Best Motorcycle Gloves with Palm Slider Protection

If you want palm slider protection, buy Alpinestars sport gloves, and no, we do not sell them. Not one glove in our catalog has a hard palm slider, so a roundup from us that pretended otherwise would be worthless to you. Palm sliders are hard plastic pucks moulded over the base of the palm, they come from road racing, and the makers who build them properly are Alpinestars, Dainese and Held.

The idea behind them is simple and worth understanding before you shop. When you put a hand down at speed, the palm grabs the pavement, the hand stops, and your arm keeps going. That twisting load is what breaks the scaphoid, the small bone at the base of the thumb side of your palm, and it is one of the most common motorcycle hand injuries there is. A slider is designed to skate instead of grip, letting the hand keep moving so the wrist is not asked to absorb a sudden rotation. Nothing about thick leather does that job, which is the honest starting point for this whole list.

What I Weighted

First question for every glove here: does it have a genuine hard slider at the base of the palm, and is the glove certified? Everything with a real slider ranks above everything without one, which is why our own products sit below two brands we have no financial interest in. After that I looked at how the slider is anchored, whether the wrist has a retention strap, and how much the glove costs you in feel and heat during normal riding.

Scores here are editorial judgments from riding and from handling construction, not measurements. We do not run impact rigs or abrasion machines, we do not have test data on any slider, and we will never publish a number we did not earn. Every Legendary and Churchill glove below is unarmored deerskin or goatskin with no CE certification and no slider, and each pick says so in its own words.

1. Alpinestars Sport Gloves, The Slider Done Right

Alpinestars built its reputation in road racing and the palm slider is the clearest expression of that. The sport range puts hard sliders across the base of the palm, backs them with a doubled palm, and pairs them with knuckle armor, a wrist retention strap and a gauntlet cuff, all certified under the European motorcycle glove standard. Availability is the practical argument: these sit on the shelf at most American dealers, so you can try the fit on your own hand rather than guessing at a size chart from overseas. We do not sell them and we get nothing if you buy them. If sliders are your priority, start here.

• Price: sold elsewhere, we are not a dealer

• Score: 9.2 out of 10

• Best for: sport riding, track days, and anyone who wants the real thing

2. Dainese Racing Gloves, The Other Serious Answer

Also not ours. Dainese approaches the same problem from a slightly different direction, with sliding inserts placed where a hand actually contacts the road and structures across the outside of the hand meant to keep the wrist from bending past its limit. The racing gloves are stiff out of the box and take real miles to break in, and they are hot in summer because armor and ventilation fight each other. What you get is a glove designed around a crash rather than around a commute. If you have wide hands, try both brands, because the fit between them differs more than the marketing suggests.

• Price: sold elsewhere, not stocked here

• Score: 8.9 out of 10

• Best for: fast road riding and track use where wrist protection is the point

3. Aramid Touchscreen Deerskin Gloves, The Closest We Get

The Aramid Touchscreen Deerskin Gloves at $125 are the most palm focused thing we sell, and they are not a slider. The aramid lining sits in the palm and resists cutting and scuffing better than a plain leather liner, which matters in the low speed drops that make up most real world spills. It does nothing about rotation, because it grips the ground rather than skating across it. Buy these because they are a comfortable American deerskin glove with a tougher palm and touchscreen fingers, not because you think they will do a slider's job. No CE rating, no armor, no puck.

• Price: $125

• Score: 7.7 out of 10

• Best for: daily street riding where a tougher palm and good feel both matter

4. ILL DOZER Outseam Gloves, A Cleaner Palm Face

The ILL DOZER Outseam Gloves at $140 move the seams to the outside of the glove, which leaves the inside of the palm smooth against your hand and keeps thread off the surface that meets the road. That is a construction advantage, not a protection feature, and I want to be careful about the difference. The perforated panels breathe well for summer, which also means less material in those panels. Ranked here for build quality and comfort on hot days, with no claim about what happens in a slide.

• Price: $140

• Score: 7.3 out of 10

• Best for: hot weather riding with careful construction

5. Bad Billy Black Goatskin Gloves, Tougher Hide for Less Money

Goatskin is denser and more scuff resistant than deerskin at the same thickness, which makes the Bad Billy Black Goatskin Gloves at $99.99 an interesting palm side choice for riders who cannot stretch to a certified glove. It is still an unarmored short wrist glove with no slider and no CE rating, and I would not tell you it belongs in the same conversation as the two brands at the top of this list. What it is: the least expensive glove here that puts a genuinely hard wearing hide between your palm and the world, and a glove you will not mind wearing every day.

• Price: $99.99

• Score: 7.1 out of 10

• Best for: budget minded daily riding on a hide tougher than deerskin

How to Judge a Palm Slider Before You Buy

Sliders vary more than the photos suggest. Here is what to look at when you have the glove in your hand.

• Position. The slider should sit over the heel of the palm below the thumb, where the scaphoid is. A puck placed further back does less.

• Anchoring. Is it stitched through a reinforced panel or glued to the surface? A slider that peels off in the first metre was decoration.

• Hardness. It has to be hard enough to skate. Soft rubber grips pavement, which is the opposite of the point.

• Wrist retention. A slider on a glove that comes off your hand is useless. Check for a strap that cinches under the cuff.

• Certification. Look for the CE mark and EN 13594 on the label rather than the words protection or armored in the product copy.

• Fit at the palm. The slider only lands correctly if the glove is the right size. Measure across the knuckles and use a glove size chart before ordering.

• Prices verified August 2026.

Common Questions

What motorcycle gloves have the best palm slider protection?

Alpinestars, Dainese and Held sport gloves, none of which we sell. Those are the makers who place hard sliders over the heel of the palm, anchor them into a reinforced panel, and certify the finished glove under the European motorcycle glove standard. If a glove listing does not show a hard puck at the base of the palm and a CE label, it does not have slider protection no matter what the description says.

Do palm sliders actually help?

The reasoning behind them is sound and it comes straight out of road racing. Letting the hand skate rather than catch keeps a sudden twisting load off the wrist, which is how the scaphoid usually gets broken. We have not run our own testing and we are not going to quote anyone else's numbers as though they were ours, but the design logic is why every serious race glove has them.

Can I add a palm slider to a leather glove?

No, and please do not try. A slider works because it is bonded through a reinforced structural panel that spreads load into the rest of the glove, which is not something you can retrofit with adhesive. If you want slider protection, buy a glove that was designed and certified with one. If you want American deerskin, buy it for comfort and daily wear and know exactly what you are getting.

Where That Leaves You

For palm slider protection the pick is Alpinestars, with Dainese as the runner up, and both come from shops that are not us. That is the whole answer to the question in the title, and there is no version of it where a deerskin glove wins.

If you have already decided on leather for comfort and daily wear, the most palm conscious option we sell is the Aramid Touchscreen Deerskin Gloves at $125, with the Bad Billy Black Goatskin Gloves at $99.99 as the budget alternative. Both are unarmored and uncertified. If you want to see how the rest of the range compares on cuffs, palms and hides, the glove buying guide lays it out plainly.