About StockTent

Buying or packing for a tent trip usually starts with a pile of numbers that do not line up. A tent is labelled “4-person” but two adults and a duffel bag barely fit. A sleeping bag says “15°F” on the tag, but that number comes from a European standard most shoppers have never read. A backpack feels fine in the store and unbearable three miles down the trail. None of this is because campers are bad at math — it is because the industry publishes ratings and specs without explaining what they actually mean for the trip in front of you.

StockTent exists to close that gap for one niche: tents and camping gear. Instead of another roundup of “best tents 2026,” the site is built around calculators that take your actual numbers — group size, the coldest night you expect, your pack’s loaded weight, how many days you are out — and turn them into a specific answer.

The Tent Size Calculatorconverts a manufacturer’s “N-person” rating into the floor area you should actually look for, in ft² and m², based on how much elbow room or gear space you want. The Sleeping Bag Temperature Guide decodes EN 13537 / ISO 23537 ratings and helps you decide whether to shop the Comfort or Limit figure for the coldest night you expect. The Backpack Weight Calculator adds your base gear, food, and water into a total in kg and lb and checks it against the common 20%-of-body-weight comfort guideline and the ultralight base-weight mark. The Camping Water Calculator turns people, days, and conditions into litres and gallons to carry or plan to resupply. The Tent Footprint Calculator sizes a DIY groundsheet from your tent’s floor dimensions, inset 5–8 cm per side so it sheds rain instead of collecting it. And the Sleeping Pad R-Value Guide matches a pad’s ASTM F3340 R-value to an overnight low, and adds up two stacked pads’ combined warmth.

Alongside the tools, the site publishes articles and guideson the same decisions — canvas versus nylon, waterproofing and seam sealing, backpacking versus family camping — and a Museum of Shelter & Camping, a browsable history of tents, tarps, and tepees built from Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons entries, for anyone who wants the story behind the gear rather than another number.

A few honest limits. StockTent is an independent, advertising-supported site; it is not affiliated with any tent, sleeping bag, or gear manufacturer, nor with the EN 13537, ISO 23537, or ASTM F3340 standards its guides reference. Every calculator output is an estimate built from the figures you enter and widely published outdoor references — it is not a guarantee, and it is not a substitute for manufacturer instructions or professional outdoor-safety training. Weather, terrain, and individual gear vary, so treat results as a starting point for your own judgment, not the final word before a trip into genuinely cold or remote conditions.

Questions, a tool that gave you a strange result, or something you think we got wrong — the fastest way to reach us is the contact page.