 climbs, these are the ones some published gears clear and others do not.

Fleets that publish no cassette

8 of 18

The one number that matters here, and they do not print it.

Example rider

82 kg at 200 W

Rider plus bike. A gear counts as too tall below 60 rpm.

Every low gear the island rents

12 distinct lowest gears, taken from the fleet pages of 10 operators who print one. The last column counts how many of the 75 climbs that gear leaves our example rider pedalling below the cadence floor. That is the column to read.

The two ends of that table are far apart. 34×40 leaves our example rider grinding on 2 of 75 climbs; 36×28 does it on 15 — 7.5 times as many, on the same island, for the same rider, at the same power. Both are on offer here this season.

Climbs where your hire gear makes the difference

A wall that beats every gear on the island is no reason to prefer one fleet over another, and neither is a drag that all of them clear. These 13 climbs sit in between: some published gears keep you turning and some do not. 60 of the 75 are fine on anything the island rents, and 2 are hard work on all of it.

Coll dels Reis from Sa Calobra is the one to look at, because it is the climb everybody books the trip for. Its steepest kilometre averages 8.8%, and that single kilometre is the difference between spinning it at 85 rpm and hauling it at 56 rpm — a decision made weeks earlier, on a booking form, by someone choosing a frame colour.

2 climbs beat every gear on this list: coll de s'Heura from Son Serralta and Puig de sa Coma Fosca from Gènova. Nothing a Mallorcan shop rents will spin those comfortably at that power, and no amount of choosing between fleets changes it.

The good news: 60 of the 75 climbs here are comfortable on anything in the table, the Serra road’s long passes among them. Most of this island does not punish a bad gear choice. The list above is where it does.

Fleets that publish no cassette

8 of the 18 fleet pages we checked publish no cassette at all. They will tell you the frame is carbon, the groupset is Ultegra Di2 and the brakes are hydraulic — every one of which you could have guessed — and not the one integer that decides whether the last kilometre of the Coll dels Reis is a ride.

On the pages we checked, that is Bike Island Mallorca, 54eleven, Huerzeler Bicycle Holidays, Ultimate Bike Hire Mallorca, Can Velo Mallorca, Berganti Bikes, Elite Sports Mallorca and Mallorca Bike Hire.

This is worth an email rather than a shrug. Ask for the cassette and the inner chainring before you book, in that order, and treat a shop that answers in a sentence as a good sign about everything else. A fleet is turned over every season or two, so last year’s answer is not this year’s.

How we got this A page counts as publishing gearing when a chainring pair and a cassette range can be extracted from it by pattern. The others are re-tested at every re-check by a probe that raises the alarm if a gear-shaped string appears, so this count corrects itself rather than ageing.Computed from 18 operators’ own fleet pages, read on 20 October 2026.Computed 7 August 2026.

Who publishes what

The 10 operators whose own pages carry a gear, and the 26 combinations between them. This is not a ranking: they are ordered by the easiest gear each one offers, which is what a rider is choosing on.

Every tooth count here comes from the operator’s own page. What is on offer on the day you arrive is between you and the shop.

Booking the bike

If you know the gear you want, the useful move is to search the fleets by what they actually have rather than by the hotel’s partner shop. Compare hire fleets on Mallorca — then ask them the cassette question before you pay.

Every row above is one setting of the gearing calculator , which takes your own weight and power rather than our example rider’s. Start there if the numbers here are close.

Where to stay

The gear matters most in the mountains, which is an argument for basing yourself inside them rather than driving in. Places to stay in Sóller.

Before you go

A hire bike is somebody else’s asset and most travel policies treat it as such — damage and theft of rented equipment is a common exclusion, and so is riding as an organised event. Travel cover — read what it says about hired equipment before you assume you have it.

How to read these numbers

Two kinds of figure share this page. The tooth counts are exact — they are what the operator printed. The speeds are modelled: a rider and bike of 82 kg holding 200 W on 28 mm tyres, up the climb’s steepest kilometre. The cadence that follows is then exact arithmetic on the gear. 60 rpm is our own cut-off, not a physiological limit.

The model needs rolling resistance and drag, and both are estimates — 0.005 and 0.35 m² respectively. On a 9% gradient at 8 km/h, gravity is doing almost all the work and those two move the answer by less than a bidon of water. On the flat they would dominate, which is why nothing on this page is about the flat.

We checked the fleet pages listed above, on the dates beside them. That is not every hire shop on the island: a shop missing from the list was not checked, which is different from publishing no cassette.

Each gear is checked against the calculator’s own options at every update. The calculator now offers the widest cassette and the largest inner ring the island actually rents, and if a fleet goes beyond them again it is caught before the page is updated.

Sources

Source Philipps Bike Team · checked 20 October 2026

Source CCT Bike Rental · checked 20 October 2026

Source Cycling Mallorca · checked 20 October 2026

Source Mallorca Cycling Center · checked 20 October 2026

Source Active Mallorca · checked 20 October 2026

Source Pinarello Experience · checked 20 October 2026

Source Bike Experience Mallorca · checked 20 October 2026

Source Pro Cycling Mallorca · checked 20 October 2026

Source Pro Cycle Hire · checked 20 October 2026

Source VAS Rent a Bike · checked 20 October 2026

Source Bike Island Mallorca · checked 20 October 2026

Source 54eleven · checked 20 October 2026

Source Huerzeler Bicycle Holidays · checked 20 October 2026

Source Ultimate Bike Hire Mallorca · checked 20 October 2026

Source Can Velo Mallorca · checked 20 October 2026

Source Berganti Bikes · checked 20 October 2026

Source Elite Sports Mallorca · checked 20 October 2026

Source Mallorca Bike Hire · checked 20 October 2026

How we got this Checked every time this page is built: a gear an operator publishes that the calculator cannot offer stops the page rather than shipping a table that links to a tool which cannot answer it.Computed from every low gear in the survey, against the option lists behind the gearing calculator.Computed 7 August 2026.

How this site is researched and checked

Every climb on the island, measured