Stuck between sizes?

Barefoot tweens outgrow kids' barefoot shoes. Their toes still splay and their feet still run wide. We find zero-drop, wide-toe-box shoes that fit 8 to 12 year olds, in youth, women's and men's sizes.

Zero drop · wide toe box · any sole thickness

  1. 1 Drag the ruler to the foot length
  2. 2 Press find

Step 1 · Drag the ruler to the foot length

Exact length
cm
Fit
Foot width across the ball, the widest part

The line on each foot is what you measure. Ball widths are for a 23 cm foot. Scale up or down for other lengths.

Shoe type

Set the foot length, then press Find shoes that fit.

Why this exists

Our kids grew up barefoot. Wide feet, splayed toes, no heel lift. Then they outgrew every kids' barefoot shoe. The Altra Lone Peak Youth was the one that worked, and Altra stopped making it.

So we went looking. We searched online, walked into stores on two continents and tried tens of pairs. Kids' ranges stopped too early. Many adult shoes squeezed the toes.

The answer turned out to be women's and men's sizes. Our 10-year-old now wears a women's shoe. The hard part was turning a foot measurement in cm into the right size, brand by brand, and knowing which shoes run narrow or short.

That is what Between Shoes does. Over 100 families told us they were stuck too. If a shoe here fit your kid, or did not, . Every report makes the next match better.

How to measure a foot
  1. Put a sheet of paper on a hard floor against a wall.
  2. Stand the child on it, heel touching the wall, weight on both feet.
  3. Mark the tip of the longest toe. Measure wall to mark in cm. Do both feet. Use the longer one.
  4. For width, measure across the widest part of the foot (the ball). Under 9 cm on a 23 cm foot is narrow. Over 10 cm is wide. Not sure? Leave width on "Not sure".
  5. Kids' feet grow about 1 cm a year at this age. Re-measure every 3 months.
How the match works

Every brand publishes a size chart. Some give the longest foot each size fits. Others give the inside length of the shoe. We use the brand's own numbers. When a brand only gives inside length, we take off 10 mm for toe room.

Then we apply what we know about how each model actually fits. A model that many people say runs short loses a few millimetres. A model that runs long gains a few. Each result shows that adjustment and where it came from.

"Room" is how many millimetres the foot can grow before that brand says to go up a size. Green means a normal fit. Amber means roomy. "Room to grow" adds 5 mm to the foot length before we match.

Width is a brand's own description plus fit reports. Pick a width and we hide models known to be narrower than that.

Charts change. Always check the brand's size guide before you buy.

Visits, clicks and the choices you make here are counted with Vercel Web Analytics and in our own log. No cookies, and nothing that identifies you or your child.