Best Deadbolts of 2026: 18 Locks Tested & Ranked by Pick Resistance

The Medeco M4 Maxum is in a different category entirely — not because it's expensive, but because it's engineered around a fundamentally harder-to-attack cylinder. The angled cuts on the key rotate each bottom pin to a specific angle before it can set at the shear line. That means picking requires not just lifting each pin to the right height, but rotating it to the exact right angle simultaneously. Standard picks can't do both at once. Our expert picker spent twenty minutes on it and didn't get in. The test was halted. The lock was still locked. It also carries a UL 437 rating covering pick, drill, and pull resistance. If you need one lock you can trust absolutely, this is it — but you'll need to buy it through a licensed Medeco dealer, not a hardware store shelf.

The Schlage B60N is the lock we recommend to almost everyone asking for a front-door upgrade. At around $45 it's ANSI Grade 1 — the highest residential classification — with tighter tolerances and better security pins than anything else at this price. Four minutes and twelve seconds is an excellent showing for a retail lock; that's not beginner territory, that's someone who knows what they're doing spending real effort. For anyone upgrading from a Kwikset or a store brand, this is the move. Read our full review for the complete breakdown.

The Baldwin Prestige looks like a premium lock — the forged brass body is handsome and weighty. The problem is what's inside: a Kwikset-compatible cylinder with SmartKey, which carries all the vulnerabilities we've documented elsewhere. You're paying $60 for the aesthetics of security rather than the substance of it. Fine for interior doors or low-stakes applications where you want the look. Not what we'd trust on a front door.

Rim locks — surface-mounted on the interior of the door — are common in city apartments and older homes in places like NYC and Toronto where retrofitting a mortise lock isn't practical. The Prime-Line is a fine example of what a rim deadbolt is: a secondary lock that adds friction and slows entry. It's not meant to be your primary security. At 38 seconds to pick, treat it as a supplement to a proper deadbolt, not a replacement.

Fourteen seconds. That's how long the Kwikset 660 survived against raking. The tolerances are simply too loose for the pins to offer meaningful resistance — the rake finds false sets almost immediately and the lock gives up. It's the most common brand-name deadbolt in North America, which means it's also the most commonly bypassed. If this is on your front door, upgrading to the Schlage B60N costs about $25 more and adds roughly four minutes of resistance. That's a significant return on investment.

A double cylinder lock requires a key to open from both sides. That does add a small amount of security on doors with glass panels nearby — a burglar can't just break the glass and reach in to turn the thumb-turn. But it's a meaningful fire safety hazard: if you need to exit fast and can't find the key, you're trapped. The cylinder itself opened in 28 seconds. The security gain doesn't justify the life-safety tradeoff for most residential applications.

The most elegant answer to pick resistance is removing the keyhole entirely. The Yale Assure Lock 2 in key-free configuration has no keyway to insert a pick into — the only entry methods are the touchscreen code or a connected app. You cannot pick what isn't there, and you cannot bump what has no keyway. The tradeoff is that if your phone dies, the battery dies, or you forget your code, your backup options are limited. For households that are disciplined about battery maintenance and code management, this is a genuinely smart solution.

The Encode Plus is the toughest smart lock we tested — it combines Schlage's Grade 1 cylinder (with legitimate pick resistance) with a built-in alarm that triggers on forced entry attempts. The Wi-Fi connectivity doesn't require a hub. At 6 minutes and 30 seconds to pick, it's the only smart lock where we felt the cylinder actually earned its rating. The keyway is still there and still pickable, but it's a genuinely hard target. Also reviewed separately on the site.

The U-Bolt Pro hides its physical backup keyway behind a cover, which adds a small layer of obscurity — an attacker needs to know it exists before they can target it. With six entry methods (fingerprint, keypad, app, auto-unlock, shake to open, key), it's genuinely versatile. The physical cylinder underneath is average once found, but the combination of hidden keyway plus biometric primary entry makes this a solid choice for tech-forward households.

The Eufy's fingerprint scanner is legitimately fast — 0.3 seconds in good conditions makes it practical as a primary entry method. The cylinder behind the keyway is better than average for this price class, holding for nearly three minutes under raking. For the money it's one of the better-value smart locks we tested, especially if fingerprint entry is a priority for your household.

The August is not a lock — it's a smart retrofit that mounts on your existing deadbolt's interior thumb-turn. Your exterior hardware stays exactly as it was, meaning the physical cylinder security is whatever you already have. If you pair it with a Schlage B60N you have decent security plus smart features. If you pair it with a Kwikset 660 you have a $200 smart layer on top of a 14-second cylinder. The August itself is well-made; the security outcome depends completely on what you put it on.

The Halo connects directly to Wi-Fi without a hub, which is convenient, and the app integration is well-designed. But it uses the SmartKey cylinder system, which has documented forcing vulnerabilities we've covered elsewhere on the site. You're paying $180 for smart features on a cylinder that held for 80 seconds. If smart lock convenience is the goal and budget is the concern, the Wyze Lock Bolt at $70 gets you a similar experience for less money — and a comparable physical security result.

For $70 the Wyze Lock Bolt is a remarkable value in the smart lock space. Fingerprint reader, keypad, auto-lock, Bluetooth app control — all the essentials. The physical cylinder is below average but so is the price. The Bluetooth-only connectivity means no remote control without your phone in range, which is a real limitation. But as an affordable entry into biometric/keypad locking, nothing else at this price comes close.

Like the Yale Assure, the Nest x Yale has no physical keyway — picking isn't an attack surface. It scores lower than its Yale sibling primarily because the physical deadbolt mechanism underneath is less robust and the Nest Secure ecosystem it was designed around has been discontinued by Google, which raises long-term software support questions. Good lock, uncertain future. The Yale Assure Lock 2 is the better choice unless you're deeply invested in Google Home.

A staple in Canadian homes — Weiser is to Canada what Kwikset is to the US. The Elements line is Grade 3, which is the lowest residential classification and is technically rated for interior doors only. It's on exterior doors across the country anyway because it's affordable and available at every Canadian Tire in the country. Eighteen seconds to pick is a deterrent against nobody with any lock knowledge at all. If this is your front door lock, the Schlage B60N is available at Canadian Tire for around $65 and is a night-and-day improvement.

Home Depot's house brand. Ten dollars. Grade 3. Eleven seconds. The Defiant exists to put a lock-shaped object on a door for minimum cost, and it accomplishes that goal. It will stop your door from blowing open. It will not stop anyone who has ever seen a pick set. We've covered the Defiant more fully in our Deep Cuts series — it was one of seven locks that genuinely concerned us.

Lowes' house brand equivalent of the Defiant. Nine seconds to pick. The tolerances are so loose that a rake finds multiple false sets simultaneously and the lock practically opens itself. Available in Canada through Rona. The only reason this isn't last is that the Garrison narrowly edges it out for the bottom spot.

Last place out of eighteen locks, and it earns it. The Canadian Tire house brand deadbolt is in apartments and rental units across the country. Eight seconds is the fastest pick time in this entire roundup. If you're a renter in Canada and this is what came with the unit, you are not locked in — you're just in a room that happens to have a door. Ask your landlord for an upgrade, or invest $65 of your own money in a Schlage B60N. That $50 difference is the most impactful security spending you can do.