EN 13634is the European standard for motorcycle riders' protective footwear, and the single most useful thing to know about it is that it does not produce one score. It rates four separate properties— upper height, abrasion resistance, impact cut resistance and transverse rigidity — and awards each one a Level 1 or Level 2independently. A boot that is Level 2 for abrasion and Level 1 for everything else and a boot that is Level 2 across all four both get to print "CE certified." They are not the same boot.
That is the whole problem with shopping on a CE badge. The badge is real, it is a legal requirement for motorcycle footwear sold as PPE in Europe, and it is still almost content-free on its own. What tells you something is the level string, and only a minority of makers publish it. On this page the Sidi Adventure 2 Gore-Tex publishes Level 2 for rigidity, impact, abrasion and cut, the RST Axiom CE prints a four-digit rating of 2122, the REV'IT! Subductionpublishes "Level 1 | 1 | 2 | 2" and SHIMApublishes "1111" on the SX-2 EVO. Four makers, four different levels of honesty about the same standard.
What to look for on a boot's certification claim
Before any pick, these are the three things worth reading off a product page, in the order they tell you the most:
- Is there a level string at all? Four digits, or four levels separated by pipes, or a sentence naming the levels per property. If the page says only "CE certified" or "CE Cat. II," you know the boot passed and nothing more.
- Which revision of the standard? "EN 13634:2017" is the current revision; "EN 13634:2010" is the older one. Both are real certifications and a 2010 boot is not a bad boot, but a maker who names the year is telling you more than one who does not.
- Does the claim come from the maker or the retailer? Where the two disagree, the maker's own product page is the one we rank on. We say so on every card where we had to take a spec from a retailer sheet instead.
We have not tested a boot, cut one or crushed one. Everything below comes from the published standard, the test house's own description of its requirements, and the makers' published certification wording, all linked at the bottom.
The four rated properties, one at a time
Every certified motorcycle boot is assessed on the same four things. Here is what each one is actually measuring and why it matters on the road.
| Rated property | What it measures | Why it matters |
|---|
| Upper height | How far the upper extends above the heel, measured with a ruler | Decides how much of your ankle and shin is inside the boot at all |
| Abrasion resistance | How long the upper survives being dragged across an abrasive surface | The sliding part of a crash, before anything hits anything |
| Impact cut resistance | Resistance to a blade driven into the upper under load | Footpegs, levers, bodywork edges and road furniture |
| Transverse rigidity | How much force it takes to crush the boot sideways | The bike landing on your foot — the classic low-speed injury |
How to read the level string
When a maker prints something like 2122 or Level 1 | 1 | 2 | 2, those are the four results in order. Each digit is a 1 or a 2, and 2 is the higher performance level in every case. There is no 3, and there is no 0: if a boot failed any of the four, it would not be certified at all.
So a 1111boot, like the SHIMA SX-2 EVO, is a boot that passed every test at the lower level. That is the floor of the standard. It is also genuinely useful information, and it is a great deal more than a fashion sneaker with a motorcycle logo on it can claim — an uncertified shoe has not passed anything, at any level. A 2122 boot, like the RST Axiom, took the higher level on height, cut and rigidity and the lower one on abrasion. And Level 2 across all four, which Sidi publishes for the Adventure 2, is as high as the standard goes.
One warning about comparing strings across makers: not every maker prints the four results in the same order, and some write them as a sentence rather than a code. Read the words next to the digits rather than assuming position. If a page prints digits with no labels at all, treat the string as evidence that the boot was properly assessed and go to the maker's size and spec documentation for the breakdown.
What EN 13634 does not test
This is the part most buying guides skip, and it is where riders get caught out. The standard is about the protective performance of the footwear in a crash. It says nothing whatsoever about:
- Waterproofing. A separate optional marking exists for water resistance, and most makers simply name their membrane instead — Gore-Tex, Drystar, SinAqua. None of the four picks here publishes a waterproof rating in millimetres for the boot. Our waterproof boots ranking is built on membrane construction for exactly that reason.
- Comfort, fit or walkability. Nothing in the standard asks whether you can walk a mile in the boot. A Level 2 everything race boot is often the worst boot on the page to walk in.
- Sole grip. Not rated. A boot can be fully certified and still be slick on a wet forecourt.
- Durability over time. The tests are performed on a new boot. Stitching, buckles and sole bonding age, and nothing in the certification speaks to that.
- Ankle brace mechanisms. Branded torsion-control systems are a design feature, not a certified rating. They may help the boot score on rigidity, but "anti-torsion system" is marketing language until the level string backs it up.
Is an uncertified boot useless?
No, and it is worth being precise instead of absolutist. A tall leather work boot with a hard sole and good ankle coverage is meaningfully better than a canvas sneaker, and plenty of riders wear exactly that. What it is not is evidence. Nobody has dragged it across an abrasive drum, driven a blade into it or crushed it sideways, so nobody can tell you how it behaves when any of those things happens for real. On a site whose entire method is published specifications, that distinction is the whole game: we rank what makers are willing to document, and we say so when they document nothing. Our do you need motorcycle boots guide takes the broader question apart.
EN 13634 and the rest of your gear
Boots are the only piece of gear with their own dedicated standard; the rest of the CE landscape is split differently. Jackets and trousers are rated as whole garments under EN 17092, in classes AAA, AA, A, B and C, and the armor inside them is rated separately under EN 1621. Gloves have their own standard, EN 13594. Helmets are outside the CE system entirely in the US, where DOT FMVSS 218 applies. Our CE armor levels guide covers the garment and armor side, our glove certification guide covers gloves, and DOT vs ECE vs Snellcovers helmets. Four standards, four different scales, no shared vocabulary — which is exactly why each one needs reading on its own terms.
The boots on this page, and why these three
These are not the three best boots on the site. They are three whose makers publish the most about their certification, which is the only thing this page is about. The Sidi Adventure 2 Gore-Texpublishes Level 2 for rigidity, impact, abrasion and cut under EN 13634:2017 — the top of the standard. The REV'IT! Subductionpublishes "Level 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 certified according to standard EN 13634:2017" on a riding shoe, which is rare in that category. And the SHIMA SX-2 EVOpublishes "1111" — the floor, stated plainly, which we rate as honesty rather than weakness. A fourth worth naming but not ranked here is the RST Axiom CE, which prints a four-digit 2122 on a women's boot and sits on our women's boots ranking instead. For rankings by what the boot is for rather than by what it publishes, start with our motorcycle boots ranking, riding shoes ranking or adventure boots ranking.
