The short answer
- SPD is the off-road system, SPD-SL is the road one. Shimano's own words: SPD has "a recessed cleat design that is designed to meet the needs of mountain biking", SPD-SL is "a road pedal platform".
- SPD pedals are double-sided. SPD-SL are single-sided. That one line explains most of how the two feel to ride.
- The cleats come in the box. Every Shimano SPD pedal ships with SM-SH51 cleats, so you don't need to buy them separately.
- No, the SPD pedals aren't all the same — but the differences are platform size and weight, not the mechanism. They all take the same cleat.
- Every one of them has a tension screw. Wind it all the way out for your first month. That single adjustment is the difference between confidence and a bruised hip.
- Start on the flat, not on Suikerbossie. The fall that gets you is at walking pace, at a stop, with one foot still attached.
Someone leans a bike on the counter and says they want to "go clipless", and then almost always adds: I just don't want to fall over. Fair. Everyone falls over at least once, and it's never at speed — it's at a stop street on Main Road with one foot still bolted to the bike.
Most of the worry comes from not knowing what you're buying. So here's the whole system in plain terms, using what Shimano publishes rather than what the forums reckon, and then what I'd actually put on your bike.
"Clipless" means the opposite of what it sounds like
It's the worst name in cycling. Clipless pedals are the ones you clip into. The name is a leftover from what they replaced — the old toe-clips-and-straps cages that you slid your shoe into and cinched down. When the ski-binding style pedal arrived, it was "clipless" because the toe clip was gone.
So: a cleat bolts to the sole of your shoe, and it locks into a spring-loaded mechanism in the pedal. You twist your heel outwards to get out. That's the whole idea.
SPD or SPD-SL — the one decision that matters
SPD stands for Shimano Pedaling Dynamics. Shimano describes it as "a pedal platform with a recessed cleat design that is designed to meet the needs of mountain biking". The cleat is small and metal, and it sits down inside a recess in the sole — which is why you can walk in the shoes.
SPD-SL is the road version. Shimano calls it "a road pedal platform systematically engineered with SHIMANO footwear to transfer more power from your body to your bike". Bigger cleat, bigger platform, one side only.
Figures from Shimano's own product pages for the PD-M8100 pedal and the SM-SH51 and SM-SH11 cleats — all listed in the sources at the foot of this page. The highlighted row is the one people expect to differ and it doesn't: the twist to get out is the same on both.
Notice the bottom row. The angle your heel travels to release is identical on the road and off-road systems. The nervousness people have about road pedals being "harder to get out of" isn't in the geometry — it's that there's only one side to find, so you're fishing for the pedal at a robot rather than just stamping down.
My rule of thumb: if you ever ride on gravel, on trails, or you stop and put a foot down often, go SPD. If your bike only ever sees tar and you care about the last few watts, SPD-SL. And if you're honestly not sure — that's an SPD answer. Being able to walk into a coffee shop without skating across the tiles counts for more than most people admit.
Are all SPD pedals the same? No — but the mechanism is
This trips people up. Every Shimano SPD pedal here takes the same SM-SH51 cleat and releases the same way. What changes is how much pedal there is under your foot, and how much it weighs.
The PD-M520 is where most people should start. It's the plain double-sided XC pedal — a bare spindle and mechanism, nothing around it. Shimano doesn't publish a weight for it, so I'm not going to invent one — but it's the plain, cheap, hard-to-kill option, and for most people it's where I'd start.
Move up and you're buying grams and platform. Shimano lists the PD-M540 at 352 g a pair; the Deore XT PD-M8100 is 342 g, with a larger pedal platform and a 16.5 mm stack height. Ten grams and a slightly lower, wider feel. Whether that's worth the jump is a real question, and on a bike you ride to Kalk Bay and back, probably not.
The exception is the PD-ME700, which is a genuinely different shape — a normal SPD mechanism sitting inside a wide alloy cage. Shimano's pitch: "With a wide contact area, the PD-ME700 pedals let riders focus on the trail ahead". Shimano's figure is 540 g a pair — heavy next to the M520 — and every one of those grams is cage.
That cage matters more than the number suggests if you ride the Tokai or Table Mountain trails. When you unclip mid-descent and put a foot back down in a hurry, a caged pedal gives your shoe something to land on. A bare M520 gives you a spindle and a bruise.
On the road side the pattern repeats: the pedals on our shelf run from the PD-R550 up through 105 and Ultegra, and what you're buying is weight and body material. Shimano puts the R550 at 310 g a pair, and lists a wider spring tension range against it. The Ultegra PD-R8000 is 248 g with a 15.8 mm stack height and a 4 mm longer axle available.
That wider tension range is why I'd point a first-time road rider at the R550 rather than at the lighter ones. You can set it softer than the others will go.
The cleats are in the box — and there's a second kind worth knowing about
This is the part that saves people a wasted trip. You do not need to buy cleats separately. Shimano is explicit: "Shimano SM-SH51 SPD Cleats come stock with all Shimano SPD pedals". Bolts included, in the same box as the pedals.
But there's a second SPD cleat, and it's the one I wish more beginners knew about. The SM-SH56 is a multi-release cleat. Shimano's own description of who it's for: "These cleats are a great choice for anyone new to clipless pedals". In Shimano's description it lets you "clip out of your pedal by twisting your foot in either direction or by lifting and twisting your heel" — so a panicked, badly-aimed wiggle still gets your foot free, where the standard SH51 wants a proper heel-out twist.
The SH56 is listed on every Shimano SPD pedal spec sheet as the optional cleat. Which means it isn't the one in your box — and nobody tells you it exists.
We don't list cleats as a separate item on the website, so don't go looking for them in the shop pages — ask us about them when you're in.
Your first ride: wind the tension out and stay off the hills
Every pedal in this article has a cleat retention adjuster — a small screw with a + and − scale, visible in that first photo. It sets how hard the spring grips the cleat. New pedals come somewhere in the middle.
Wind it all the way to minimum. Both pedals, both sides. It will feel loose and slightly wrong to an experienced rider, and it is exactly right for your first month. Tighten it later, once clipping out has stopped being a thought.
Then pick your ground carefully. Not Chapman's Peak, and definitely not Suikerbossie — a long steep climb is where you stall at 4 km/h with a car behind you, and that's the situation the tension screw is for. The flat stretch of Main Road early on a Sunday, or a quiet bit of the Hout Bay beachfront, is where you want to be. Clip in, roll, clip out. Twenty times. Both feet.
Two and a half minutes from the Global Cycling Network on the heel-out twist itself. Worth watching before your first ride rather than working it out at a stop street.
One habit worth building from day one: unclip before you need to, not when you need to. Coming up to a stop, foot out early. Every rider who has fallen over at a robot did it because they left it until the bike had already stopped.
Shoes: the half people forget to budget for
The pedal is only half the system. The cleat has to bolt to something, and a normal trainer has nowhere to bolt it. So a first clipless setup is pedals plus shoes, and the shoes usually cost more.
The thing that makes SPD shoes livable is that recess Shimano designed the cleat around: the metal sits below the tread, so you walk on rubber, not on the cleat. You can see it on the sole of these — proper lugs, cleat sunk into them.
Try them on before you buy. Cycling shoes are stiffer and sized differently to trainers, and a shoe that's fine standing in the shop can hurt on a two-hour ride if it's half a size out. We've got the road, MTB and gravel Scotts here to fit.
Common questions
What does SPD stand for with pedals?
Shimano Pedaling Dynamics. It's Shimano's off-road clipless system, defined by a small recessed cleat — the recess is what lets you walk normally in the shoes. SPD-SL is the separate road system, with a bigger cleat that sits proud of the sole.
What is the difference between Shimano SPD and SPD-SL pedals?
SPD is double-sided and built for mountain biking; SPD-SL is single-sided and built for the road. The SPD cleat is recessed into the shoe so you can walk; the SPD-SL cleat is larger and gives a bigger, stiffer platform under the ball of your foot. Float differs too — 4° on the standard SPD cleat against 6° on the yellow SPD-SL. The release angle is 13° on both.
Are all Shimano SPD pedals the same?
The mechanism is. Every Shimano SPD pedal takes the same SM-SH51 cleat, releases at the same angle, and has the same tension adjuster. What differs is the body: the M520 is a bare mechanism, the M8100 is lighter with a bigger platform, and the ME700 wraps the whole thing in a cage for trail riding. You can move between them without changing your shoes or cleats.
Which Shimano SPD pedal is considered the best?
There isn't one, and I'd be careful of anyone who names a model without asking what you ride. For most people getting started, I'd fit the M520 — it does the same job as the expensive ones for a fraction of the price, and nothing about the more expensive ones will make clipping in easier. If you ride technical trails, the ME700's cage genuinely changes the bike. If you're counting grams on a race bike, XT. "Best" here mostly means "lightest", and lightest is rarely what a new clipless rider needs.
Can I fit them myself?
You can, with the right tools and a bit of care. The pedals are stamped L and R — you can see the R on the spindle in the first photo above — and they are not interchangeable. The two sides are threaded differently, which is the step home fittings most often get wrong, and a crossed thread in a crank arm is an expensive mistake. You'll want a proper pedal spanner or hex key rather than an adjustable spanner. Cleat position on the shoe is the fiddlier half, and getting it wrong is how knees start hurting. If you'd rather not chance it, bring the bike and the shoes in and we'll do it on the stand.
Come and get set up properly
Bring the bike and the shoes in. We'll fit the pedals, set the cleats where your feet actually sit, wind the tension down for your first rides, and send you out on the flat to try it before you go anywhere near a hill.
While the bike's on the stand, it's worth knowing whether the frame under you is the right size in the first place — cleat position can't fix a bike that's too long. And if you're new to riding here and the descents are about to become a bigger part of your life, the brake pad guide is the other thing worth reading before winter.