Adidas vs Head: Which Padel Racket Brand Should You Buy? (2026)

Quick Answer: Adidas licenses its entire padel lineup to All For Padel (AFP), building two attack-first diamond families — the Metalbone ($455, Ale Galán’s current racket) and the Adipower Multiweight 3.3 (about $260) with tunable weights. Head instead manufactures its own rackets in-house at its Kennelbach, Austria factory, running six single-trim frames: the Coello Pro 2026 ($374.95) for power, the Radical Pro 2026 ($299.95) for shot-shaping, and the Vibe 2026 ($99) for beginners. The clearest real-world split: Head’s Arturo Coello and Adidas’s Ale Galán headline a rivalry so close that Chingotto/Galán won 4 of their last 5 meetings against Coello/Tapia in 2026, even as Coello/Tapia hold the season’s longer winning stretch and the world No. 1 ranking.

Adidas and Head both entered padel from outside racket sports, but they chose opposite paths to get their rackets made. Adidas, a sportswear company with zero racket-manufacturing history, licenses its entire padel line to All For Padel (AFP), a dedicated padel specialist that designs and builds every Metalbone and Adipower frame. Head, by contrast, makes its padel rackets at the same Austrian factory — Head Sport GmbH in Kennelbach — that already builds its tennis and ski equipment, bringing manufacturing in-house instead of handing it to a third party. This completes the crossover-brand triangle on this site: Babolat, Head, and Adidas all arrived in padel via tennis or sportswear roots, but only Adidas still builds nothing itself.

By the numbers

• Head makes its padel rackets at its own factory in Kennelbach, Austria — the legal manufacturer named on Head’s own retail listings is Head Sport GmbH, the same entity behind Head’s tennis and ski lines, not a licensed outside builder.
• Adidas has never made a racket of any kind on its own. Per All For Padel’s own account, Adidas entered padel around 2013 by licensing its name to AFP, which designed and built Adidas’s first racket line in 2014 — every Metalbone and Adipower sold today is still AFP’s build, not Adidas’s.
• Adidas’s Metalbone flagship costs about $80 more than Head’s Coello Pro 2026 ($455 vs $374.95), and Adidas’s RX Series 2026 costs $21-41 more than Head’s Vibe 2026 ($120-140 vs $99) — Adidas is the pricier brand at both the top and the bottom of the lineup.
• Chingotto/Galán beat Coello/Tapia 4 times in their last 5 meetings in 2026, including the Buenos Aires P1 final, per Padel Addict’s own season coverage — yet a separate Red Bull season review confirms Coello/Tapia won every final between the two pairs across a longer June-to-Paris stretch of the same season. The two stats aren’t contradictory, just measuring different windows of a genuinely back-and-forth rivalry.

Adidas vs Head at a glance

Where the two brands come from

Head’s story starts one year before Adidas’s, but also outside rackets entirely: founded in 1950 in Baltimore by aeronautical engineer Howard Head, the company built skis first and didn’t touch a racket of any kind until its first aluminum tennis frame in 1969 — 19 years into its history. Once it did get into rackets, though, Head kept the work in-house, and that habit carried straight into padel: every Head padel racket today is still made at Head Sport GmbH’s own factory in Kennelbach, Austria, the same plant behind its tennis and ski lines.

Adidas, founded in 1949 in Germany, never crossed that line. It built its global reputation entirely on shoes and apparel, with no equipment-manufacturing arm of its own for any racket sport. Per All For Padel’s own account of the partnership, Adidas entered padel around 2013 by licensing its name to AFP, a padel-specialist manufacturer, which designed and built Adidas’s first racket line for its 2014 debut. Everything Adidas sells in padel today — Metalbone, Adipower, Cross It, Essnova, RX — is still AFP’s engineering and production under that same license, not Adidas’s own.

Head to head: flagship racket

Looking to queue up something for the drive to your next match? Try Audible and get your first audiobook free — handy for the trip between tournament stops.

At $455 versus $374.95, Adidas’s Metalbone costs about $80 more than Head’s Coello Pro 2026 — and the gap isn’t explained by manufacturing cost alone, since Head builds its flagship in-house at Kennelbach while Adidas pays AFP’s licensed engineering on top of its own brand premium. The on-court story is just as close as the price gap is wide: Galán and Coello are 2026’s defining rivalry, with Chingotto/Galán’s 4-1 run against Coello/Tapia at the Buenos Aires P1 cutting directly against Coello/Tapia’s longer June-to-Paris winning stretch the same season. For the full spec breakdown on each, see our dedicated Adidas Metalbone and Head Coello Pro coverage.

Head to head: mid-tier racket

This is the one tier where Adidas is the cheaper brand — the Adipower Multiweight undercuts the Radical Pro by about $40. The two also solve “soften the attack” differently: Adipower ships with clip-in weights, per Adidas’s product specs, so you physically shift the balance without buying a second racket, while the Radical Pro keeps a fixed teardrop build and relies on its low 260mm balance point and Double Carbon face for shot-shaping instead of adjustable hardware. Pick Adipower if you want to tune one racket over time; pick Radical Pro if you already know you want a teardrop that rewards technique.

Head to head: beginner racket

Adidas is the costlier beginner pick here too, by $21-41. The RX Series got more expensive in 2026 when it replaced the old sub-$60 RX 200, so it no longer carries the clear price edge an entry racket usually needs — especially against a Head Vibe 2026 that’s held steady around $99. Both are round, forgiving shapes meant to survive a first season of mis-hits; unless you specifically want AFP’s padel-only engineering under the Adidas name, the Vibe 2026 is the simpler budget pick.

Which brand should you buy?

• Want a racket made entirely in-house, at one company’s own factory: Head — Kennelbach, Austria handles design through production, with no licensed third party involved.
• Want adjustable hardware you can tune yourself as your game develops: Adidas — the Adipower Multiweight’s removable weights are a feature Head’s catalog doesn’t offer.
• Best value at the flagship tier: Head’s Coello Pro 2026 ($374.95) — about $80 under Adidas’s Metalbone, from a brand that builds its own flagship rather than licensing it out.
• Best value at the beginner tier: Head’s Vibe 2026 ($99) — $21-41 cheaper than Adidas’s RX Series 2026, the widest price edge on this comparison.
• Want six clearly labeled rackets, one per job, instead of two tunable families: Head — simpler shopping if you already know your playing style.

The bottom line

Adidas and Head both entered padel from outside racket sports — Adidas from sportswear, Head from skis — but they chose opposite ways to get their rackets made. Adidas still has no manufacturing arm of its own in padel; every Metalbone and Adipower comes from All For Padel under license. Head builds in-house at its own Kennelbach, Austria factory, the same plant behind its tennis and ski gear. That gap shows up in price at two of three tiers: Head is cheaper at both the flagship ($374.95 vs $455) and the beginner tier ($99 vs $120-140), while Adidas only wins the mid-tier by about $40. It shows up on court, too — Arturo Coello and Ale Galán are 2026’s tightest rivalry, split enough that Chingotto/Galán’s 4-1 run against Coello/Tapia at the Buenos Aires P1 sits right alongside Coello/Tapia’s own longer winning stretch the same season, depending on which weeks you look at. This completes the tennis-and-sportswear-crossover triangle on this site — for how Head and Adidas each stack up against Babolat, see our Babolat vs Head and Adidas vs Babolat comparisons, or check the full best padel racket brands hub for Nox, Bullpadel, and Wilson too.

Check the Head Vibe 2026 price on Amazon →