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Best garden shredders 2024: our expert picks from Bosch, Makita and more

Impact or roller? Petrol or electric? This expert guide will help you pick out the best garden shredder, reveal typical prices and round-up popular shredders.
Manca VirantResearcher & writer

Do you have plenty of material that needs shredding after winter pruning or a Christmas tree at the bottom of the garden that still needs doing? The best garden shredder can churn through garden waste quietly and quickly without getting blocked up.

The worst we've tested struggle to mulch even the flimsiest of branches, get jammed easily and make clearing garden material a noisy nightmare. 

Discover how to find the best garden shredder for your job.


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Best garden shredders

Here's our pick of the top garden shredders, including roller shredders, impact shredders, and a great inexpensive garden shredder

Best roller shredders

Best impact shredder

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Best cheap garden shredder

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Table updated: March 2024.

How to buy the best garden shredder

A good garden shredder can save you money on skip hire or numerous trips to the council tip. They're also great for reducing piles of everyday prunings into woodchips that can be used in the garden.

Use our expert advice to help you decide whether you need a roller or an impact shredder and find out how much we suggest spending to get a good model. 

Video: how to buy the best garden shredder

Petrol or electric garden shredder?

Most gardeners will opt for an electric garden shredder. But it's a good idea to check that the length of the cable is sufficient for your garden. Some brands skimp on cable length, so you might need an outdoor extension cable.

If you don't have an outdoor power supply then you might want to go for a petrol model. These models are normally more powerful, but will be more expensive and will need servicing regularly. 

Also note that due to recent market shifts, we're seeing fewer launches of petrol-powered gardening tools, as manufacturers appear to be focusing their attention on cordless tools. These offer a better alternative for the environment and our health, as they’re quieter and produce zero emissions, while still being flexible and powerful enough to rival petrol tools. 

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Types of garden shredders

There are two main types: impact and roller. 

Impact garden shredders

Impact shredders - also known as rapid shredders - are generally the cheapest type of garden shredder and the noisiest. 

They have a blade mechanism that slices up garden material into very fine pieces and don't block as often.

Impact shredders are more suited to chopping up leaves and lighter garden foliage rather than big chunks of wood, and are typically lighter than roller models. 

If you opt for an impact shredder try to look for one that has more than one blade as they will get blunt less quickly. 

You should also choose a machine with a regular-shaped hopper as it will help you feed material into the shredder more easily and get the job done quicker.

Pros of impact garden shredders

  • Budget options 
  • Lightweight 
  • Don't block as often

Cons of impact garden shredders

  • Noisy

See our impact garden shredder reviews

Roller garden shredders 

Roller shredders, or sometimes known as quiet shredders, use a ridged roller to crush and cut garden debris. The roller action draws material through the machine, which can make it easy to shred lots of waste.

Unfortunately, these shredders do tend to get blocked by greener, more fibrous material and are normally more expensive. 

Before buying a roller shredder, make sure you can move it around easily. They can be pretty weighty machines. 

You should also check that you can adjust the gap between the roller and the plate. Not being able to do so could result in ineffective shredding.  

Pros of roller garden shredders

  • Great for shredding lots of waste

Cons of roller garden shredders

  • Expensive
  • More likely to get blocked
  • Heavy 

See our roller garden shredder reviews

Price: how much does good garden shredder cost?

Garden shredders start from about £100, although you could pay more than £400, depending on what features and type you want.

Impact shredders are cheaper than roller models. The starting price is around £100, although we'd recommend spending around £200 to get a really good model. 

Roller shredders cost from £150 up to £500, but you can pick up a Best Buy for around £250.

Generally, it can pay to spend a bit more to get a good garden shredder. Although if you do your research you can definitely find a quality budget model, too. 

Garden shredder features

Using a good garden shredder can make clearing garden waste a breeze, but a bad model will struggle to slice anything and get blocked up every five minutes. The following features can really help: 

  • Safe and easy access to the roller This will keep the time spent clearing blockages to a minimum. 
  • Collection box To help reduce the mess when you're gardening and make it easier to transport the shredded material. 
  • Tamper or reverse setting Both can help force items back out of the shredder if there's a blockage. 
  • Wheels If you have a big garden, wheels will make it easier to move your shredder around. 
  • Accessories You'll need to buy some basic safety equipment to use a shredder, including goggles, gloves and ear defenders.

Use our garden shredder reviews to find the right model for your needs. 

Repairing a garden shredder

Blockages are the most-common reason for a garden shredder not working. Always turn off your machine before attempting to unblock it or you could face life-changing injuries.

Blades can also become blunt over time and may need to be replaced. Check with your shredder's manufacturer if they can supply spare parts, such as blades. Expensive petrol models can be serviced by garden-machinery specialists.

Using your shreddings

Don't throw out your garden shreddings as they be used in the garden. They can be added in small quantities when making garden compost or they can be left to rot down on their own for a couple of years. This woody material will steal nitrogen from the soil when added fresh but it's great for making paths with as it will stand up to wear and can be topped up when it breaks down.

Learn how to make garden compost.

Video: how to use a garden shredder

Tips for using your shredder 

  1. Shred material shortly after pruning, as the wood will be a bit softer and will compost down more easily. 
  2. Alternate sappy, green waste such as hedge trimmings with more dry, woody material to stop the blades from clogging. 
  3. Clean out after shredding sappy material or it will clog the blades. 
  4. Make sure the shredder is disconnected from the mains before trying to clear any blockages. 
  5. Some saps are irritants so use gloves and eye protection, as well as ear defenders. 
  6. Keep the shreddings from different types of material separate: wood for mulch and green for composting. 
  7. Take care that stones don’t get put in the shredder, as they will blunt the blade, clog the machine or they could fly out. 
  8. Where possible, put the thicker end of your branches through first. 
  9. Try not to stuff too much or too large branches in at once, and if you don’t have a tamper, keep a stout branch for pushing through softer material.

Is your garden shredder in need of an upgrade? Take a look at our garden shredder reviews.

Why Which? garden shredder reviews are better

When clearing up garden prunings, you want a reliable and quick shredder that will help you whizz through the job - not one that's constantly blocking up, struggling with certain materials or making a racket. We put garden shredders through their paces in our tough tests so you can choose one that will make your gardening chores that bit easier.

Each shredder has material fed through it for 30 minutes. We rate how easy it is to put branches into the machine, then weigh the material produced to see how much it shredded. We put a variety of garden debris into each shredder to see how good it is with different types of material, including:

  • Straight, fresh branches, up to 20mm in diameter
  • Prunings from an overgrown conifer hedge
  • Spiny and woody branches with side-shoots growing at awkward angles
  • Soft, fibrous plants
  • Dead branches up to the maximum diameter specified for the shredder (typically 30-40mm).

We rate how fine the shreddings are and how much the machine blocked in the process, plus how easy it was to clear out when it did. 

The shredders are assessed for speed and efficiency, as well as noise and vibration, and how easy they are to move and store. 

We also look at overall ease of use as well as safety, so we get an idea of how user-friendly they are for experienced and novice shredder users alike.

To find the best shredder for your garden, go to our independent garden shredder reviews.