The 3 Best Rain Pants of 2025
Top pick
These lightweight, comfortable pants will keep you dry through rainy hikes. They are available in regular, short, and long versions to accommodate multiple heights.
These lightweight, comfortable pants will keep you dry through rainy hikes. They also come in three inseam lengths.
Marmot’s PreCip Eco Pants (available in men’s and women’s versions) will keep you dry just as well as the competition for a lower price, and they’re available in a wider array of inseam lengths. These 2.5-layer, ripstop-nylon pants are made with 100% recycled fabric and have ankle zips to help you get them over your boots. They also have zippered side pockets.
Where the PreCip pants stand out is in their cut: They ranked among the best-fitting pants we tried, and they come in short, regular, and long inseam lengths. More of our testers found that this cut, of all the pants we tested, fit them the best.
Marmot’s pants kept us dry while we walked for several miles in heavier-than-usual rain and wind in Portland, Oregon. During our eyedropper and spray tests, we saw no signs of wetting through—both before and after putting the pants through five hours of continuous washing. Water didn’t bead up and jump off the PreCip pants quite as well as it did off the Arc’Teryx Beta pants, but neither did the water cling to the Marmot pairs’ fabric.
On our Hoh Rain Forest hike, the PreCip pants felt breathable. (The temperature was around 48 degrees Fahrenheit in the rain forest.) We felt noticeably sweaty and clammy after only an hour of hiking in the Columbia Storm Surge pants in the rain forest—but that wasn’t the case in the PreCip pants.
Tripping over pants isn’t fun, and neither is feeling like you’re wearing a couple of trash bags. We experienced that feeling while wearing many of the rain pants in our test group—but not when we wore the PreCip pairs. Instead, the PreCip pants fit well and were easy to move in; we also found their legs roomy enough to pull on over layers and then walk in. The PreCip pairs still look and feel like rain pants, of course, so they don’t get many style points. Their fabric isn’t as soft and stretchy as that of the sleeker Mountain Hardwear Stretch Ozonic pants. However, these pants feel sturdier than the others we tested because of their gusseted crotch, which, according to our experts, can help reinforce an easy-to-rip area.
The PreCip Eco Pants come in three inseam lengths (short, regular, and long) in both men’s and women’s versions, and they were among the few pants in our pile that proved to be true to size. The men’s pants come in S to XXL (30- to 42-inch waist, 36- to 48-inch hip, 30- to 35-inch inseam), and the women’s pants come in sizes XS to XL (24.5- to 36.5-inch waist, 35- to 47-inch hip, 29- to 33-inch inseam). Both the men’s and women’s models come only in black.
The two zippered mesh side pockets let you stash whatever you need to keep accessible. These pockets have a protective fabric shelf, and Marmot’s most recent update to the PreCip design added fully taped seams, which means you can trust that your phone will stay dry during a true downpour. Ankle zippers at the cuffs made pulling the pants over our boots easy, and if you prefer pants that fully unzip (from the waist to the ankle), both the men’s and women’s versions offer that option. Unlike other rain pants, however, the PreCip pairs have an effective ankle cinch (an elastic drawstring) to help you taper and shorten them after you put them on.
As for the price, the PreCip Eco Pants are at the lower end of the high-end rain pants we tested and at the higher end of the cheaper options. At this writing, they’re $30 less than our runner-up, the almost identical Patagonia Torrentshell pants. For the cost, these pants offer the best value of all the pants we tested.
You need to wash the PreCip pants with liquid detergent, not powder; you can dry them on low. If your pants do wear out, you can file a warranty claim with Marmot. The company offers a limited lifetime warranty.
Flaws but not dealbreakers
Because the PreCip Eco Pants are made from ripstop nylon, they still feel somewhat like trash bags. They aren’t the quietest pants, either. However, that complaint extended to most of the pants we tested. And although the zippers on the PreCip pants are plenty long, they’re not as long as the zippers on Patagonia’s Torrentshell pants.
