The Best Multitools (2026)

Every category has a benchmark, and in multitools the benchmark has a name. The Wave+ is the tool that defines what 'full-size multitool' means: a stout pliers head with replaceable wire cutters as the spine, and 18 listed tools folding out of the handles around it, blades, saw, scissors, drivers, files, the openers and strippers that quietly do most of a multitool's real work. The layout is the part you feel daily: the two blades live on the outside of the closed tool, so the cut-something jobs that make up 80 percent of multitool life never require unfolding the pliers at all.

The carry cost is 8.5 ounces listed, and this is where the pliers question earns its keep. Half a pound in a pocket is real; on a belt it disappears, and in a pack lid it is nothing. If your weeks include gripping, crimping, pulling staples, seizing stuck zipper sliders, or unscrewing the corroded and the stripped, the Wave+ repays those ounces better than any single tool you own, and Leatherman's 25-year service culture means the purchase is closer to a lifetime decision than a gadget one. If your weeks include none of that, keep reading; the ladder below exists for you.

Most multitools are built for the garage and borrowed by the trail. The Signal was built facing the other direction. The Signal keeps the load-bearing Leatherman core, real pliers, wire cutters, blade, saw, drivers, and swaps workshop niceties for survival hardware: a removable ferro rod that throws sparks into tinder, an emergency whistle built into the carabiner-style body, and a blade-sharpener so the edge you carry stays an edge. That is 19 listed tools where the emphasis, not just the count, is the story.

At 7.5 ounces listed it is lighter than the Wave+ despite the bigger number, and the shape of the trade matters more than the total: you give up the Wave+'s scissors-and-files workshop refinement and gain the two tools that belong on the Ten Essentials list anyway, fire and signaling. For a backpacker, that means the Signal can quietly retire two other small items from the kit, which is how a 7.5-ounce tool argues its way into an ounce-counting pack. Group leaders, scout parents, and anyone who hikes where self-rescue is a real scenario will feel the design intent immediately.

The dirty secret of full-size multitools is how many live in drawers. The half-pound tools are magnificent until the day you dress lighter, and then they stay home, and a multitool at home is a paperweight. The Skeletool CX is Leatherman's answer to its own dropout rate: cut the frame to skeleton, cut the tool count to seven, and get a genuine pliers-based multitool down to 5 ounces listed, light enough that carrying it stops being a decision.

Seven tools sounds austere next to the Wave+'s 18 until you audit what multitools actually do all year: cut, grip, screw, open. The CX covers exactly that list and nothing else, with a real one-hand-opening blade accessible from the outside, a bit driver instead of a fixed screwdriver rack, and the pliers head that justifies the category. The CX trim adds the nicer blade steel and carbon-fiber handle scale over the standard Skeletool, which is most of why it runs about $100. This is the 'every ounce earns its place' philosophy applied inside a single tool: nothing rides along that does not testify.

The budget multitool aisle is a minefield of tools that cost $20 and are worth less, which makes the Suspension-NXT genuinely useful news. The Suspension-NXT is Gerber, a century-old Portland brand, doing the full-size formula at a third of Leatherman money: spring-loaded-feel pliers in an open skeletal frame, 15 listed tools including blade, scissors, drivers, and openers, and a wire-form pocket clip on the body, which the $130 Wave+ does not include out of the box.

What the missing $89 buys the Leatherman owner is real but specific: tighter tolerances, better blade steel, smoother deploys, and tools that lock with more confidence. What the Gerber owner keeps is $89. For a first multitool, a just-in-case tool for the car or the gear closet, or a gift that will not embarrass you, that trade is excellent, and the NXT's slim profile honestly carries easier than either full-size Leatherman. The failure mode to respect on the budget rung is the classic one: budget tools are for budget jobs, and leaning your whole weight on any multitool's pliers ends badly regardless of the logo.

Now the other end of the ladder, and the most honest tool on it. The Classic SD carries no pliers, no saw, no pretense. What it carries is the actual greatest-hits list of multitool life: a small sharp blade for packages and threads, scissors that people end up using more than any blade, a screwdriver tip in the nail file, and the tweezers that make it the most-borrowed object in any group containing a splinter. Seven listed functions, about 0.7 ounces listed, permanently attached to the keys you already never forget.

The carry math is unanswerable. At about 0.7 ounces listed, the Classic SD is roughly a twelfth of a Wave+, and because it lives on a keychain its effective carry burden is zero: it goes everywhere your keys go, which is everywhere. That is the whole thesis of the keychain rung: a lesser tool that is always present beats a greater tool that stayed home. The one place the always-present logic fails is the airport, and it fails expensively; the blade, small as it is, makes this a checked-bag item under the widely published TSA carry-on rule, and security trays around the world hold a steady sacrifice of forgotten red Classics.