Most cut resistant gloves sold in Canada and the United States carry two different cut ratings, an ANSI/ISEA 105 level from A1 to A9 and an EN 388 letter from A to F. They are not the same scale and neither one converts cleanly into the other. This guide explains how to read each rating, sets both scales out in full, gives an approximate cross reference, and shows how to use the two together when you write a glove specification.
ANSI/ISEA 105-2016 is the North American cut resistance scale, and it is what almost every purchase order, safety program and job hazard analysis on this continent is written against. It grades a glove from A1 to A9 using a straight blade test. A blade is drawn across the glove material under a known load, and the result is the force in grams required to cut through the material within 20 mm of blade travel. Higher grams means more cut resistance.
The nine levels are set out in the first table below. The important thing to notice is that the bands are not evenly spaced. A1 to A3 covers a narrow range and A5 to A9 spreads across thousands of grams, so the practical difference between an A2 and an A3 glove is far smaller than the difference between an A5 and an A7. Specifying a level higher than the task needs usually costs dexterity and money without adding real protection.
ANSI/ISEA 105 is a voluntary consensus standard. No authority requires a glove to be tested to it before that glove can be sold in North America, and the standard as written contains no tear test. A manufacturer can put a cut rated glove on the market with an A level and nothing else, and that is entirely legitimate. It simply means the ANSI level tells you about cut resistance and nothing about how the glove handles abrasion, tearing or puncture.
EN 388:2016+A1:2018 prints up to six characters beneath the anvil pictogram, and every position is a separate test with its own result. Read it left to right.
Position one is abrasion resistance, scored 1 to 4. Position two is the coup test for blade cut, scored 1 to 5. Position three is tear strength, scored 1 to 4. Position four is puncture resistance, scored 1 to 4. Position five is the TDM cut test to ISO 13997, reported as a letter from A to F. Position six is an optional P, shown only when the glove has passed impact testing and omitted entirely when impact was not tested.
So a marking of 4X42D tells you a great deal in five characters. Abrasion is at the top level of 4. The coup test was not usable, which is why an X appears. Tear is level 4, puncture is level 2, and the TDM cut result is a D. There is no P, so this glove is not an impact glove.
The coup test in position two uses a rotating circular blade that travels back and forth across the sample until it cuts through. It works well on leather and on conventional textiles. It does not work well on the high performance yarns that people actually buy for cut protection, because those yarns contain hard particles such as glass or steel filament that blunt the blade during the test. Once the blade dulls, the result stops being a measurement of the glove and starts being a measurement of the worn blade.
When that happens the coup result is reported as X and the TDM letter in position five becomes the governing figure. An X in position two is not a missing test or a gap in the certification. It is the standard telling you that the circular blade result would be misleading and that you should read the letter instead. On modern cut resistant gloves the TDM letter is the number that matters.
The TDM test uses a straight blade drawn once across the material under increasing load, and the reported result is the force needed to cut through over 20 mm of travel. EN 388 reports that force in newtons and assigns a letter band, from A at 2 newtons or more up to F at 30 newtons or more. Because ISO 13997 and the ASTM F2992 method used for ANSI belong to the same family of straight blade tests, the two scales are measuring the same physical property, which is what makes any comparison between them meaningful at all.
Blade force is the load required to cut through the material over 20 mm of blade travel, measured in grams.
| ANSI level | Blade force (grams) |
|---|---|
| A1 | 200 to 499 |
| A2 | 500 to 999 |
| A3 | 1000 to 1499 |
| A4 | 1500 to 2199 |
| A5 | 2200 to 2999 |
| A6 | 3000 to 3999 |
| A7 | 4000 to 4999 |
| A8 | 5000 to 5999 |
| A9 | 6000 or more |
The EN 388 TDM result to ISO 13997 is reported as a letter, with blade force measured in newtons rather than grams.
| EN 388 letter | Blade force (newtons) |
|---|---|
| A | 2 N or more |
| B | 5 N or more |
| C | 10 N or more |
| D | 15 N or more |
| E | 22 N or more |
| F | 30 N or more |
The table below lines the two scales up so you can place a glove roughly on the scale you are less familiar with. Treat it as a guide to reading a datasheet, not as a conversion you can put in a specification.
| EN 388 letter | Blade force (newtons) | Approximate ANSI level |
|---|---|---|
| A | 2 N or more | A1 |
| B | 5 N or more | A1 to A2 |
| C | 10 N or more | A2 to A3 |
| D | 15 N or more | A3 to A4 |
| E | 22 N or more | A4 to A6 |
| F | 30 N or more | A6 to A9 |
This cross reference is approximate. The two scales use the same family of straight blade method, ASTM F2992 for ANSI and ISO 13997 for EN, so a comparison is meaningful, but the bands do not line up exactly and the EN letters are open ended at the top while ANSI keeps dividing. Specify a glove against the standard your own paperwork uses. Do not convert a result from one scale and record it as though it were the other.
If you are buying in Canada or the United States, specify the ANSI level. That is the figure your safety program, your job hazard analysis and your compliance file are built around, it is what your auditor will look for, and it is the language your own team already uses when they talk about gloves. A specification written in EN letters will slow every conversation down.
Then read the EN code as the fuller picture. The ANSI level tells you one thing well. The EN marking tells you five, and the four properties it adds are the ones that decide how long the glove survives on the job. Abrasion tells you whether the palm will wear through in a week. Tear tells you whether a snagged glove keeps working or splits open. Puncture tells you how it handles wire, staples and swarf. A glove can be A4 on cut and still be the wrong glove because it tears in the first shift.
Choose the lowest cut level that genuinely covers the sharpest edge on the task, then use the other EN positions to pick between the candidates at that level. A worker who takes a glove off to complete a fiddly task is unprotected at the worst possible moment, so dexterity is a safety property and not a comfort feature.
The two standards sit in very different legal settings, and understanding that difference is genuinely useful when you are comparing datasheets from different suppliers.
In the European Union, CE marking under PPE Regulation 2016/425 is legally required before a glove can be placed on the market. For Category II and Category III gloves that means independent assessment by a Notified Body, and the full EN 388 mechanical panel is tested and reported. Abrasion, cut, tear and puncture all appear on the marking, including the results that are not flattering.
In North America there is no equivalent requirement. ANSI/ISEA 105 is voluntary, so a glove can be sold with one cut level, with several ratings, or with none at all. The practical consequence is about disclosure rather than quality. An EN certified glove reports its full mechanical profile by default, including its weaker properties. A glove marketed on a single ANSI cut level may be excellent, but the other properties may simply never have been tested, and an untested property is not a low score, it is an unknown.
None of that makes EN better than ANSI, and it does not make an ANSI rated glove inferior. ANSI ratings are what a North American compliance file needs, and CE marking on its own does not satisfy every jurisdiction or every customer's paperwork. The genuinely useful position for a buyer is a glove that has been through the mandatory full EN panel, so nothing is hidden, and that also carries an ANSI rating where the buyer needs one. Every glove in the Knight Safety Gear range is EN certified, and selected lines additionally carry ANSI cut ratings.
The GRANBERG 0995 is a good glove to read, because it carries both ratings. Its EN marking is 4X42D and its ANSI cut rating is A5.
Take the EN code first. Abrasion 4 is the top level, which is what you want on a palm coated glove that will be handling sheet material all shift. The X in the coup position is the blunting effect described above, entirely expected on a Typhoon fibre liner. Tear 4 is again the top level. Puncture 2 is mid range, which is honest and worth knowing, because this is not the glove for handling wire or swarf. The TDM letter is D, so cut resistance is 15 newtons or more. There is no P, so it is not an impact glove.
Now compare that with the ANSI figure. D on the EN scale sits approximately in the A3 to A4 band on the cross reference table above, and yet the glove is rated A5 under ANSI. That is not a contradiction and neither figure is wrong. It shows exactly why the cross reference is approximate. The EN letter bands are wide and open ended, so a result comfortably above the D threshold still reports as D, while the ANSI scale keeps dividing and places the same material higher. If you are buying in North America, record A5, because that is the tested result on the scale your paperwork uses. Read 4X42D alongside it to understand where this glove is strong, where it is average, and which jobs to keep it away from.
No. They are close on an approximate cross reference, but they are separate scales measured in different units, newtons for EN and grams for ANSI, with different band widths. A glove rated D can test as A3, A4 or higher under ANSI. Specify against the standard your own paperwork uses rather than converting between them.
The coup test uses a rotating circular blade, and high performance cut resistant yarns blunt that blade during the test, which makes the result unreliable. When that happens the coup position is reported as X and the TDM letter in position five becomes the governing cut result. An X is not a failure or a missing test.
No. ANSI/ISEA 105-2016 covers cut resistance and several other properties, but it contains no tear test. The EN 388 marking does report tear, in position three on a scale of 1 to 4, which is one reason it is worth reading the EN code alongside the ANSI level when you compare gloves.
There is no requirement equivalent to CE marking. ANSI/ISEA 105 is a voluntary consensus standard, so a glove can be sold here with a cut level, with several ratings, or with none. In the European Union, CE marking under PPE Regulation 2016/425 is legally required before a glove can be placed on the market.
Choose the lowest level that covers the sharpest edge the task actually presents, then use the abrasion, tear and puncture scores to choose between the gloves at that level. Over specifying costs dexterity, and a glove that gets removed for fiddly work protects nobody. Our team can help you match levels to tasks.
Send us the tasks and hazards and our team will put together a specification and carton pricing for delivery in Canada and the United States. Request a bulk quote, browse cut resistant gloves, or check the glove sizing guide.
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