Gravel Bikes

Mizubikes may earn a commission from links in this post. Tire clearance is the spec that changed fastest this year. A frame that was “generous” at 45mm two years ago now looks conservative, and a few brands are quoting numbers that used to belong to cross-country hardtails. This chart collects the published maximums for the frames people ask me about most, plus a few others worth knowing. A warning before the table: these numbers are not measured the same way. Some brands quote a tire with 4mm of frame clearance, others use 6mm, and 3T avoids the whole question with its own measurement system. I’ll cover that below. Treat the table as a starting point for shopping, not a guarantee that a specific tire fits. ...

We’d been watching this bike show up in the wild for months — a Traka 360 start line here, a blurry Eurobike hallway shot there — and today Canyon finally made it official. The third-generation Grail is out, and the headline change is the one every gravel racer with wide tires and a dream has been asking for: clearance jumped from 42mm to 57mm, enough for a 2.25-inch mountain bike tire if you want to run one. That’s not a trim update. That’s Canyon admitting the second-gen Grail was already outgunned by where gravel racing actually went. ...

That’s my old Crux leaning on a fence post in the photo up top — no aero tube shaping, no wind tunnel time, not even the current generation of the bike. And I had a great day on it. I just finished writing up the new Canyon Grail, and buried in the press materials was a stat that stuck with me more than the tire clearance number did: Canyon tested the bike in a wind tunnel with a pedaling mannequin, simulating yaw angles up to 20 degrees, to chase watts at a race pace of 35 km/h. That’s a genuinely sophisticated piece of engineering. It’s also a lot of institutional effort spent on a question I’m not sure enough people are asking: faster toward what? ...

If you’ve been shopping for a gravel bike recently — new or used — you’ve probably run into the term UDH and wondered whether it matters for what you’re building. The short answer is: it depends on what groupset you want to run. The longer answer is that a lot of popular gravel frames have had their dropouts quietly updated mid-generation, which means two bikes with the same name and similar looks can have very different futures when it comes to drivetrain compatibility. ...

If you’re shopping for a gravel bike and want to run SRAM’s 13-speed XPLR ecosystem — or just want the future-proofing that UDH brings — the first question is whether the frame you’re considering actually has it. We’ve pulled every gravel bike currently listed on SRAM’s official Bike Finder with the UDH filter applied, as of May 2026. A note before you use this list: This is sourced directly from SRAM’s Bike Finder tool and reflects only the bikes SRAM has listed there. It is not an exhaustive list of every UDH-compatible frame on the market — there are likely other frames from brands not represented in the Bike Finder, particularly smaller builders and direct-to-consumer brands, that also use the UDH standard. Always verify directly with the frame manufacturer before purchasing, especially on the used market where model year matters. ...

Update: it launched. Canyon released the third-generation Grail in September 2026 with 57mm tire clearance and a 1x-only design. Here’s what actually changed, and how its clearance compares in the 2026 gravel bike tire clearance chart. If you’ve been paying attention to Canyon’s releases over the past year, there’s a pattern worth noting. The Aeroad CFR established the template — deep aero tubes, integrated cockpit, dropped seatstays, built purely for speed. Then last month the Endurace CFR showed up and took that same design language, added a little more tire clearance, and called it an endurance road bike. We actually covered that one here on Mizubikes. Now at The Traka in Girona this week, Canyon’s new team — the Canyon x DT Swiss All-Terrain Racing squad — showed up to race on what appears to be an unreleased Grail CFR, and it’s exactly what you’d expect if you’ve been following the thread: Aeroad DNA, pushed all the way into gravel. ...

If you’re shopping for your first gravel bike and trying to make sense of tire clearance specs, here’s the first thing to understand: the number on the spec sheet isn’t the full story. I recently tested this on the Specialized Crux. The stated max clearance is 47mm — but I mounted a 50c tire in the rear and a 2.1" up front to see what the frame could actually handle. Watch the full video here. ...