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. None of those decides anything here. The number that does is the one 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 roads here are not long so much as steep, and the steep bit tends to arrive late. So this page does the join nobody else does: every gear combination the island’s operators actually publish, against the steepest kilometre of every climb-side this site has measured. 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 climb-sides — some published gears clear them, others do not.

Fleets that publish no cassette

6 of 14

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

Reference rider

82 kg at 200 W

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

Every low gear the island rents

11 distinct lowest gears, taken from the fleet pages of 8 operators who print one. The last column is the count of the 75 climb-sides on this site where that gear drops the reference rider below the floor — which is the only column that answers a question.

The two ends of that table are not close. 34×40 leaves the reference rider grinding on 2 of 75 climb-sides; 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.

The climbs your hire bike decides

Not the steepest ones. A wall that beats every gear on the island is not a reason to prefer one fleet over another, and neither is a drag that all of them clear. These 13 are the climb-sides in between — where some published gear keeps you turning and some does 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 climb-sides 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 the reference power, and no amount of choosing between fleets changes it.

The reassuring half: 60 of the 75 climb-sides 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.

The fleets that will not tell you

6 of the 14 fleet pages read for this page 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 read for this survey, that is 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 14 operators’ own fleet pages, read on 25 August 2026.Computed 7 August 2026.

Who publishes what

The 8 operators whose own pages carry a gear, and the 19 combinations between them. No ranking is implied and none is computed: the order is the easiest gear each one offers, which is the thing a rider is choosing on.

Every tooth count here was read off the operator’s own page and stored with the sentence it came from. 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 the reference 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 where this site draws the line, not where physiology does.

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.

The survey is the fleet pages listed above, read on the date beside them — not a census of the island’s hire trade. An operator missing from it is missing, not silent.

Each gear is checked against the calculator’s own options when this page is built. Until this survey existed, the tool could not offer the widest cassette or the largest inner ring the island actually rents; it can now, and a fleet moving outside them again is caught before this page can publish.

Sources

Source Cycling Mallorca · checked 25 August 2026

Source Mallorca Cycling Center · checked 25 August 2026

Source Active Mallorca · checked 25 August 2026

Source Pinarello Experience · checked 25 August 2026

Source Bike Experience Mallorca · checked 25 August 2026

Source Pro Cycling Mallorca · checked 25 August 2026

Source Pro Cycle Hire · checked 25 August 2026

Source VAS Rent a Bike · checked 25 August 2026

Source Huerzeler Bicycle Holidays · checked 25 August 2026

Source Ultimate Bike Hire Mallorca · checked 25 August 2026

Source Can Velo Mallorca · checked 25 August 2026

Source Berganti Bikes · checked 25 August 2026

Source Elite Sports Mallorca · checked 25 August 2026

Source Mallorca Bike Hire · checked 25 August 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