Fishing Rod Power Label Comparator

Last updated 2026-08-24

"Light," "Medium," "Medium Heavy" — a fishing rod's power label sounds like a shared scale. There is no industry standard behind it. We fetched four brands' own current spinning-rod spec pages directly and found PENN's own Battalion II page rates its "Medium" for 12-20 lb line — Abu Garcia's own Vengeance page rates its "Medium" for 6-12 lb, and Favorite Fishing's own Balance page agrees with Abu Garcia at 6-12 lb. PENN's Medium starts exactly where two other brands' Medium ends. Ask a tackle-shop clerk for a "Medium" rod and, depending on the brand on the box, you could walk out with anything from a 6 lb finesse rod to a 20 lb workhorse.

Label	Ugly Stik	PENN	Abu Garcia	Favorite Fishing
Ultra Light	2-6 lb	—	—	2-8 lb
Light	4-10 lb	—	—	—
Medium Light	—	—	6-10 lb	6-12 lb
Medium	6-15 lb	12-20 lb	6-12 lb	6-12 lb
Medium Heavy	8-20 lb	15-30 lb	8-15 lb	8-14 lb
Heavy	8-20 lb	20-40 lb	—	—

A dash means that brand's own page doesn't use that label on this rod line. Ugly Stik's own page states "Heavy" and "Medium Heavy" as the identical 8-20 lb on this line — two names, one range, on the same brand's own table.

What "closest" means here Enter the line weight you actually fish. For each of the 15 (brand, label) rows above, this tool checks whether your number falls inside that row's own stated range — zero distance if it does, otherwise the distance to the nearer edge of the range. Ranked closest first, ties broken by the order each brand's rows are listed above.

What this does not do

It compares one flagship spinning-rod line per brand — Ugly Stik's GX2, PENN's Battalion II, Abu Garcia's Vengeance, Favorite Fishing's Balance — not every rod each brand sells under a given power label. Casting rods are a different platform with different conventions and are not mixed in here.
Ugly Stik's own GX2 Spinning table lists one 9' model as "Medium, 4-20 lb," wider than its other four Medium models (all 6-15 lb). This tool uses the majority figure (6-15 lb) and flags the outlier here rather than silently picking one as canonical.
It does not tell you which power rating is right for your target species or technique — only what each named brand's own current page says its label is rated for.

Runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you type is sent anywhere. The resistance band color comparator found the same shape of problem in a completely different market — brands sharing a naming vocabulary that doesn't mean the same thing.