Podiatrist Tested

Toe Box Width Chart: 31 Shoes Measured in Millimetres

Nobody prints toe box width on the box. Here are 31 shoes measured at the big toe, 67.3 to 83.6 mm — and why a 4E fitting does not mean a wider toe box.

Every shoe box tells you a length and a letter. Neither of them tells you how much room there is where your toes actually are. The length is measured to the end of the longest toe. The width letter — D, 2E, 4E — is a fitting taken across the ball of the foot, at the joints behind the big and little toes. If what hurts is a bunion, a bunionette, a hammertoe, a neuroma or a nail, the pressure is further forward than that, and there is no published number for it.

So we went and got one. The table below holds every shoe on this site for which an independent lab has cut the shoe in half and measured the internal width at the big toe, in millimetres. It is the single most useful footwear measurement nobody sells you, and not one manufacturer publishes it.

What this number is, and what it is not

The figures come from RunRepeat’s laboratory, which buys shoes at retail, cuts them in half and measures them. Their published method takes toe box width “always at the same distance from the tip of the mold” — precisely 28.3 mm — which is roughly where the pulp of the big toe ends in a correctly sized shoe. Measuring at a fixed point is what makes the numbers comparable across brands: it removes the last’s length and its toe spring from the comparison and leaves only how much the upper tapers.

The same lab publishes a second forefoot figure, which it calls shoe width, taken at the widest points of the mould, between the first and fifth metatarsophalangeal joints. That number lands between about 92 and 101 mm on the shoes we hold. The big-toe number lands between about 67 and 84 mm. They are 20 mm apart and they are not interchangeable — if you find a “toe box width” quoted in the nineties, you are reading the ball of the foot, not the toes. A section further down shows the eight shoes where we hold both, and why the order changes.

One honest limit, stated before the chart rather than after it: these are measurements of one pair, in one size, of one colourway. Uppers differ between a mesh version and a leather one, and lasts are occasionally revised mid-life. Treat a 1 mm difference between two shoes as noise. Treat 5 mm as real.

The chart: 31 shoes, widest toe box first

Every figure is a laboratory measurement of the internal width at the big toe, in millimetres. Shoe names link to our review of that shoe, where the full specification and its sources are recorded.

Bars start at 60 mm rather than at zero, so that differences of a millimetre or two are visible; the printed figure beside each bar is the measurement. Gold marks a shoe the manufacturer sells in a 4E, 6E, X-Wide or Extra Wide fitting. The vertical line is the median of the 31 shoes.

The full table

Toe box measurements: RunRepeat laboratory, internal width at a fixed 28.3 mm from the tip of the mould, on one pair at the size that lab tests. “Fittings the brand sells” is taken from the manufacturer’s own listing and is reproduced in the brand’s own words, including where a brand publishes no width information at all. Read a 1 mm difference as noise.

Four fifths of the catalogue lives inside a 6 mm band

Across the 31 shoes, the measured toe box runs from 67.3 mm to 83.6 mm — a spread of 16.3 mm, or about two thirds of a centimetre of real estate at the front of the shoe. That sounds like a lot. The distribution says otherwise: 24 of the 31 sit between 70.0 and 76.0 mm, and the median is 72.8 mm.

This is the honest answer to “is this shoe wide?” for most mainstream trainers: no, and neither is the one you are comparing it with. Swapping one cushioned daily trainer for another moves your big toe by a millimetre or two. If a shoe is pressing on a bunion or a bunionette, a lateral move inside the band will not fix it, and the disappointment people report after buying “a wider shoe” is usually this, measured.

The shoes that genuinely sit outside the band are worth naming, because there are only a handful and they are all making a deliberate design decision rather than a marketing one. At the roomy end sit the two Altras and the HOKA Bondi SR — foot-shaped lasts, 7 to 15 mm clear of the pack. At the tight end sit a group of conventional running lasts, and the narrowest shoe in the catalogue is one most people would guess the opposite way.

A wide fitting does not mean a wide toe box

This is the finding that changes how you shop, and it is the reason this page exists rather than a list of “wide toe box shoes”.

Split the 31 shoes by whether the manufacturer offers them in a genuinely wide fitting — 4E, 6E, X-Wide or Extra Wide. The 21 shoes that are offered in one average 72.3 mm at the big toe. The 10 shoes that are not average 75.1 mm. The shoes you can buy in a wide fitting are, on average, the narrower shoes. Counting the distinct fittings each model is listed in and correlating that against the measurement gives r = −0.25 — a weak relationship, and it points the wrong way.

The single clearest example is at the bottom of the chart. The narrowest toe box we have measured belongs to a shoe sold in five fittings, from B through 6E. Buying a wider fitting of it does not change the shape of the toe box; it changes the girth of the shoe across the ball and the instep, which is exactly what a width letter is defined to do. If the bone that hurts is further forward than the joints that letter is measured across, the letter is not the lever.

None of which makes width letters useless — they are the right tool for a broad midfoot, a high instep or a foot that swells through the day, and our shoe width chart covers what each letter actually buys you in millimetres of girth. It makes them the wrong tool for a forefoot problem, which is a different measurement in a different place.

Where your toes splay is not where a bunionette presses

For eight of these shoes the same lab published both forefoot figures — the big-toe width above and the widest-point width across the metatarsal heads. Comparing them is more useful than either one alone, because the gap between them is a direct measure of how sharply the shoe tapers.

Both columns are RunRepeat lab measurements of the same pair. “Taper” is the widest-point figure minus the big-toe figure — how much the shoe narrows between the ball of the foot and the ends of the toes. Only some teardowns publish both numbers, which is why this table holds eight shoes and the one above holds 31.

The big-toe figures across these eight span 15.3 mm. The widest-point figures span only 7.5 mm. Most of the difference you can feel at the front of a shoe has already closed by the time you reach the ball of the foot. That is the measured reason a wider fitting satisfies a bunion — which sits at the first metatarsophalangeal joint, inside the widest-point measurement — and so often disappoints a bunionette or a clawed second toe, which sit forward of it.

The order changes too, and not subtly. The Altra Torin 8 is the widest of the eight at the big toe by 2.4 mm, but only third at the widest point, with the Brooks Ghost 17 — second narrowest at the big toe — 0.1 mm behind it. Read as taper, the same fact is starker: the Torin flares by 11.7 mm from toes to ball, the Ghost 17 by 25.6 mm. A foot-shaped last is not a bigger shoe. It is a shoe that keeps its width where the toes are instead of giving it all back.

If you want that argument applied to one diagnosis, our guide to shoes for a tailor’s bunion works through what it means when the painful bone is on the outside of the forefoot, and wide toe box shoes covers what to look for in a last more generally.

Shoe brands with a wide toe box, brand by brand

The chart above is sorted by shoe, because the shoe is what gets measured. The question most people actually arrive with is broader — which brands run wide. Below are the same 31 lab figures rolled up across the 13 brands on this site. Read the second column first: on several of these brands the number behind the figure is one or two shoes, and a brand verdict cannot be built on that.

Brand	Shoes measured	Widest on record	vs the median	Range across the brand	No figure yet
Altra	2	Altra Torin 8 — 83.6 mm	+10.8 mm	82.3–83.6 mm	1
HOKA	8	HOKA Bondi SR — 81.2 mm	+8.4 mm	70.2–81.2 mm	—
New Balance	5	New Balance Fresh Foam X 860v15 — 75.1 mm	+2.3 mm	67.3–75.1 mm	2
ASICS	3	ASICS GEL-CUMULUS 28 — 74.4 mm	+1.6 mm	72.5–74.4 mm	1
Brooks	7	Brooks Glycerin 23 — 73.9 mm	+1.1 mm	68.3–73.9 mm	1
Saucony	2	Saucony Ride 19 — 72.8 mm	+0.0 mm	72.8–72.8 mm	1
On	2	On Cloudrunner 2 — 72.4 mm	−0.4 mm	71.0–72.4 mm	—
Skechers	1	Skechers Aero Burst — 70.7 mm	−2.1 mm	single shoe	2
KURU	1	KURU ATOM 2 — 70.7 mm	−2.1 mm	single shoe	—
Dansko	0	Not published	—	—	1
OOFOS	0	Not published	—	—	1
Orthofeet	0	Not published	—	—	1
Vionic	0	Not published	—	—	1

Only three brands here are measured across five shoes or more: HOKA (8), Brooks (7) and New Balance (5). Those are the only rows with enough behind them to describe a brand at all, and what they show is that the brand is the wrong unit. HOKA’s eight shoes span 11.0 mm, from 70.2 to 81.2. Brooks’ seven span 5.6 mm. New Balance’s five span 7.8 mm.

Now set Altra aside and look at the other eight brands’ widest shoes: they all fall inside a 10.5 mm band, from 81.2 mm down to 70.7 mm. HOKA alone covers a wider range than that. The variation inside one brand is larger than the variation between eight of them — which is the honest answer to “which brand has a wide toe box”: a brand is not a last, it is a company selling many lasts, and toe-box width belongs to the model.

Altra’s two figures are the widest recorded here, which is consistent with how the brand describes its own foot-shaped last. Two shoes is still not a brand verdict, and this page is not making one. The same caution applies in the other direction: KURU and Skechers appear near the bottom on a single measured shoe each, which says nothing about the rest of their range.

Four brands — Dansko, OOFOS, Orthofeet and Vionic — carry no figure here at all. That is a statement about what the lab has published so far, not about their shoes. Those unmeasured models, 12 in total, are listed with a reason in the next section.

The twelve shoes with no figure, and why

This site holds 43 published shoe records and 31 of them carry a measured toe box. The missing 12 are not an oversight and they are not coming soon, so it is worth saying plainly which they are and what the gap means.

ASICS GT-2000 15 · Altra Torin 9 · Brooks Beast GTS 26 (Ariel GTS 26) · Dansko XP 2.0 · New Balance 928v3 · New Balance Fresh Foam X 1540v4 · OOFOS OOahh Slide · Orthofeet Coral · Saucony Triumph 24 · Skechers GO WALK Arch Fit 2.0 · Skechers Hands Free Slip-ins · Vionic Walk Max

The pattern is the whole explanation: the lab that produces these measurements cuts open running shoes. Comfort, walking, recovery and slip-on brands are not in its programme, so a Dansko clog, an OOFOS slide, an Orthofeet or a Vionic will not appear here however long you wait. A second group — the newest models — has only had its predecessor cut open. We do not borrow a predecessor’s figure: a last is exactly the thing manufacturers change between versions, so a number from last year’s model is not a measurement of this year’s shoe, it is a guess wearing a decimal point.

That leaves a real limitation, and it is the honest reason this chart is not longer: the shoes most often recommended to people who need room are the ones nobody measures. Closing that gap means measuring pairs ourselves, which is on the plan below rather than in the table above.

How to use this if you are shopping

What the research actually supports — and where it stops

Two findings are worth putting beside this chart, and both are narrower than the headlines usually made from them.

The first is that the fitting systems shops use control length and ball width, and nothing further forward. When researchers sized 56 older adults with a Brannock device, then scanned their feet in three dimensions and compared the result against the manufacturer’s last measurements, the allocated shoes were on average 23.6 mm longer than the foot (95% CI 22.1 to 25.2) — nearly an inch — while ball width differed by only 1.4 mm, a gap that did not reach statistical significance. Fitting worked, in the dimensions it measures. Almost an inch of surplus length has to go somewhere, and where it goes is the toe box, in whatever shape that particular last happens to give it.¹

The second is that the link between badly fitted shoes and foot problems is real but is mostly associative. A systematic search and narrative review of the literature found that incorrectly fitted footwear — too short or too narrow — is common and is associated with foot pain and with disorders including corns, calluses and lesser-toe deformity, with the strongest and most consistent evidence in people with diabetes. It also found that most of the underlying studies are cross-sectional, so they establish that the two travel together, not that one caused the other.²

What that means for this page: a measured toe box is a fit specification, not a treatment. It is a good reason to rule a shoe out, and a poor reason to expect a shoe to fix a deformity that already exists.

Questions patients ask

Is a wider toe box always better? No. A foot that is not wide loses contact with the sides of the shoe, and the foot then grips to stabilise itself — which is its own source of clawing, callus under the metatarsal heads and nail trauma on descents. Room matters when something in your forefoot needs it. Spare room, on a foot that does not, is slop.

Why will no brand publish this number? Because it is not flattering and it is not standardised. There is no agreed point at which to measure, no agreed size to measure at, and every published figure invites a direct comparison with a competitor. Notice the gradient on this site: the price is published by the manufacturer for almost every shoe we hold, the drop for most of them, the stack height for fewer — and the toe box for none. The easier a number is to market, the more reliably it is published; the more it decides whether the shoe fits you, the more likely nobody prints it.

Does going up half a size give me a wider toe box? A little, and less than you would hope. Length grading widens a last by roughly a millimetre and a half per full size, spread across the whole shoe, and it moves the widest part of the shoe further forward than the widest part of your foot — which is why a too-long shoe can feel tight in a new place. Going up a size to solve a width problem trades one fitting error for another.

Can I measure my own shoe? Roughly, and roughly is often enough. Pull the insole out, stand on it with your weight through the foot, and mark where the edge of your big toe sits and where the widest part of your forefoot sits. If either mark is outside the edge of the insole, the upper is being asked to stretch over the difference all day. It will not tell you a millimetre figure; it will tell you which of the two columns on this page is your problem.

Toe box width or toe box height? If your complaint is a bunion, a bunionette or a wide forefoot, width. If it is a hammertoe, a clawed toe, a thickened or lifted nail, or pain on the top of the toes, height — and height is the one measurement nobody publishes at all, ours included. Depth is why a shoe that measures generously here can still be the wrong shoe.

What happens next on this page

Sources

1. RunRepeat, How we test and measure shoes — laboratory method, including the toe box width measurement taken at a fixed 28.3 mm from the tip of the mould and the separate widest-point “shoe width” measurement between the first and fifth metatarsophalangeal joints. Every millimetre figure on this page is from that lab.
2. Menz HB, Auhl M, Ristevski S, Frescos N, Munteanu SE. Evaluation of the accuracy of shoe fitting in older people using three-dimensional foot scanning. Journal of Foot and Ankle Research. 2014;7:3. doi:10.1186/1757-1146-7-3
3. Buldt AK, Menz HB. Incorrectly fitted footwear, foot pain and foot disorders: a systematic search and narrative review of the literature. Journal of Foot and Ankle Research. 2018;11:43. doi:10.1186/s13047-018-0284-z
4. Manufacturer product pages and major retailer listings for every shoe in the table, for price, drop, weight and the fittings each model is sold in. Where a manufacturer publishes nothing, the cell says so rather than borrowing a retailer’s figure silently. Per-shoe provenance is recorded on each review page and in the shoe spec database.

Measured, not guessed

Recently reviewed

Individual shoe pages state their evidence tier, published measurements and who should skip them.

HOKA

HOKA Clifton 11

Spec Analysis

HOKA’s product page carries a podiatric seal claim the APMA database does not support for this version, and a women’s stack height that contradicts HOKA’s own drop. Not tested by us.

$155Not scoredRegular, Wide, X-Wide

Skechers

Skechers Hands Free Slip-ins

Spec Analysis

Untested. A heel panel engineered to stay open cannot also be a rigid heel counter, and Skechers publishes no stiffness figure for it — nor a drop, a weight or a width.

$110Not scoredNot published at point of sale

New Balance

New Balance Made in USA 990v6

Spec Analysis

New Balance publishes no weight, drop or stack height for the 990v6, but it does publish B through 6E widths — and that range is why it still matters. Not tested by…

$199.99Not scoredM: B/D/2E/4E/6E

All reviews

Measured, worn, scored — never sponsored

No brand has ever paid for a review, a score, a ranking or the seal. Where we earn a commission the link says so, and the score does not change.

Browse the reviewsHow we test