How we compare tyres

Where the data comes from

Since May 2021 every tyre sold in the EU must be registered in the European Product Registry for Energy Labelling (EPREL) before it goes on sale, under Regulation (EU) 2020/740. The supplier enters the size, load and speed index, tyre class, the three label values and the snow and ice symbols, and the European Commission publishes each registration.

We use every published registration: 304,417 tyres from 678 brands, data as of 23 October 2026. Blocked and unpublished records are left out. TyreRank is not affiliated with the European Commission or any tyre maker.

What the label says

• Wet grip, class A to E: how well the tyre brakes on a wet road compared with a reference tyre. For passenger car tyres, A means a grip index of at least 1.55 and E at most 1.09.
• Fuel efficiency, class A to E: the tyre’s rolling resistance. A means at most 6.5 kg per tonne of load, E at least 10.6 kg/t.
• External rolling noise in decibels, with a class A, B or C. This is the noise the tyre makes outside the car, not inside it.
• 3PMSF (three-peak mountain snowflake): the tyre passed the EU severe-snow test. Ice grip: it passed the ice test (Nordic winter tyres).

Label values are the supplier’s own declaration. Market surveillance authorities check samples, but most tyres are not tested independently, and neither do we test them.

How tyres are grouped

A pattern (tyre model) is the brand plus the commercial name the supplier entered, such as Michelin Primacy 4+. Suppliers type these names freely, so we clean them up: model codes written into the brand field (“Kumho PS71”) are moved back to the brand, spelling variants of the same brand are merged, and sizes, load indexes and suffixes written into the name (“205/55R16 94V AS-2+ XL”) are removed. The result is 15,876 patterns. If you find a tyre under the wrong name, tell us.

A pattern gets a page that search engines may index when it is registered in at least eight sizes (5,780 patterns); a size page needs at least 30 registrations and eight patterns in one season (726 sizes).

Seasons: EPREL records only the snow and ice symbols, not the season. We call a pattern an all-season tyre when its name says so (all season, 4 seasons, CrossClimate, Weather and similar), and a winter tyre when its name says so or most of its sizes carry the ice symbol. Other patterns where most sizes carry 3PMSF are shown as 3PMSF tyres: they can be winter or all-season tyres, so we compare them together with winter tyres in one group (“winter and 3PMSF tyres”). Everything else is shown as a summer tyre.

How tyres are compared

A tyre is only compared with tyres of the same size, same class (car, van or truck) and same season. “At least as good as 75%” means that, in its size group, the tyre’s class or noise value is equal to or better than that of at least three quarters of the other registrations. We show these shares only when a group has at least five tyres. On pattern pages, the share is the proportion of its sizes that reach that mark.

Size pages rank every pattern on sale by wet grip, then fuel efficiency, then noise, using each pattern’s best-labelled variant in that size. Registrations with a market end date are counted but not ranked.

Same label, different brand

Many manufacturers sell the same production under several brands. We list two patterns as having the same label values when both were registered by the same manufacturer organisation, they share at least five size and load/speed variants, and at least 80% of those variants have identical values on all five label fields. Identical labels do not prove two tyres are the same: classes are broad, and the tread, compound or construction can differ.

Braking, fuel and noise estimates

For passenger car tyres (class C1) we translate the label into everyday figures, always from the middle of each class range:

• Wet braking from 80 km/h: stopping distance = v² / (2 · g · μ), with μ = 0.46 × the grip index (A 1.60, B 1.47, C 1.32, D 1.17, E 1.05). This gives about 18 metres between class A and class E, in line with the European Commission’s own label information.
• Fuel: rolling resistance (A 6.0, B 7.15, C 8.4, D 9.8, E 11.0 kg/t) on a 1,500 kg car, an engine efficiency of 35% and 32 MJ per litre of petrol. One class step is roughly 0.1–0.2 L/100 km; yearly figures assume 15,000 km.
• Noise: every 3 dB is about double the sound energy; 10 dB is perceived as roughly twice as loud.

Real tyres can sit anywhere inside their class range, and braking also depends on the car, the road, the temperature and tread depth. Treat these figures as an order of magnitude.