Your chosen bike frame and wheelset both affect speed in Zwift, so it makes sense for racers to do a little research and choose the best tool for the job.
Frame Tests – Introduction
While Zwift’s 4-star rating system for weight and aero is simple and easy to understand, performance varies even among frames with the same star ratings–because the stars are just an approximation.
So we’ve ranked all the standard road frames (TT frames are ranked here) against each other based on their actual performance on flat roads (2 laps of Tempus Fugit) and a long, steep climb (Alpe du Zwift).
As you will see, some frames perform well in flat tests, while others are nimble climbers. In between we have the all-arounders: frames that perform well on all course types but can’t beat the specialized frames on their own turf.
Charts last updated April 19, 2022
Frame Timings
This chart shows actual timings for flat and climb tests, in seconds. The shorter the bar, the faster the frame.
Notes:
- Flat tests run on 2 laps of Tempus Fugit at 300 watts steady with an isolated 75kg rider 183cm tall, using basic Zwift 32mm Carbon wheels. This test data is used for all flat results on this page.
- Climb tests run on Alpe du Zwift using 300 watts steady with an isolated 75kg rider 183cm tall, using basic Zwift 32mm Carbon wheels. This test data is used for all climbing results on this page.
Frame Percentile Rank, Stacked
This format lets you easily see how frames perform across both flats and climbs, and compare that performance with other frames. This is useful for selecting the best bike frame for your race course.
Example: you want a top-performing frame for a road race that ends on the Innsbruck KOM, so you look at the longest bars. But you know the race will be won or lost on the big climb, so you go with the Scott Addict RC since it is near the top of the climbing rankings and also offers decent performance on the flats.
Frame Time Improvement, Stacked
This format lets you easily see how frames perform across both flats and climbs in terms of actual timing, and compare that performance with other frames. This is useful for selecting the best bike frame for your race course, and may be an improvement over the percentile chart above since it is based on timings and not percentiles.
To be precise, this chart shows how many seconds a particular frame improves on the time of the lowest-ranked frame for both the flat and climb tests. So the Scott Addict RC’s flat improvement of 23.5 means it is 23.5 seconds faster than the Zwift Buffalo on our flat test.
Since there is a bigger swing in climb times (130.5 seconds) than flat times (29 seconds) it could be argued that this chart is overly weighted toward climb performance.
What About the Tron Bike?
The Tron bike (Zwift Concept 1) is not listed above because it’s impossible to test the Tron frame without also testing the Tron wheels, since they are inseparable.
What we do know is the Tron is not a strong climber, but it’s among the fastest setups for flat and rolling courses. Only a handful of frames, coupled with the disc wheelsets, can beat the Tron by 1-3 seconds in our ~50 minute flat test.
Here’s a post comparing the Tron bike against top-performing frames and wheelsets >
Your Feedback
We’d love to know what you think of these charts, including suggestions for improvements. Share your comments below.
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