Best mowers for a narrow gate

Side access is the constraint nobody shops for until the mower is in the hall and the gate is not having it. It is also the one dimension the industry has agreed not to publish: we hold spec sheets for nine mowers and exactly one states a deck width alongside its cutting width.

The short answer

Cut width is not the width that has to fit

A cutting width is the arc the blade sweeps. The machine around it is wider — wheels sit outside the deck, a side-discharge chute sticks out further still, and the deck itself has a lip. Every one of those is real and none of them is published.

How to measure the gate, properly

1. Measure between the posts at the narrowest point, not at the top. Gate frames sag and posts lean inward at ground level.
2. Open the gate fully and measure again. A gate that only swings to 80 degrees steals several inches at the hinge.
3. Subtract for the latch hardware, which sits inside the opening on most timber gates.
4. Take the grass catcher off the mower before comparing. Fitted, it is usually the widest point on the machine.
5. Allow room for your hands. A machine you can only get through by scraping the posts is one you will resent.

1. LawnMaster MEB1114K — the narrowest we can verify

This is the only mower in our registry that publishes a deck width as well as a cutting width: 15 inches of cut on a 14 inch deck. It is also 28.6 lb with folding handles, 11 amps and 3300 RPM, five cut heights from 1.4 to 3.0 inches and a 7 gallon rear bag.

The honest limits: it is corded, so the working radius is your cord; it bags only, with no mulching or side-discharge mode published; and a 15 inch cut means more passes.

#ad Check the LawnMaster MEB1114K 15" 11-Amp Corded Electric Lawn Mower price on Amazon — how we're funded.

2. Greenworks LM2054 — the narrowest cordless

Twenty inches of cut, a 40V 4.0Ah pack (160 nameplate watt-hours), 3200 RPM, seven cut heights from 1.2 to 3.6 inches, a rating of up to a third of an acre and a published 57.5 lb. One inch narrower than every other cordless mower we hold specs for sounds trivial and is not, because that inch comes off the whole machine, not just the blade.

The honest limits: Greenworks publishes no deck width and no overall width either, so the inch is inferred from the cut figure. It is a push mower, not self-propelled, and 160Wh is the smallest battery in our mower registry.

#ad Check the Greenworks 40V 20" Push LM2054 price on Amazon — how we're funded.

Why there are only two picks

Because there are only two machines. Of the nine mowers we hold specs for, seven are 21 inch cuts and would be equally uncertain at a narrow gate. Ranking them against each other on a figure none of them publishes would be inventing a result, so we have not.

If your gate takes 21 inches comfortably, this is not your page — best mowers for small yards and the main mower ranking both apply and give you a far wider field.

If nothing fits

• A robot mower lives on the far side of the gate. It never has to come through it. The Segway Navimow i105N is 24 lb and 7.1 inches of cut — see robot mowers for small yards.
• A string trimmer will cut a small back lawn. Slowly and unevenly, but it goes through a 24 inch gap in one hand.
• Rehang the gate. Moving a hinge is cheaper than the wrong mower, and it is a one-off.

Where the mower goes once it is through is covered in the mower storage guide.

What we cannot tell you

We cannot tell you whether any of these mowers fits your gate, because not one manufacturer in our registry publishes an overall width, a handle width or a folded width. We have not measured a machine ourselves, and we will not publish a figure we did not get from a maker. The 42 minute figure above rests on our own assumption of an unchanged walking pace and overlap. And we have no data on how a narrower deck affects cut quality on uneven ground.