The 5 Best Bike Helmets for Commuters in 2025
Top pick
Our top pick for most commuters, this decently priced helmet is comfortable and versatile, and it scores well in safety tests. But it comes in only two sizes (fewer than our other picks offer).
The Met Downtown Mips is a lightweight and comfortable helmet that scores well in safety tests conducted by the Virginia Tech Helmet Lab. With its low-key style and removable visor, it’s a versatile choice for casual commuters on hybrid bikes, as well as for weekend warriors on drop-bar road or gravel bikes.
In 2023, the Met Downtown Mips was one of the least expensive helmets to make Virginia Tech’s top-25 list; the average price for a helmet on that list was $180. (In the recently published 2025 list, the Met dropped to 30th, remaining one of the least expensive helmets in that group.) But this helmet’s fit and features feel uncompromised by price. The buckle and adjustable chin straps, which keep the Downtown helmet on your head, are among the slimmest and most user-friendly of those I tested.
Seventeen vents move air through the helmet, and the sweat pads are robust enough to keep the anti-rotational Mips liner from snagging your hair. However, this helmet comes in only two sizes (the fewest of all our picks), and Met’s crash-placement policy is good but not great.
Runner-up
This lightweight, aerodynamic helmet has good ventilation and an excellent crash-replacement policy. It’s best for riders on drop-bar bikes.
The proprietary liner on the Trek Starvos WaveCel Cycling Helmet—a wave-shaped cellular co-polymer insert called WaveCel—is a funky-looking take on anti-rotational technology. Yet this helmet breathes well (if you’re on a road bike) and tests well, and it eliminates the standard plastic Mips slip-plane liner.
Due to the angle of its vents, though, this helmet doesn’t breathe as well when you’re riding in a more-upright position. So it’s a less versatile choice than the Met Downtown Mips if you swap between a drop-bar bike and a city cruiser. (If you ride only hybrids or upright ebikes, consider our pick that’s best for city riding.)
Of the companies whose helmets I tested, Trek has one of the best crash-replacement policies—free replacement for one year after purchase. So that helps to offset its higher price.
Upgrade pick
This was, at the time we tested it, the top-rated helmet in Virginia Tech’s safety tests, and it’s the lightest, best-ventilated helmet we tested. It’s also the most expensive by far. If you’re a committed roadie, it may be worth considering.
The Giro Aries Spherical is the most expensive helmet we tested, but it’s also the lightest and most comfortable. And it was the highest-rated helmet in the 2023 Virginia Tech helmet safety ratings out of a total of 217 helmets. (In the 2025 results, it’s the fifth-highest-rated helmet out of a total of 264 helmets.)
This helmet has an unusual ball-and-socket design, which uses a sleeker, better-integrated version of Mips technology, and it also features adjustable chin straps and a low-profile buckle. The result is a helmet that’s so light and comfortable you almost forget you’re wearing it at all.
Generous vents on the outside and cut-in airflow channels on the inside keep your head cool. And a triangle of reflective tape adds visibility to the back, making us wonder why all helmets don’t come standard with reflective details. Given this helmet’s high price, though, the crash-replacement policy seems skimpy.
Also great
Designed for upright riding, this helmet is meant to appeal to commuters who dress in street clothes, not spandex. Yet it outperforms other urban-style helmets we’ve tested, and it scored exceptionally well on Virginia Tech’s crash tests.
The Specialized Mode looks like one of the many bucket-style helmets that have become popular with kids and casual riders—almost more like a skateboarding helmet than what you’d see on a bike racer. Those bucket-style helmets tend to have fewer vents, so they can be hot, and they also tend to score poorly in Virginia Tech’s tests.
The Mode, however, bucks those expectations, with cleverly designed vents and an impressive sixth-place spot on VT’s 2023 list. (In the 2025, it fell to the 12th place spot, but it’s the only urban style helmet to make the top 50.) But this helmet is less versatile than our top pick—its ventilation system doesn’t work well on road bikes. And its crash-replacement policy is less generous than those of our other picks.
Also great
Another stellar performer in Virginia Tech’s safety tests, this helmet is intended for use on mountain-bike trails. That means it provides more coverage to the back of your head than our top pick. It also weighs more.
If you tend to spend more of your time on trails than on pavement, the Sweet Protection Trailblazer Mips helmet could be worth a look. It also scored very highly in the Virginia Tech tests (fifth place in 2023 and 11th place in 2025). And, like most mountain-bike helmets, it provides more coverage for the back of the head than road-bike helmets do. The flip side is that it’s heavier than our top pick, and the visor doesn’t come off.
As someone who rides all kinds of bikes, I appreciated the easy-breezy attitude the Trailblazer helmet gave off, and I felt just a tad less dorky traversing the streets while wearing it. (Buy the helmet you like best, and you’ll wear it more often!)
