The Best Backpacking Tents for Beginners

Almost every “best backpacking tent” list is written for someone on their fourth tent. The rankings go to trekking-pole shelters that need poles you may not own, arrive unsealed, and pitch badly until you have done it a dozen times. Those tents are genuinely better — most of them sit near the top of our flagship ranking — and they are the wrong first purchase.

So this page has a deliberately narrow gate. Freestanding, so it stands up on its own while you work out where the door should face. Double wall, so condensation lands on the fly rather than your bag. Factory-sealed seams, so it is waterproof out of the box. And every pole and stake included, so you are not discovering at the trailhead that the pegs were sold separately.

What a first tent has to do

Four things, in this order.

Stand up without stakes. A freestanding tent lets you pitch it, look at it, and move it three metres left. Non-freestanding shelters need tension from the first peg, which means the first pitch in wind is a fight.

Arrive waterproof. Several excellent tents ship unsealed with a tube of sealant and an instruction to spend an evening on it. That is fine on your third tent. On your first it is the thing you skip and then regret.

Keep condensation off you. A double wall puts a mesh inner between you and the wet fly. Every tent here is a double wall for that reason; the full trade-off is here.

Come complete. Stakes, guy lines, and ideally a footprint. Three of the six tents here include a footprint, which on a first purchase is worth more than 100 g of saved weight.

How we picked

Full rubric at our methodology page. The gate: freestanding, double wall, all poles and stakes in the box, no instruction from the maker to seal the seams before first use, and a maker-published weight. The reference for the two-person tents is the Kelty Late Start 2P at 1,900 g (4 lb 3.0 oz) — the tent a first-time buyer most often walks out of a shop with. Grams saved against the class reference per dollar of list price is 35% of the score, weight alone 20%, space and weather protection 25%, materials 10%, ease 10%.

Solo and three-person tents are scored against their own class references, so the numbers on the cards are never comparing a one-person tent to a three-person one.

The evidence side by side

The three Naturehikes that carry most of this page.

The buy-once option, the cheapest solo tent, and the reference.

The number worth staring at: the gap between the Kelty reference and the Cloud Up UL 2 is 680 g (1 lb 8.0 oz), at a similar list price. That is the single easiest weight saving available to a first-time buyer, and it needs no new skills at all.

Who each pick is for

1. Naturehike Cloud Up Pro 3: the best beginner tent overall

1,750 g (3 lb 13.7 oz) minimum weight for a freestanding double wall with a 20D silicone-coated nylon fly at PU 3000 mm+ over a 210T floor at PU 5000 mm+, and a footprint, 15 stakes and six guy lines in the box. It saves 1,150 g (2 lb 8.6 oz) vs the Clostnature 3-Man Tent, giving it a value figure of Value 8.3/10. The inner is 220 x 180 cm, which is a great deal of room for two.

Buy it if two of you want the easiest possible first tent and do not mind carrying it as a pair. Skip it if anyone is near six foot: 220 cm of inner length is short.

2. Naturehike Cloud Up UL 2: the lightest complete kit

1,220 g (2 lb 11.0 oz) on a Yuksom 8.5 mm aluminum pole, with a 210 x 130 cm inner, an included 210T footprint at PU 5000 mm+ and an enlarged front door with a vent. The catch is the fly: Naturehike's tech specs give it PU 1500 mm+, even though a feature blurb on the same page claims 4000 mm. We show the lower figure, which makes this the least storm-proof tent here on paper.

Buy it if weight matters to you from day one and your trips are fair-weather. Skip it if the forecast is wet — the Cloud Up Pro 2 below publishes double the fly rating for less money.

3. Naturehike Cloud Up Pro 2: the value pick

1,360 g (2 lb 16.0 oz), a 20D silicone-coated nylon fly at PU 3000 mm+, a 210T floor layer at PU 5000 mm+, a footprint, 14 stakes and five guy lines, and the lowest list price of the two-person tents here. It saves 540 g (1 lb 3.0 oz) vs the Kelty Late Start 2P, and it asks a higher MSRP band less than the MSR.

If you want one recommendation for two people with no other information, this is it. Naturehike does not print a door or vestibule count for the Pro series, which is noted on its card.

Buy it if you want the most tent for the least money with nothing else to buy. Skip it if you want two doors — Naturehike builds the Cloud Up as a front-entry shelter.

4. MSR Hubba Hubba LT 2: the tent to learn on and keep

32 sq ft of true rectangular floor, a 40 in peak, two side doors, 16 sq ft of vestibule and a single DAC NFL 9.3 mm pole that makes the pitch almost impossible to get wrong. At 1,360 g (2 lb 16.0 oz) it saves 540 g (1 lb 3.0 oz) vs the Kelty Late Start 2P, but its list price is more than three times the Cloud Up Pro 2, which is why its value figure lands where it does.

Its published waterproof figures are lower than the Naturehikes' — 1,200 mm fly, 1,800 mm floor — which surprises people. MSR's answer is fabric quality and seam taping rather than coating thickness, and the tent has a long reputation behind it, but we report the published numbers.

Buy it if you expect to still be backpacking in ten years and want to buy once. Skip it if you are not yet sure you will enjoy this: it is a lot of money to find out.

5. Clostnature Crux 1: the cheapest complete solo tent

1,350 g (2 lb 15.6 oz) for a freestanding one-person double wall with 210T polyester at PU 5000 on both fly and bathtub floor, one D-shaped door, one large side vestibule, two aluminum poles and 14 aluminum stakes. It saves 250 g (8.8 oz) vs the Kelty Late Start 1P and carries the lowest list price of any tent on this site.

Buy it if you are going alone and want to spend as little as possible on a tent that arrives complete. Skip it if you want the lightest solo shelter — see the 1-person ranking.

6. Kelty Late Start 2: the reference first tent

The tent the two-person scores on this site are measured against: 1,900 g (4 lb 3.0 oz), 30.6 sq ft of floor, one door and one 7.4 sq ft vestibule, 68D polyester at 1,200 mm, and Kelty's Quick Corners, which are the fastest clips here. The footprint is sold separately.

It is on the page because it is genuinely what most first-time buyers end up with, and because it is a perfectly good tent. It simply weighs 500 g more than tents at the same price, and that is the whole argument of this site.

Buy it if you want a mainstream brand with shop-floor support and a fast pitch. Skip it if you care about weight at all: everything above it here is lighter for similar money.

The tents to avoid on your first trip

Trekking-pole tents. The Lanshan 2 and Durston X-Mid 2 are near the top of our flagship ranking and they are the wrong first tent: they need two trekking poles you may not own, and the pitch takes practice to get taut. Read trekking-pole versus freestanding before you decide otherwise.

Anything that ships unsealed. The Lanshan 2 Pro and the Six Moon Lunar Duo both need seam sealing before the first wet night. The makers say so plainly. It is an evening of work and a skill worth having — later.

Single-wall shelters and bivies. Lower weight, much more condensation management. Our tent versus bivy comparison shows that a bivy is usually heavier and dearer than a budget trekking-pole tent anyway.

Ultralight nylons under 15D. A 0.55 oz Dyneema canopy is astonishing and it is not what you want while you are still learning where to pitch and how hard to tension. The fabric guide explains what each one tolerates.

What else you have to buy

The other two costs people forget: a pad with enough R-value for the ground you will actually sleep on, and stakes that hold in the soil you have. Every tent here includes stakes, but bent-wire pegs are the first thing most people upgrade. If yours came with wire, the stake comparison is the cheapest upgrade on this site.

If you are assembling a whole kit rather than just a tent, our beginner gear list and the $500 build put a tent, bag, pad and pack together at a total that is actually achievable.

For the decision-by-decision version of this — capacity, pitch type, wall count, fabric, floor area and weight, in that order — read how to choose a backpacking tent.

Almost every tent here is freestanding, which is the right call for a first tent. When weight starts to matter more than simplicity, the best freestanding backpacking tents ranks the lighter models that still stand up on their own poles.

How to choose your first backpacking tent

1. Count the people, then add room. Two beginners in a two-person tent with packs inside is tight. Two in a three-person tent is comfortable, and the Cloud Up Pro 3 weighs less than the mainstream two-person reference.
2. Insist on freestanding for tent one. You will pitch it in the dark, on a slope, with the door facing the wrong way. Freestanding lets you fix that by picking it up.
3. Check the words “factory sealed” or “taped seams”. If the page instead mentions a sealing kit, the tent is not waterproof when it arrives.
4. Read what is in the box. Footprint, stakes, guy lines. The Naturehike Cloud Up Pro tents include all three; the Kelty and the MSR sell the footprint separately.
5. Compare the published waterproof numbers, not the brand. On paper the two cheapest tents here publish the highest floor ratings. That is not a mistake, and it is worth knowing before you spend.
6. Pitch it in the garden before the trip. Once. That single hour is worth more than any upgrade on this page.

Mistakes to avoid

• Buying the lightest tent you can afford. The lightest shelters need poles, sealing and practice. Our flagship ranking exists for your second tent.
• Reading packed weight as trail weight. The Cloud Up Pro 2 is 1.36 kg minimum and about 1.53 kg packed. Both are on its card; only one is the figure to compare.
• Assuming a two-person tent fits two people and their packs. Most do not. That is what vestibules are for, and why the extra floor in a three-person tent is worth its grams.
• Skipping the stakes that came in the box. Every tent here needs staking out properly even when it is freestanding, or the fly touches the inner and you wake up damp.
• Spending the whole budget on the tent. A tent you love with a pad that is too cold is a bad night. Read R-value explained before you allocate the money.