Head Tube Angle — every audited bike, ranked

Head tube angle is the angle the steering axis makes with the ground. It interacts with fork offset to set mechanical trail, and it shapes whether the bike feels twitchy or planted.

Highest Head Tube Angle in the catalog

Lowest Head Tube Angle in the catalog

How to read this metric

Across 56 audited models the Head Tube Angle ranges from 67.9 ° to 73.3 °, with a mean of 71.2 ° and a median of 71.5 °. The mean and median agree closely, which tells you the catalog is not skewed toward an extreme of the distribution — most modern bikes target the middle, and the leaderboard above lets you see who deliberately steps outside it.

The current high-watermark is the Parlee Altum 2017; the current floor is the Scott Scale Gravel RC 2026. Steeper angles (≥73°) quicken steering, shorten wheelbase, and are common on crit and XC race frames. Slacker angles (≤70°) lengthen trail, calm steering inputs, and absorb terrain impacts on gravel and trail bikes.

Distribution by bike type

This per-discipline breakdown is the more honest comparison: comparing an XC hardtail's Head Tube Angle to a road frame's is a category error. Use the type rows to find the right peer group, then drill into individual bikes from the leaderboards above. Each bike row links straight to its full geometry page on RideDNA, where you can run a side-by-side against any other audited frame.

If you want to filter on multiple metrics at once, the filter tool lets you set ranges on stack, reach, HTA, trail, wheelbase and chainstay simultaneously and returns every bike that satisfies all the constraints. The discipline pages apply pre-baked filters by riding style, which is the fastest way in if you already know what you ride.

Caveat. Published geometry charts are not all drawn the same way. Some manufacturers publish stack at the top of the head tube exclusive of any integrated headset cap; others publish it at the top of the cap. RideDNA reconciles these to a common reference where possible (see the methodology page for the corrections we apply), but for any single bike you should still treat the chart as ±2 mm uncertainty before you stack-spacer-shop. The relative ordering on this page is more reliable than the absolute values.

Related geometry pages

• Stack
• Reach
• Mechanical Trail
• Wheelbase
• Chainstay Length
• Bottom Bracket Drop
• Full geometry glossary
• Compare two specific bikes
• Handling Index methodology