The Best Adjustable Wrench of 2024 | Reviews by Wirecutter

By Doug Mahoney

Doug Mahoney is a writer covering home-improvement topics, outdoor power equipment, bug repellents, and (yes) bidets.

After another round of research, we remain confident in our picks.

A good adjustable wrench can crank hex-shaped fasteners from the teeniest nut on a child’s toy to the bolts on your boiler. After testing 15 over the years, we’re sure the Channellock 8WCB WideAzz 8-Inch Adjustable Wrench is the best one for your home toolbox.

This wrench has the jaw capacity of a much larger model, plus smooth jaw adjustment and a comfortable, padded gripping area.

This wrench has a wide jaw but lacks a padded handle, and the jaws are a hair thicker and a hair shorter, so it’s not as good in the tightest of spots.

This wrench is well built and usually about half the price of our current top pick. But it lacks the wide jaw capacity and is harder to use in tight spots.

With an elegant, unique design, this wrench uses two handles to grab (rather than cradle) the nut; it works well for stuck bolts and eliminates any slippage.

This wrench has the jaw capacity of a much larger model, plus smooth jaw adjustment and a comfortable, padded gripping area.

The Channellock 8WCB is a manageable 8 inches long but has the jaw capacity of a much larger wrench, so it can handle everything from precision work to a fat garden-hose fitting. Because the jaws are narrow and come to a point, they can work in tight spots where other wrenches are too bulky to fit. The thumb turn is smooth, the lower jaw has little wobble, and the padded grip is comfortable. And after consistent use over three years, the wrench is showing hardly any wear at all.

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This wrench has a wide jaw but lacks a padded handle, and the jaws are a hair thicker and a hair shorter, so it’s not as good in the tightest of spots.

If the Channellock is unavailable, we also like the Milwaukee 48-22-7508 8-Inch Wide Jaw Adjustable Wrench. It has the same length and the same wide mouth as the Channellock 8WCB, but the jaws are a little fatter and don’t come to as narrow of a point. The Milwaukee model also has no padding on the grip area, and even though the all-metal handle is comfortable, we think most people would prefer the added hand protection of the Channellock.

This wrench is well built and usually about half the price of our current top pick. But it lacks the wide jaw capacity and is harder to use in tight spots.

If you’re not looking to invest much and just want a wrench that can handle the basics, we like the Irwin Vise-Grip 2078608 8-Inch Adjustable Wrench. It opens to about 1⅛ inches, so it can’t fit around larger plumbing connections or even a garden hose. But its comfortable handle and solid build quality make it a nice choice for general around-the-house tasks, such as assembling furniture or attaching training wheels to a bike.

With an elegant, unique design, this wrench uses two handles to grab (rather than cradle) the nut; it works well for stuck bolts and eliminates any slippage.

If you’re willing to invest more to have the best there is, we recommend the Knipex 86 05 180 Pliers Wrench. This tool combines the best elements of adjustable pliers and adjustable wrenches, and the result is that the smooth-faced jaws of the Pliers Wrench grip a nut like a pair of pliers rather than cradling it, as our other picks do. Where the tool differs from regular pliers is that the lower jaw moves parallel to the upper jaw (instead of like an alligator mouth), ensuring an even clamping force along the edges of the nut regardless of the sizing. The engineering of this unique tool is simply outstanding, and the build quality is excellent. In fact, of all the hand tools I’ve used in a nearly 25-year career of working in construction and tool reviewing, the Pliers Wrench is among my favorites. The Knipex 86 05 180 is comparable in size to the 8-inch wrenches we recommend, but larger sizes are available, like the 10-inch Knipex 86 02 250.

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I spent 10 years in construction as a carpenter, foreman, and site supervisor in the Boston area. I also spent four years on a full gut and remodel of my own 100-year-old farmhouse and have since moved on to a 250-year old colonial saltbox that I’m currently renovating. In addition, I’ve been writing about and reviewing tools since 2007. Through all of this, I’ve gained a thorough knowledge of hand tools, including adjustable wrenches.

To narrow down the hundreds of wrenches available, I relied on my own experience and had conversations with two tool experts: Marc Lyman, editor of HomeFixated, and Stuart Deutsch, editor of ToolGuyd. Each brings a unique perspective—Lyman is a DIY/home-improvement aficionado, and Deutsch approaches his tools from an engineer’s standpoint (and has a PhD in materials science and engineering to back it up).

For testing, I enlisted the aid of Aaron Goff, a high-end residential carpenter with 13 years of experience at the time.

Basically, if you own a house, you should also own a reliable adjustable wrench.

An adjustable wrench is an all-purpose nut- and bolt-turning tool. Because it has two parallel, flat jaws with no teeth, it’s good for situations where you don’t want to damage the nut or bolt with the grip of the jaws, as you would with a pair of adjustable pliers. A wrench can serve to adjust the seat on a bicycle, build a playset, assemble prefab furniture, or tighten up a lag screw on a deck ledger. Also, because of the delicate fittings that are prevalent in plumbing systems (such as the chrome connections under a pedestal sink), an adjustable wrench is an invaluable tool for any plumbing project or repair. Basically, if you own a house, you should also own a reliable adjustable wrench.

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Look for an extra wide mouth. Many manufacturers offer 8-inch wrenches with the jaw capacity of a much larger 12-inch wrench. This greatly increases the usefulness of the tool and saves significant toolbox space, but also side-steps the awkwardness of the extra long handle length. A standard 8-inch wrench opens to about 1⅛ inches, which is enough for a lot of tasks but not all of them, but the wide-mouth wrenches open up to about 1⅝-inches.

We asked HomeFixated’s Marc Lyman about wide-mouth models, and he said that he really likes what they have to offer, adding, “I have run across situations where my [standard 8-inch] adjustable didn’t have the capacity needed for a specific job. That’s always a bummer.” He also pointed out that to accommodate larger-sized nuts, the jaws are longer, meaning you have a little more reach to the tool if you’re working in a tight spot such as under your sink. In addition, it means that the jaws can more easily fit around the entire edge of the nut. Lyman noted, “I’ve had the joy of rounding off larger nuts when the jaws don’t make contact along the full length of the nut edge.”

A padded handle is a must. With a tool that is likely to be under a great deal of strain, we definitely recommend getting one with a padded handle. The only reason to go with a fully metal handle is if you ever plan on using a cheater bar, which is when you slide a pipe over the handle and use that for added leverage. But we don’t think most will get to that level of turning power (and even then, a set of locking pliers is likely the better option anyway).

A lower-quality wrench will wiggle from the get-go, but a good wrench will have a jaw that sits securely in the tool.

To test the wrenches, we first checked the stability of each contender’s lower jaw (the part that moves when you adjust the wrench). A lower-quality wrench will wiggle from the get-go, but a good wrench will have a jaw that sits securely in the tool and connects solidly with the thumb turn with minimal movement. There will always be some play, but if the lower jaw can freely move up and down 1/16 of an inch, it’s not a high-quality tool. Such looseness can prevent a tight grab and cause the tool to slip off the nut, which can round off and mar the edges in the process. When it comes to tool quality, it’s all about the shaping and machining of the metal, and the better tools simply have higher tolerances.

We then spent a couple of days with each one doing a number of small around-the-house projects (both general maintenance tasks and as part of a larger renovation). We adjusted chair legs, attached training wheels, emptied and refilled my heating system, assembled a tricycle, put together some knockdown furniture, attached garden hoses, installed a radiator, set up a garden irrigation system, and tightened up some loose gate hardware. We also recruited Aaron Goff, a Boston-based carpenter, to spend an evening looking over the tools and testing each one on a variety of fasteners. At the time, Goff had been in the trades for about 13 years and is very particular about the quality of his tools—he has absolutely no patience for cheap gear that falls apart within a couple of years.

This wrench has the jaw capacity of a much larger model, plus smooth jaw adjustment and a comfortable, padded gripping area.

Of all the wrenches we tested, the Channellock 8WCB WideAzz 8-Inch Adjustable Wrench handles most situations with the greatest comfort.

The Channellock is one of the few wide-jaw wrenches available. It has a maximum jaw opening of 1⅝ inches but measures only 8 inches long. This jaw capacity is about ½ inch larger than that of the typical 8-inch wrench and is a size usually associated with a 12-inch wrench, which has a much longer, bulkier handle.

The jaws of the Channellock are narrow and tapered to a point. Looking down at the top of the tool, the jaws start at ⅜ inch thick and taper to ¼ inch. Looking from the side, they have the slimmest profile and come to the sharpest point compared with those of any wrench in our test group. This design grips a fastener in close quarters more easily than a more snub-nosed design. For example, we tested the wrenches on a crowded garden irrigation manifold and of all the wrenches we tested, the Channellock had the easiest time grabbing the connections while still having room to turn. The Milwaukee and Bahco wide-jaws are similar in design to the Channellock, but neither competitor has such pointed ends.

The handle on the Channellock is large and well padded. This provides ample protection for hands, particularly in high-torque situations, such as trying to loosen a stuck bolt. The grip also has a good amount of texture, so your hand is unlikely to slip off while turning. The other wide-jaw wrenches either have a traditional dipped handle (Klein) or no padding at all (Milwaukee). The Bahco offers a comfortable padded handle, but in our tests that tool had other problems that took it out of contention, as described below.

The overall quality of the Channellock is very high. The wrench has a nice weighty feel, and the lower jaw doesn’t have a tremendous amount of up-and-down wiggle to it, indicating a good-quality connection between it and the thumb turn. During adjustments, the jaw and thumb turn both move smoothly. We found that this wasn’t the case with most of the wrenches priced in the under-$20 range.

Unlike most Channellock tools, which are made in the US, this wrench is manufactured in Spain by a company called Irega. “Made to CHANNELLOCK specifications in Spain,” is what the Channellock website says. Irega products are very highly regarded and have a great reputation for quality.

Stuart Deutsch and Marc Lyman both like the Channellock Wide Azz. During our conversation Deutsch said, “Channellock’s Irega-made adjustable wrenches have become yardsticks to which I measure all other adjustable wrenches.”

In a 2009 post on ToolGuyd about his first experience using the Channellock, Deutsch notes that the wrench “had very little play in the jaw, was relatively smooth to operate, and felt robust and sturdy.”

In a post dated a year later, he refers to it as “by far my favorite [wrench] to use.” Three years after that, he includes it in his "Ultimate Tool Gift Guide," writing, “Channellock’s made-in-Spain (by Irega) adjustable wrenches are our absolute favorites. The cushion handles are grippy and super comfortable, the adjustment mechanism is smooth and strong, and the jaws open wide without the wrench being too large or bulky.”

Lyman, who also likes the Channellock, told us that he “definitely likes the extra capacity that the Wide Azz brings.”

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While we appreciate the Channellock’s padded handle–and judging from Deutsch’s comments and the user feedback at Amazon, most people would agree with us—we’ve seen some dissenting opinions on it, with Aaron Goff, our tester, really not liking it at all. The handle is certainly larger than most, and even though it’s comfortable, it isn’t particularly form-fitting to the hand (like the Bacho grip). But at least one Amazon reviewer agrees with Goff: Douglas Goldberg, who works maintenance in a large building and gives the wrench a very positive review, notes in an update to the review that he ended up cutting the padded handle off.

So the majority opinion seems to regard the handle as a good thing, but we did encounter some dissent on the matter. If it’s something you think you won’t like, well, that’s what our next recommendation is for.

This wrench has a wide jaw but lacks a padded handle, and the jaws are a hair thicker and a hair shorter, so it’s not as good in the tightest of spots.

If you prefer a more traditional handle or our pick is sold out, we also like the Milwaukee 48-22-7508 8-Inch Wide Jaw Adjustable Wrench. Like the Channellock, it has all the marks of a high-quality wrench, including a smooth thumb turn, very little wiggle in the lower jaw, and a nice, even balance in the hand. What it lacks is the padded handle and the extremely narrow, pointed jaws of our main pick. When it comes to the jaws, the differences are very slight, and most people would probably never notice, but if we were ever in a situation where every sixteenth of an inch counted, we’d prefer to have the Channellock over the Milwaukee. Lastly, the Milwaukee usually sells for a few dollars more than the Channellock.

Even with no padded handle, the Milwaukee wrench is extremely comfortable to hold. On tough, stuck nuts, it doesn’t offer the palm protection of the Channellock, but during regular use it fits the hand well, and the metal has a slight grainy texture.

One unique aspect of the Milwaukee is that the thumb turn makes contact with the lower jaw with five different threads; the Channellock has four. This design is supposed to give the Milwaukee added stability in the lower jaw, but in closely comparing the two, we couldn’t see any notable differences. Both are stable and precise.

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This wrench is well built and usually about half the price of our current top pick. But it lacks the wide jaw capacity and is harder to use in tight spots.

If you just want a small, basic wrench and are looking to keep the investment to a minimum, we suggest the Irwin Vise-Grip 2078608 8-Inch Adjustable Wrench. The major drawback with the Irwin is that it isn’t a wide-mouth model. The jaws open to just over 1⅛ inches, so it should be able to do around-the-house jobs such as bike adjustment and furniture assembly, but it won’t be able to handle larger connections in a basement or to tighten a garden hose. It has a smooth thumb turn and hardly any wobble at all in the lower jaw, something we didn’t see in any other sub-$20 wrenches. But while we were impressed with the Irwin’s quality, we think you’d be better off with the Channellock in an emergency. It’s better to have the extra width and not need it than to not have it and need it.

Like the Channellock, the Irwin has a padded handle, but this one has an odd rectangular shape that we found comfortable and easy to hold. Even Aaron Goff, our tester, liked it quite a bit, proving that he’s not entirely opposed to padded handles.

With an elegant, unique design, this wrench uses two handles to grab (rather than cradle) the nut; it works well for stuck bolts and eliminates any slippage.

If you’re really into your tools (and you’re willing to pay top dollar for the highest quality), we give a huge thumbs-up to the Knipex 86 05 180 Pliers Wrench. This tool is a wildly successful hybrid of a wrench and a pair of adjustable pliers. Because of its unique design, it grabs a nut with parallel gripping force, greatly reducing the chance of the tool slipping and increasing its effectiveness on beat-up, rounded-over fasteners. It has a jaw capacity of about 1⅜ inches, not as much as the Channellock but more than the Irwin. At more than $50, it’s a pricey tool, certainly, but while we were testing it we quickly saw the value of its capabilities, not to mention its exceptional look and feel.

Across more than a decade of construction and tool reviews, the Pliers Wrench may be my all-time personal favorite.

The body of the Pliers Wrench takes the form of a pair of adjustable pliers. The jaw size adjusts the same way, with a push-button mechanism that allows you to slide the lower jaw up and down a series of stops. But where the tool differs is in how the lower jaw moves in relation to the upper jaw once you squeeze the handles. On traditional pliers, the lower jaw moves off a pivot point, like an alligator’s mouth, but on the Pliers Wrench, the lower jaw always remains parallel to the upper jaw. To use the tool, you make the push-button adjustment to be a little larger than what you want to grab; then, when you squeeze the handles, the lower jaw clamps up toward the upper jaw but stays parallel to it the entire time.

A traditional wrench doesn’t grip the sides of a nut, instead catching the edges of the corners. Even with such nice tools as the Channellock, Milwaukee, and Irwin, this is the case. Because of the unusual mechanism of the Pliers Wrench, this model’s jaws clamp down on the entire side of the nut, grabbing the object with a truly parallel gripping force. The result is a near-zero chance of stripping or rounding over the edges of the nut, regardless of how stuck it is.

Another plus of this tool is that it makes quickly tightening or loosening a nut simple. Once you’ve made a turn, just release your grip a bit to open the jaws, reset the tool, and tighten again. It’s an easy rhythm to fall into, and one that makes for speedy work.

On traditional pliers, the lower jaw moves off a pivot point, like an alligator’s mouth, but on the Pliers Wrench, the lower jaw always remains parallel to the upper jaw.

It’s also a high-end tool that comes with a high-end price, usually just over $50. The models with non-ergonomic handles are a few bucks cheaper, but once you’ve decided to go in on a tool like this, getting the padded handles makes sense. Pricing fluctuates; the next size up, the 10-inch 86 05 250, is typically a few dollars more.

The Pliers Wrench gets universal praise. In a ToolGuyd review entitled “The Amazing Knipex Pliers Wrench,” Stuart Deutsch writes that it “is an amazingly versatile tool that is unlike any other pliers or adjustable wrenches currently on the market.” Later in the piece Deutsch states, “My Knipex Pliers Wrenches are among my most valued tools. They really are as functional and practical as everyone raves.”

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Channellock also sells the 8SWCB Xtra Slim Jaw WideAzz 8-Inch Adjustable Wrench, which is nearly identical to our pick (the same handle, jaw width, and overall build quality) but equipped with thinner jaws that are only 3/16-inch thick (looking from the top of the wrench). The jaws give this tool a better reach in tight, constrained spaces (the jaws of our top pick start at a thickness of ⅜ inch and taper to ¼ inch at the points). It’s typically more expensive and we think it offers enough of a benefit to justify an additional investment.

The Klein D509-8 Adjustable Wrench, Extra Wide Jaw was our previous runner-up, and it remains a very nice wrench. It differs from the Channellock and the Milwaukee in that it has stubbier, rounded jaws, so it has a harder time in tight spots such as an irrigation manifold. It also has a plastic-dipped handle, rather than a padded one. Like our Channelock pick, it’s an Irega-made product, and it’s of a similar high quality.

The Channellock’s Reversible Jaw 8 in Adjustable Wrench is interesting in that the jaw can be flipped so that a slightly serrated edge is exposed. This is potentially useful with round objects, like a pipe, but for grabbing things like that, we recommend a nice set of adjustable pliers.

The Crescent 8-inch wide-jaw wrench was intriguing, with the wide-mouth capacity we looked for in our picks. But a lack of padding made us dismiss this one.

The Husky 8-inch adjustable wrench and the Crescent 6- and 10-inch normal jaw set both have smaller-capacity jaws than our picks and lack the padding that makes our main pick stand out from the crowd.

The Bahco 9031 R US 8-inch wide mouth adjustable wrench is comfortable to hold, but the jaws are designed so that they are just out of parallel, with the tips slightly closer than the throat. This design causes them to lock on to the nut, preventing slippage that could result in possible hand injury. Unfortunately, it also means that, once you’ve tightened a nut, the wrench is nearly impossible to pull straight off. So if you’re doing more than one turn on a nut (and you almost always are), this feature becomes frustrating very quickly.

Like its wide-mouth sibling, the Klein D507-8 Adjustable Wrench Extra Capacity is a very smooth, very nice tool. It has a slightly larger jaw than the Irwin 2078608, coming in at about 1¼ inches. But at nearly $30 right now, it’s priced on the high side in comparison with some of the other tools we looked at. If you’re already at the $30 mark, you might as well kick in another few dollars and get the Channellock Wide Azz with the larger jaw capability.

The Stanley 90-948 8-Inch Adjustable Wrench sits in the same price range as the Irwin but lacks the same level of finish. The thumb turn has a grainy feel, and the lower jaw wobbles back and forth and up and down more than that of any of the other wrenches we tried.

The Stanley 85-610 10-Inch MaxGrip Locking Adjustable Wrench is a cross between an adjustable wrench and a set of locking pliers (aka Vise-Grips, a registered trademark). The thumb-turn adjustment makes the jaw snug, and then the lever that runs the length of the handle locks the jaw tight. A second, smaller lever unlocks the jaw. It’s a cool setup, and it’s useful if you’re constantly coming up against stuck bolts, but the smallest size this wrench comes in is 10 inches, and the max jaw width is not even 1¼ inches.

The Loggerhead Bionic Wrench is not versatile enough to be the lone wrench in a toolbox. Because this tool design completely surrounds a nut, you’ll have times when you can’t use it, such as if you need to tighten a connection on an existing pipe or hose.

Loggerhead’s Bionic Grip has an open-mouth design like a traditional wrench, but it maxes out at a width of ¾ inch and is really only for smaller tasks.

Marc Lyman, Editor of HomeFixated, interview

Stuart Deutsch, Editor of ToolGuyd.com, interview

Stuart, Channellock’s Wide Adjustable Wrenches, ToolGuyd, July 14, 2009

Stuart, Your Go-To Adjustable Wrench?, ToolGuyd, August 24, 2010

Stuart, Ultimate Tool Gift Guide, ToolGuyd, December 8, 2013

Stuart, The Amazing Knipex Pliers Wrench, ToolGuyd, August 28, 2014

Ralph Fincher, Knipex Pliers Wrenches, Cool Tools, October 27, 2010

Douglas Goldberg, Amazon customer review for Channellock 8WCB WideAzz 8-Inch Adjustable Wrench, Amazon, October 11, 2012

Doug Mahoney

Doug Mahoney is a senior staff writer at Wirecutter covering home improvement. He spent 10 years in high-end construction as a carpenter, foreman, and supervisor. He lives in a very demanding 250-year-old farmhouse and spent four years gutting and rebuilding his previous home. He also raises sheep and has a dairy cow that he milks every morning.

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