Slope mowers
The short answer. A slope mower is a mower built for ground you should not sit on. OSHA's guidance for riding mowers is to avoid slopes over 15 degrees when nothing better is available, which is roughly a 27 percent grade, and that threshold is lower than most banks and ditch sides people mow anyway.
Three classes of machine answer it: remote control mowers you drive from level ground, walk behind brush mowers you push from above, and tracked machines. This site covers the remote control class, where the models we can point you at are rated by their manufacturer from 45 percent up to 119 percent grade.
Before comparing any of those numbers, check which scale you are reading: 119 percent grade is 50 degrees, not 119 of anything you can picture.
The three classes, and what each one is actually for
| Class | What it is for | Can we point you at one? |
|---|---|---|
| Remote control mowers | Taking your own body off the bank, with enough torque and deck to go through growth a lawn machine would stall in | Yes. This is the class we cover, and the only one we can send you to |
| Walk behind and self propelled brush mowers | Ground that is rough but still walkable, at about a third of the budget, with the operator uphill of the machine | No. We earn nothing telling you this is an honest answer |
| Tracked machines | Loose or wet ground, where tracks spread weight and grip better than tyres. The steepest professional machines in Europe are tracked | No. We read the whole range we can link to, forty three products, and every machine in it runs on wheels |
Remote control mowers
The operator stands on level ground and drives the machine up the bank with a handset. Nothing about it is autonomous, there is no boundary wire, no app and no mapping, and you are working the whole time it is working.
What you buy is the removal of your own body from the slope, plus enough torque and deck strength to go through growth a lawn machine would stall in. This is the class we cover, because it is the only one we can send a reader to and say so plainly.
If you have already decided the ground needs one and the question is which, the best remote control lawn mowers ranks the four variants by the job rather than by the grade, and sets out the commercial class above them.
Walk behind and self propelled brush mowers
The DR Power class of machine, pushed or self propelled, with the operator uphill of it. They are cheaper, they are proven, and on a slope they put you on the slope, which is the exact thing the remote control class is sold to avoid.
If your ground is rough but walkable and your budget is a third of what is on this page, this is an honest answer and we earn nothing telling you so.
There is a remote control version of this work as well, and it is a different market again: remote control brush mowers, brush hogs and brush cutters are rated in inches of stem diameter rather than inches of grass, they weigh from one to three tons, and none of them is a machine this site can sell you.
Tracked machines
Crawler tracks spread weight and grip better than tyres on loose or wet ground, which is why the steepest professional machines in Europe are tracked. We have no tracked machine to offer you: we read the whole of the range we can link to, forty three products, and every machine in it runs on wheels.
That is a limit of what we sell, not a verdict on tracks, and it is worth saying out loud on the page rather than quietly omitting the class.
Percent grade and degrees are two different numbers
This is the single most useful thing on the page, and it is where most slope shopping goes wrong. Percent grade is rise divided by run times one hundred. Degrees measure the angle.
A slope that rises one foot for every foot it runs forward is a 100 percent grade and also 45 degrees, so percent figures are always the bigger, more dramatic looking number. Manufacturers quote whichever suits them, and comparing a machine's percent rating against a rival's degree rating produces a conclusion that is simply arithmetic error.
| Percent grade | Degrees | What is rated to it |
|---|---|---|
| 27% | 15° | The angle OSHA advises riding mower operators not to exceed when no other guidance is available |
| 45% | 24° | Mowrator S1 2WD, the entry machine in the range |
| 75% | 37° | Mowrator S1 4WD standard |
| 85% | 40° | Mowrator S1 4WD wide wheel edition |
| 100% | 45° | Nothing in particular. It is here because it is the number people misjudge |
| 119% | 50° | Mowrator S1 4WD grip tread edition |
Two things follow from that table. The first is that the brand's own pairings are internally consistent: every percent figure it publishes converts to the degree figure printed beside it, which is a small credibility point worth granting.
The second is that the gap between OSHA's riding mower guidance and the entry machine here is already large. You do not need the top of the range to be past the point where sitting on the mower stopped being sensible.
Where a riding mower stops, and what to do about it
The safety case is the honest entry point to this category and it deserves its own page rather than a paragraph. OSHA's guidance also says to mow slopes up and down rather than side to side, and to keep the drive wheels five feet clear of the unprotected edge of a ditch, wall or embankment, which rules out more ground than the angle limit alone does.
What to use on a steep hill works through how to measure your own slope, what the guidance means for a bank you have been mowing for years, and which of the answers costs nothing.
The remote control machines we can point you at
These are the four slope rated variants of one machine, the Mowrator S1, listed in order of the grade the manufacturer rates them to.
It is one brand rather than a market survey, and that is a real limitation of this page: it is the only remote control mower we hold an affiliate relationship with, and there are others in the category, including Spider, RC Mowers and Gravely's remote line, that we have no arrangement with and therefore cannot send you to.
The table at the end of this section sets out what each variant is for. The full assessment of each one, with its price, its caveat and the purchase terms, is in the buying guide for remote control lawn mowers.
Every variant shares the same drawbacks. You drive it for the entire session, and you keep a finger on the blade button the whole time, which owners describe as genuinely tiring on a long cut. It is over a hundred pounds and needs two people to fit the wheels at setup.
The handset is the quiet limitation nobody advertises: one owner reports losing the signal at about fifty feet from the machine, which on a wide property means walking along with it rather than watching from the porch.
Mowrator rates the remote at up to 400 metres, about 1300 feet, and says the working distance is a setting that can be raised, with 100 metres treated as enough for safety and line of sight. So check that setting before you assume the fifty feet is what you are buying.
And the obstacle sensors that make it safe are the same sensors that stop it in deep growth, because tall grass reads to them as a wall. Two separate owners, on the brand's own store and on Trustpilot, describe switching the collision sensors off to get through heavy grass at all. That is the machine working as designed and it is still a real cost to the way you work.
The independent record behind the brand is thin, and we would rather show you the shape of it than imply more. PCMag is the one mainstream test publication to have reviewed the line: it rated the S1 4WD 4.0, and in its robot mower roundup, updated 27 August 2026, calls it the best remote controlled lawn mower.
The hills pick in that same roundup goes to an autonomous machine, the Mova Lidax Ultra 3000.
It also measured the one specification that separates this class from a robot, a 21 inch cutting width against 8.7 inches on the Husqvarna Automower 435X AWD, and called it the widest it had tested.
Trustpilot showed 4.4 out of 5 across 20 reviews when we read it on 28 August 2026, up from 17 reviews at the same score in July, which is still a very small sample. The brand did win an iF Design Award in 2025 for the S1 4WD, though that is an award for design rather than a test of whether the machine cuts.
One thing to know about the star ratings on the brand's own product pages: the review widget on a variant page pools the whole store, so a page for a machine with a handful of reviews of its own can display a total in the hundreds. Any review count we quote is the per product one.
Affiliate links. We may earn a commission through MaxBounty if you buy, at no extra cost to you, and it never decides a ranking or a verdict. Full disclosure.
| Variant | Maker's slope rating | What it is for |
|---|---|---|
| Mowrator S1 2WD 45% Slope (24°) Check price at Mowrator | 45% (24°) | The cheapest way off a dry, grassy bank. Two wheel drive is what gives up first when the grass is wet |
| Mowrator S1 4WD 75% Slope (37°) Check price at Mowrator | 75% (37°) | Most residential banks, and the only variant with an independent test behind it |
| Mowrator S1 4WD 119% Slope (50°) Grip Tread Tire Edition Check price at Mowrator | 119% (50°) | Ground steeper than anything else in the line is rated for. The tread marks turf you want to keep |
| Mowrator S1 4WD 85% Slope (40°) Wide Wheel Edition Check price at Mowrator | 85% (40°) | Soft or wet ground, where sinking in is the problem. It is not the steeper machine |
When an autonomous robot mower is the better buy
Robots can climb, and a page that told you otherwise would be selling you something. Mammotion's LUBA 2 AWD is rated on its own product page to an 80 percent slope, which is steeper than the 45 and 75 percent variants in the table above, and it mows with nobody holding a handset.
What separates the two classes is the kind of work, not the grade. The machines in the table cut a 21 inch swath with one steel blade and are built for growth that has got away from you. The autonomous class takes a little off a kept lawn often, with small blades on a light body: PCMag measured 8.7 inches on the Husqvarna Automower 435X AWD.
If your bank is already mown and you want it to stay that way, the robot is the better answer and it earns us nothing to say so. The buying guide sets the two side by side, including why the remote control category stayed obscure in the United States.
Before you buy: the costs and the terms
Two things on this machine cost real money after the checkout price, and both are set out in full in the buying guide rather than repeated here. On the dearer variants a spare battery alone is about a third of what the mower cost: what it costs after you buy it.
And a return after the machine has shipped is charged at a shipping figure the brand does not publish, on a box that has to be packed back to its original size: the terms to read before you order.
Frequently asked questions
What counts as a slope mower?
A slope mower is any mower designed to work on ground too steep to sit on safely, which in practice means three different machines: a remote control mower the operator drives from level ground, a walk behind brush mower the operator pushes from the uphill side, and a tracked machine that spreads its weight over crawler belts. They are not interchangeable, because they fail in different places.
How steep is a 45 percent slope in degrees?
About 24 degrees. Percent grade is rise divided by run multiplied by 100, and degrees are the angle itself, so the two numbers never match: 45 percent is 24 degrees, 75 percent is 37 degrees, 85 percent is 40 degrees, and 119 percent is 50 degrees.
A 100 percent grade is 45 degrees, not vertical, which is the point where most people realise the two scales have been telling them different things.
Can a remote control mower replace a riding mower?
On a normal flat lawn it is the wrong tool and slower, because you walk the whole time you are mowing. It replaces a riding mower on the part of a property a riding mower should not be on at all, which for most owners is a bank, a ditch side or an embankment rather than the whole yard.
Is the steepest rated model always the most expensive?
In this line it is now, but it was not in July, which is the useful thing to know. The grip tread edition rated to 119 percent used to be listed below the wide wheel edition rated to 85 percent, because the wide wheel version is built for width and flotation on soft ground rather than for angle.
Our August check found the ladder had aligned. Buy for the job rather than for the biggest number, and read the price rather than inferring capability from it.
What does it cost to send one back?
The published policy no longer names a flat fee. Re-read on 27 August 2026, it gives you thirty days from delivery, charges return shipping on returns made for customer reasons, and requires one video showing the machine failing to meet expectations plus two photographs of the packing.
Mowrator told us directly that the actual return shipping cost is all a customer pays, and the brand's own FAQ pages now agree: the flat fee they used to publish is gone as of 27 August 2026.
The FAQ does add a term the policy leaves out, which is that the machine has to be packed back to its original size or overweight fees are added. The figure itself is still unpublished, so get the cost of your return in writing before you order.