Disc brakes have pretty much taken over from rim brakes on the best road bikes and they’ve always featured on gravel bikes. They provide better stopping power and modulation and more consistent performance in all weathers than rim brakes. They’re also less prone to contamination, don’t eat through your bike’s rims and have allowed riders to fit much wider tyres that wouldn’t fit in a rim brake calliper.
But disc brakes aren’t without their downsides. They require more specialised maintenance than rim brakes, including periodic bleeding for hydraulic systems. It’s also harder to spot when disc brake pads need replacing than it is for rim brake pads.
Disc brake pads come in a bewildering array of shapes too, although the range for road and gravel bikes is more limited. There’s the brake compound to consider, with options that are better suited for different conditions.
We’ll run through the different disc brake pads available and suggest the best alternatives to groupset makers’ own pads from aftermarket brands. Lower down, there’s a buyer’s guide and explainer to help you to choose the best disc brake pads and pad material for your own needs.
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OEM replacement pads
Shimano
Shimano brake pads for road bikes all have the same size and pad shape, although more expensive pads incorporate its Ice Technology braking fins to dissipate hear and so may not look quite the same as your original pads.
Shimano offers its pads in resin/organic or sintered/metal options, allowing you to choose a suitable pad for the riding conditions, as explained in the buyer’s guide below.
- Buy now from Tredz (£16.99)
SRAM
SRAM’s own replacement pads for road and gravel bikes come in two shapes. Its newer 12-speed brakes use a Small pad that’s symmetric. This is found in the Red, Force, Rival and Apex 12-speed groupset brakes. It’s available in four different materials, marketed as Quiet/Organic, Quiet+Light/Organic, Powerful Organic and Heavy Duty/Sintered.
Confusingly, the shape of replacement pads isn’t quite the same as that which may be fitted to brakes when a bike is sold, so look out for this when making the standard check of pad shape between old and new.
Older 11-speed SRAM systems use the Small Asymmetric pad, which is available with three different materials: Quiet/Organic, Quiet+Light/Organic and Heavy Duty/Sintered.
There are two additional pad shapes for SRAM’s older Avid BB5 and BB7 mechanical disc brakes, which were fitted to some older disc brake road and gravel bikes.
- Buy now from Tredz (£19.99)
Campagnolo
All Campagnolo disc brakes use the same pad shape with the same organic material used for the pad. Campagnolo incorporates a wear indicator in its pads, helping you to spot when they need to be replaced.
There are two specs; Campagnolo’s older disc brakes are fitted with the DB310 pads, while the wireless electronic groupsets use DB410 pads, which have an alloy backing plate to reduce weight.
- Buy now from Condor Cycles (£31.99)
Tektro/TRP
Hydraulic or mechanical disc brakes from Tektro or its TRP brand are often fitted to lower priced road and gravel bikes. They use a pad shape that’s unique to the two brands, although there may be cross-compatibility with some replacement Shimano pads.
- Buy now from Condor Cycles (£14.99)
Best non-OEM replacement disc brake pad brands
If you want more choice, rather than just fitting the groupset maker’s own pads, there are plenty of brands offering replacements to fit whichever brake model your bike is fitted with. Here are our top picks.
SwissStop
Probably the best-known brand of aftermarket disc brake pads and rim brake pads is SwissStop. It sells a wide range of pads for different disc brakes, so you should be able to find one of its high performance pad sets to fit your bike. It provides a lot of detail to help you choose, including compatibility charts and downloadable data sheets with life-sized images of each pad, to help you make sure you’ve got the right one.
It sells pads in four different materials too, which offer different combinations of pad life, modulation and longevity.
- Buy now from Sigma Sports (from £13.99)
AbsoluteBlack
AbsoluteBlack claims that its GraphenPads have been bought by a number of UAE Team Emirates pro team riders, including you-know-who. Their unique feature is a backing plate with a latticework extending out from the back of the pad that is graphene coated. There's also graphene incorporated into the pad itself, rather than copper. The brand claims around 8,000km life and that the pads are good for all conditions. Available for Shimano, SRAM and Campagnolo.
- Buy now from Tredz (£49.99)
AMP
French brand Amp makes pads to fit most road and gravel bike brake callipers. It sells pads in organic, metallic or ceramic compounds. It claims that its Carbone SL pads are the lightest available at 9.7g a set, thanks to a carbon fibre-alloy backing plate, which it says also helps avoid heat transfer to the brake calliper.
- Buy now from Sigma Sports (from £11.70)
Ashima
Ashima sells pads for Shimano road and gravel bikes, as well as for a number of other brands’ brakes, although not for SRAM. Pads are available in organic, sintered, semi-metallic and ceramic compounds. There’s also a multi-compound formulation, which includes sintered and organic pad areas.
- Buy now from Amazon (from £4.84)
Aztec
Another brand offering a wide range of disc brake pads, Aztec sells organic and metallic pads to fit most disc brake callipers.
- Buy now from Tredz (from £5.95)
BBB
Dutch brand BBB sells a wide range of components and accessories for cycling, including organic and sintered pads for Shimano and SRAM road and gravel bike brakes.
- Buy now from Amazon (from £12.93)
Clarks
Clarks sells brake pads in organic, sintered and semi-metallic compounds for a wide range of brakes, including road and gravel bike brakes from Shimano, SRAM and many other brands. Its pads tend to be towards the more affordable end of the price range.
- Buy now from Tredz (from £5.55)
Ferodo
Ferodo has been making brake pads for over 125 years. Its pads are resin-based, relatively inexpensive and cover the main road bike brake models, although not Campagnolo and there are all-round and e-bike specific versions. It also sells Racing pads, with a semi-metallic formulation that it says is fade-resistant on heavy-duty descents.
- Buy now from Tweeks Cycles (£14.95)
Gorilla
Gorilla brake pads are generally affordable, although it also sells a premium line They're available for the major road bike groupsets and, as with SwissStop, there’s extensive compatibility information to help you to choose the right pads.
There’s a wide range of compounds available and its NRS pads have a one-piece design which incorporates both pads and the pad return spring, making installation easier than a three-piece design with a separate spring and pads.
- Buy now from Amazon (£24.99)
Jagwire
Jagwire sells no less than six different pad set options across a wide range of disc brakes, including organic, sintered and semi-metallic pad compound options, as well as pads designed for e-bikes and pads with built-in cooling fins for Shimano road callipers.
- Buy now from Amazon (from £12.99)
Kool Stop
Kool Stop sells organic and sintered pads, as well as organic pads with a lower weight aluminium backing plate, which it says reduces the weight for a pair of pads to around 10g. It also sells pads with cooling fins for Shimano road and gravel bike brakes. You can even buy or download a poster showing all Kool Stop's different disc brake pads, if you're looking for something exciting to pin on your wall.
- Buy now from Merlin Cycles (from £24.95)
Disc brake pad buying guide
Disc brakes are a bit less user-friendly than rim brakes; it’s harder to check for pad wear, hydraulic brake lines should be bled, usually annually, and there’s a bewildering array of different pad shapes and materials available.
We’ll guide you through the main considerations when replacing disc brake pads.
When should I replace my disc brake pads?
Brands vary in their recommendations as to when you should replace your pads. In general, you should replace your disc brake pads when there’s less than 1mm of pad material left on the metal carrier. Always do so before the pad material itself is so worn down that the metal plate is rubbing on the rotor, as this will cause damage.
It’s important to check that the pad has worn evenly and is properly aligned with the rotor. If you use a bike workshop, they should check the pads for you during a service, but you should check periodically yourself too between services.
How do I know which shape to buy?
There’s a bewildering range of different pad sizes and shapes available to fit different brake calliper models. Fortunately, there are relatively few designed for road/gravel bikes; one shape only for Shimano, one for Campagnolo and just two for SRAM road disc brakes.
If your bike has non-road brake callipers or brakes from another brand, there are many more options. There’s no substitute for visually checking the size and shape of your replacement pad against your worn out one. SwissStop helps out by offering a life-size download of every pad it sells, which you can print out to check compatibility, and other brands offer similar tools to help you to make sure you've got the right pad.
What’s the difference between pad materials?
There are two main types of disc brake pad: organic pads, also called resin pads, and sintered pads, also called metal pads. They have different braking and wear characteristics and are better for different conditions.
Organic pads are most typically fitted in brakes when bikes are sold. They give you a quick initial braking response and are relatively quiet in operation. They’re also quick to break in and the braking material tends to insulate the calliper and the brake fluid from heat build-up.
They do wear faster than sintered pads though, particularly when riding in wet and dirty conditions. They’re also more likely to fade with prolonged braking and they can glaze over, when they’ll need to be reconditioned to restore braking effectiveness.
Sintered pads are made of metal, which makes them more durable than organic pads. They don’t wear as fast in adverse riding conditions, they’re not prone to glazing and they handle higher temperatures better and provide stronger hard braking power.
On the other hand, their initial braking response is slower and less modulated and they take longer to warm up and be fully effective than organic pads. The metal surface transfers more heat to the brake calliper and brake fluid and they’re more prone to brake squeal than organic pads.
So organic pads are a better option for summer road riding, while sintered pads might be a better choice for winter conditions and gravel riding.
SRAM says that you should replace your rotors at the same time, if you swap between organic and sintered pad materials, to ensure optimum performance.
There’s a third option, semi-metallic pads, which are made of an organic compound, but with metal particles incorporated to increase durability. They offer many of the pros of the other two options, but also the cons, plus they’re usually more expensive than either.
Finally, brake pad makers Amp and Ashima sell ceramic pads, which they say provide long life, wet weather and high temperature performance and low noise, but at the expense of slower bite and a higher price.
Are Shimano, SRAM and Campagnolo pads interchangeable?
In a word, no. Each brand has its own pad shape that’s unique to its callipers. SRAM makes things more complex, as it swapped the shape of its disc brake pads between the 11-speed and 12-speed groupset generations.
Other brands selling disc brakes for road and gravel bikes, such as TRP/Tektro, also have their own unique pad shape, although some pads may be cross-compatible with Shimano. Check pad manufacturers' sites for pad compatibility.
