7 Best Leather Sneakers in 2025

How we test leather sneakers

To give you honest and fair reviews, here is our approach:

• We buy the leather sneakers using our own money to stay unbiased. Does not matter how cheap or expensive they are.
• We thoroughly wear-test these sneakers to check their comfort, durability, stability, stiffness, traction, and breathability.
• We do a series of lab tests on them. The most important one for leather sneakers is the leather quality test, where we burn the leather to test whether it's genuine or fake. We don't stop there, so we cut the sneakers in half and measure their stack heights, shock absorption, tongue thickness, and end up with 20+ data points.  
• We select the best leather sneakers across different categories based on everything we've experienced in and with the sneakers.

3 things you must know about leather labeling 

When looking for leather sneakers, you may want to know whether the leather is real or high-quality. The trouble is, without expertise and, often, cutting the leather, it’s impossible to tell, and here’s why: 

1. Genuine does not mean high quality. The term was so overused that now it is mostly used for very low-quality materials that may have only a hint of leather, and the rest is PU (polyurethane). What makes things even worse is that there are no legal ramifications for this, so producers can write “genuine” even when it’s mostly filler and get away with it. 
2. Top grain is not the best of the best. It depends on the tannery and who makes the leather. There is suede from one tannery that is of better quality than “top grain” from another tannery. And, it depends on your taste and how you want the leather to look and feel. Not everything you want is possible in a top-grain or full-grain variant. 
3. It can be a mixed bag, and, in common sneakers, it often is. This means that a small part can be made of leather, often of low quality, while the rest is PU covered with a layer that looks like leather, or a similar combination of non-leather materials. 

If there’s one takeaway about leather, it’s this one above. OK, there are 3 points. 

THE question: Is the leather REAL?

There are 4 criteria we stick to when deciding whether we will write REAL or FAKE in our lab reviews. Learn more about them below.  

1 The smell 

When burning the leather, if it smells like burnt hair, it’s real. If it smells like melted plastic, it’s fake. 

2 The look when burned

When burning the leather, fake leather bursts into flames, melts, and becomes sticky. 

Burning the fake leather

Real leather, on the other hand, chars and we can scratch it with an awl to discover other leather layers.

Burning the real leather

3 The look when cut

When we cut the leather and look at the raw edge, if it’s grainy or has noticeable leather threads pointing in different directions, it’s real. Real leather does not have visible layers; it is dense. If it’s foamy or has a noticeable leather-like overlay that covers polyurethane, it’s fake. 

Many people complained once brands started using a very thin layer of full-grain leather, which was glued onto the polyurethane and then sealed on the sides with it as well. This made it impossible to figure out what’s happening. Enters RunRepeat lab team. We cut the shoe in half and look into all the layers and details. 

4 Percentage of real/fake leather

For us to tag a sneaker as real leather or fake leather, the majority of the upper has to be real leather or fake leather, respectively. 

This means that if only a logo is made of leather lookalike, while the rest is real leather, we will tag it as Real leather. 

Breathability of leather sneakers

Breathability depends on the upper material and whether there are ventilation holes in it. This would be much simpler if it were the end of the story; however, throughout our testing, we realized that some sneakers feature decorative ventilation holes only. 

Leather on its own is not breathable when compared to mesh. However, it is still a natural material, and it’s usually not the worst even for warmer days. That’s why we often see people wearing Blundstones or similar leather footwear even in hot weather. 

To test breathability, we fill the sneaker’s toebox with smoke using a smoke machine and then watch where the smoke comes out and at what pace. Based on what we see, we assign a 1-5 breathability rating to each sneaker. 5/5 is used only for the most breathable sneakers out there! 

Then we look at the upper under a microscope. This is very useful when we’re analyzing knit and mesh because we get to see different layers, ventilation holes that are not visible to the naked eye, weird material and color combinations, and so on.

When it comes to the leather, it helps us determine whether the ventilation hole is real or not. 

Durability of leather sneakers

The durability varies because the materials vary. As established above, there isn’t only one type of leather used in sneakers. And, some sneakers are made of leather with the exception of the toebox, which may be mesh. So, we’re seeing different results when doing durability tests in our lab. 

To test the toebox, we press a Dremel against it and then look at the damage. The deeper the hole, the worse the durability. 

We also test the durability of the heel padding and the outsole. 

We perfom this Dremel test on the sneaker outsole as well, only now we don’t have to assess the damage, but use a tire tread depth gauge to precisely measure the depth of the dent.

Cheapest leather sneakers 

The better the leather, the higher the price. It’s as simple as that because high-quality leather costs (a lot). However, sneakers often have a mix of materials of different qualities. Premium leather sneakers are excluded as we haven’t tested those yet! 

Here, you can see the cheapest leather sneakers at the moment of their release (which is why we list their MSRP or manufacturer’s suggested retail prices): 

However, sneakers are often discounted. There are a few things you can do to find a good deal: 1. Visit the sneakers deal page where we showcase the biggest discounts, 2. Subscribe to our price alerts and get an email when the price drops, 3. Look at the price history and learn more about previous discounts and which prices you can expect.

Pros of wearing leather sneakers

In case you’re not convinced yet or you need a confirmation that the decision to buy leather sneakers is a good one, here’s why it’s good to wear leather sneakers: 

• Leather sneakers are more durable than canvas or mesh sneakers. They are more difficult to rip or tear
• Durability also makes leather more protective for your feet. It’s not like you plan to hike over trails covered in sharp debris, but the protection can come in handy
• Leather is great for different weather conditions. It’s naturally waterproof to a certain degree, and you can use special sprays to maintain that waterproofness 
• Leather is easy to maintain, and different stains are easily removed (wiped away), unlike canvas, which soaks them in and you may struggle removing the stains entirely 

Who should NOT buy leather sneakers 

Leather, like any other material, has a few downsides:

• Breathability is usually dependent on the ventilation holes. Some sneakers have them, others don’t. And even those that do have them… might have fake ventilation holes. In our reviews, we always double-check. 
• Leather creases. It’s a normal thing, but many don’t like how it looks. 
• Leather sneakers are heavier than canvas/mesh ones. 
• Leather sneakers may be more expensive than canvas/mesh ones, but this may not be justified, given that many sneakers feature materials with traces of leather only, or not even that. 
• Vegans and vegetarians often choose eco-friendly alternatives to leather. Animal cruelty is still an important topic, and although there are manufacturers who claim they got the leather from animals that were killed for different purposes, the whole process is still something many can’t just turn their heads from. 
• The environmental impact is significant. Water use, carbon emissions, toxic chemicals, and biodegradability–when all of these puzzle pieces are taken into account, those who care about this planet and their ecological footprint usually look for alternatives. 

Short leather glossary 

If you ran into a few unknown words in this guide or you want to do more research, here are the terms you should be familiar with. 

Hide is the natural, non-treated skin of an animal. 

Tanning is a process that turns animal skin into leather that can be used to make different goods like jackets, bags, footwear, belts, etc. 

Geniuine leather is a term used for all sorts of leather and, unfortunately, thanks to its overuse, it is usually used for low-quality leather. The bar for leather to be called genuine is very low.

Top grain is the top part of the leather if you look at its raw cut. It’s the part that hasn’t been altered. It may feature blemishes, pores, scars, and similar marks. 

Full grain comes after the top grain, looking at the vertical cut of the leather, but it may include the top grain. Full grain usually means the leather has been sanded. This type of leather is often treated so it may have a different finish, like waxy or glossy. 

Splits or split leather is the bottom part of the hide. From top to bottom: top grain, full grain, the splits. It does not include the grain part at all, so it is less durable, of lower quality, and often used in budget products.

Nubuck is a soft and fuzzy sanded top-grain leather. It is very resilient, so it’s often found on the interior of shoes and watches. While it is similar in looks and feel to suede, it is made from the outer side of the hide.

Suede is soft to the touch and similar to nubuck, but it’s made from the underside of the hide. This makes it less durable than nubuck because it’s made from more flexible (and less dense) hide layers.

Bonded leather is made of leftover leather scraps and pieces glued together with a binding agent, such as polyurethane or latex. Once this mixture is ready in the form of a sheet, it is stamped with a leather-grain pattern. Bonded leather contains a very low percentage of leather pieces (less than 20%), which is why it is often considered fake leather.