Best Riding Lawn Mowers of 2025

A classic tractor is especially good if the area you’re mowing is hilly. Lawn tractor riding mowers feature a stable cutting deck, from 42 to 54 inches wide, and typically top out at speeds of 6 to 7 mph.

Many John Deere tractors perform impressively in our tests. It’s one of only three brands to earn an above-average or higher score for predicted reliability and one of only two with stellar owner satisfaction in CR member surveys. All of the tractors in the 100 series (we evaluated five models) should perform similarly, and those in the 200 series (we evaluated two models) should deliver similar performance, too.

Gas-powered zero-turn radius lawn tractors have historically used lever arms to navigate, though there are now models with excellent performance that have joysticks or steering wheels instead. These riding mowers are typically pricier, but they’re faster and can turn in place, which lets them nimbly maneuver around obstacles such as trees. 

Battery-powered zero-turn-radius riding mowers perform just as well as gas-powered models, if not better in some cases, with advantages including a lower carbon footprint and quieter operation. Electric battery-powered riding mowers are too new a category for us to judge long-term predicted reliability or owner satisfaction.

The rear-engine riding mower is the smallest category of riding mowers, usually built with a 30-inch cutting deck and good for anyone who doesn’t have a lot of storage space. 

To get you ratings and reviews of the latest models by early spring, we travel to our mower testing facility in Fort Myers, Fla., to conduct tests in late winter at grounds we prepare each year. 

We plant 1,800 pounds of grass seed (predominantly annual rye, prized for its dense growth) and cut 500,000 square feet of grass in three modes—mulching, side discharging, and bagging, producing a total of 3,000 pounds of clippings. We mow both level turf and slopes to get a feel for each model, and we review their convenience features.

Each model’s Overall Score incorporates all of that performance data along with predicted reliability and owner satisfaction ratings from our latest member surveys. We leverage data on 46,807 lawn mowers owned by 39,051 CR members that were purchased new between 2014 and 2024.

Note: For models with noise-at-ear ratings that are unsatisfactory—or less than satisfactory—we recommend that you wear hearing protection. Also, CR doesn’t judge zero-turn mowers for bagging because our research shows that just 11 percent of their users bag their clippings.