Best Cleats for Wide Feet?
Do you have wide feet and play a sport that requires cleats? If so, I feel your pain.
My whole life I was stuffing my feet into cleat that were too narrow for my feet. Resulting in bunions, knee surgeries and sprained ankles.
Ok that's a little dramatic, but it's true that without being able to use my feet properly I suffered a plethora of injuries, some of which I'm still trying to correct decades later.
The main culprit were my Nike Mercurial Vapors - which I wore from age 14-16, the prime years of development. I can say with some conviction the restriction of my big toe and pinky toe severely impacted my athleticism and playing career.
I mean look at these things. They are more submarine shaped than foot shaped.
Unfortunately, pretty much every major shoe brand makes cleats like this... way too narrow.
They do this because the shoes look nicer with a narrow tapered toe box. There are short term performance benefits for cutting and changing direction, not allowing for slippage. But those benefits of a snug fit come with the trade-off of pain and higher chances of injury. They also make them narrower because the conventional manufacturing process is easier with a narrower shape.
The good news is that there are now a few options for wide cleats. The best and most accessible option is Prevolve Footwear's custom fit cleats. There are a couple startups making standard sized wide fit minimalist cleats, but they are not always available and you can't guarantee they will actually fit the width of your foot.
Wide Cleat Options
So here is our list of the current options best options for wide feet, ranked from best to worst.
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Prevolve Footwear - ($445 - $655 )the best cleat option for wide feet because the cleat plate is designed specifically for the width and unique shape of your feet. You can be sure the cleats will have the correct stud placement and cleat plate shape and a unique design for your specific sport and even position. Click on the image below to check out their options.
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Naturathletics - ($159 ) the widest standardized fit, supposedly shipping in spring 2025.
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FreeKickz - ($159) wider toe box standardized fit, currently running a kick starter to get the shoe launched. Unsure when they will be ready for delivery.
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New Balance - ($110 - $215) most of their cleat options have a 2E width option that uses an upper with more material. Don't be confused, they don't actually make the cleat plate or placement wider. This is only to give you more space in the upper, but lacks the biomechanical changes needed to properly fit a wide foot.
- Other options you'll find if you search this topic on reddit or google are going to be leather. These shoes do stretch more than some other synthetic models, however, the sole plate is not actually wider. So you have been duped by these companies to think it's wider but really there is just more material on the upper.
Conclusion
The costs of designing and manufacturing the molds for cleat plates is at minimum $10,000 per size. It means that in order to actually create wider options, companies need to spend hundreds of thousands if not millions to make a proper wide cleat. Because the public is only just starting to realize what healthy footwear should look like, its no wonder that these companies have not invested into wider sizes. You can read more about why wide cleats don't exists in the traditional shoe world in our blog post here.
In the meantime Prevolve Footwear will continue to develop our 3D printing manufacturing process to serve those with wide feet and unique feet. We love wide feet :) and all feet... we don't discriminate :D
We actually hope to make your feet even wider! With the use of healthy footwear and custom fit toe spacers you could reverse the years of damage caused by traditional narrow cleats.
Hopefully this post helped illuminate the current landscape of wide cleats. Drop a comment or email us at info@prevolvefootwear.com if you have any questions :)
