Road bike vs gravel bike: what are the differences?

Gravel Bike vs Road Bike
(Image credit: Aaron Borrill)

The differences between a road bike and a gravel bike may, at first glance, look small.

Both have drop handlebars, a racy ride position and similar-looking gears and tyres. But there are subtle differences which, in sum, make road bikes and gravel bikes very different beasts.

Paul has been on two wheels since he was in his teens and he's spent much of the time since writing about bikes and the associated tech. He's a road cyclist at heart but his adventurous curiosity means Paul has been riding gravel since well before it was cool, adapting his cyclo-cross bike to ride all-day off-road epics and putting road kit to the ultimate test along the way. Paul has contributed to Cyclingnews' tech coverage for a few years, helping to maintain the freshness of our buying guides and deals content, as well as writing a number of our voucher code pages.