Fastest Electric Bikes

A Class 3, at 28 mph. That is not our house rule, it is where US law stops calling the thing a bicycle, and it is why every bike on this page arrives at the same number instead of competing on it.

Outside the US the ceiling is lower. The EU caps assist at 25 km/h flat, with no classes involved at all, and other markets differ again. A bike built for one market and one built for another can share a motor, a frame and a battery and still stop helping at different speeds, because the only real difference is a setting. Never take one limit as universal, and check your own region before you check the spec sheet.

The fastest e bike here, then, is whichever one you can actually hold 28 mph on, and that has more to do with your route and your riding position than with the badge. How fast ebikes actually go covers what happens past the cap, which is less dramatic than people expect.

There is no difference in the words. There is a large one in the classes, and it is the only distinction worth understanding before you buy.

Class 1 and Class 2 stop assisting at 20 mph. Class 3 carries on to 28. That extra 8 mph is the entire premium, and it is paid for in access rather than money: plenty of jurisdictions allow Class 1 and 2 on shared paths and exclude Class 3, and some attach a minimum age or a helmet requirement to it.

So the question is not which is faster. It is whether the roads you actually ride let you use the faster one. Our classes explainer sets out what each class permits, and it is worth ten minutes before spending anything.

Machines exist at 35, 45 and 50 mph. None of them is legally a bicycle, and you will not find one here. A search for a 60 mph electric bike for sale ends in the same place: that is a motorcycle, and a shop listing it as a bicycle is telling you something about the shop.

They are electric mopeds and light motorcycles wearing bicycle clothing. In most places that means registration, a licence, insurance, a plate, and no legal access to a bike path or cycle lane. They can be a perfectly good thing to own, and some are excellent. They are simply not the thing the listing said, and finding that out from a police officer is the expensive way to learn it.

The same goes for the tuning kits. Derestricting voids the warranty on everything we sell, can turn your bicycle into an unregistered motor vehicle where you ride, and puts a drivetrain and a set of brakes under loads they were never specified for. If you need more than 28 mph, buy the vehicle designed and certified to do it.

Once every bike shares a cap, wattage stops being interesting. What separates these 27 is how quickly they reach 28 mph with a rider and a load on board, and whether they hold it, and neither of those is a top-speed spec.

Torque in newton metres does the accelerating. Gearing decides whether your legs are still contributing at speed or spinning uselessly. Weight and riding position decide whether you hold 28 mph or briefly touch it: a heavy fat-tyre bike sitting you bolt upright is a barn door in a headwind, whatever the motor is rated at.

Which is why the Ride1Up Portola at $995 and the Mercedes-AMG Rallye Edition at $7,500 stop assisting at exactly the same speed. The money between them buys frame, finish, suspension and badge. It does not buy miles per hour, and any page implying otherwise is selling you something. Hub motor vs mid drive covers which one actually gets you moving.

If your route is city centre and full of junctions. Your average speed is set by traffic lights, not by your cap. You will use 28 mph on perhaps four hundred metres of the ride and pay for it on all of it.

If you ride shared paths. Class 3 is excluded from a lot of them. Buying the fast bike and then not being allowed to ride it on your own commute is the single most avoidable mistake in this category.

If range matters more than speed. Holding a higher speed is the most expensive thing a battery does. If you want distance, the long range collection is a better page than this one, and the two rarely point at the same bike.

The rule of thumb: buy for the speed you will average, not the one printed on the box. Nine times out of ten a Class 1 is plenty and the money is better spent on a torque sensor, brakes that stop 25 kg repeatedly, and lights that work. If that sounds like your ride, the commuter range is where to look instead, and we would rather point you there than sell you the fast one.