The soft saddle is a trap
The gel one is better for about fifteen minutes and worse for every hour after that, and the hard one you're avoiding stops hurting in roughly two weeks. I bought the squashy one off Amazon first, so this is mostly me explaining why that was the wrong instinct.
Firm wins, but only at the right width - so measure your sit bones on cardboard, add about 20mm, and buy a firm saddle that size. The break-in is real and it is short: three or four rides to notice, about two weeks to forget about it. Gel feels better immediately and never stops feeling worse later.
Why gel feels better and then doesn't
Padding spreads your weight into the soft tissue between your sit bones, which is the tissue least able to carry any, and then it compresses - so twenty minutes in you have sunk through to the base anyway, just lower and in a worse position. The two facts are the same fact, which took me an embarrassingly long time to work out on the second-hand Schwinn.
A pro bike fit later put it the other way round: the fitter's whole job is getting your weight onto the parts of you built to carry it, and no amount of foam does that.
Gel versus firm, over time
The reason this argument never resolves is that both sides are describing a different moment. Gel genuinely is more comfortable at the start. That is the whole of its case, and it is true.
| When | Squishy gel | Firm saddle |
|---|---|---|
| First 15 minutes | Softer, noticeably | Harsh |
| Hour two | Sunk through it, sitting on the base | Unchanged |
| Where the load sits | Spread into soft tissue | On the sit bones |
| After 3–4 rides | Same as day one | Noticeably better |
| After ~2 weeks | Still numb on long rides | You stop thinking about it |
| Standing up to climb | Catches you on the way back down | Predictable edges |
So the honest version is that you are choosing between two weeks of discomfort and an indefinite low-grade problem. If you ride for half an hour a week, the gel saddle is genuinely fine and I am not going to pretend otherwise. Past about an hour at a time it stops being fine, and that happens to almost everyone who keeps riding.
Why firm and narrow wins
Measuring your sit bones with cardboard
Bike shops do this with a gel pad or a pressure mat and it is worth doing if you are there anyway. At home, cardboard gets you within a few millimeters, which is plenty - saddles come in about 143 / 155 / 168mm, so you are picking a bucket, not a precise number.
Sit bone width has nothing to do with how big you are - narrow people get wide measurements and the other way round, so guessing tends not to work.
If it still hurts after two weeks
It is probably not the saddle. Too high and you rock side to side, which is what causes the rubbing people blame on the seat, so saddle height and fore/aft do more damage than saddle choice does. Level is the right starting point for tilt rather than nose-up.
Also wear proper bibs and nothing underneath them, which feels wrong the first time and is correct. Black Bibs are cheap and genuinely good. If you are still sore after all that with a measured saddle, that is the point where a real fit earns its money.