How Loud Is a Chainsaw? (Decibel Levels & Hearing Risk)

If you look up chainsaw noise you will find figures between about 83 and 115 dB, all of them sourced, none of them wrong. They differ because they answer different questions. Sorting them out is most of the work.

Sound pressure at the operator's ear (written LpA) is the number that matters for the person holding the saw. It is measured with microphones fixed relative to the operator's head, using the test code in ISO 22868 — an engineering-grade method with a defined duty cycle rather than a free-form field reading.

Guaranteed sound power (LWA) is the number stamped on a CE-marked saw under EU Directive 2000/14/EC. Sound power describes how much acoustic energy the machine radiates in total. It is a property of the source and has no distance attached, so it cannot be read as "how loud it is where I am standing". For the Stihl MS 291, the accredited DLG test report lists 103 dB(A) at the operator's ear and 113 dB(A) sound power — the same saw, two quantities, ten decibels apart.

Bystander level is a third thing again: sound pressure at some stated distance, which falls off as you move away and depends on the ground, vegetation and weather.

The clearest single dataset we found is the accredited DLG test report for the Stihl MS 291, measured to DIN EN ISO 22868. It breaks the saw down by how hard it is working, which is exactly the variable that moves the number.

NIOSH's field data on logging crews is the useful cross-check: measured across real tasks and workers, chainsaw work came in at 91–110 dBA — wider than any single lab figure, because real cutting is not a standard duty cycle.

Distance matters more here than for most sounds, because a chainsaw is loud enough that being well clear of it is not automatically the same as being safe.

A field study from Mendel University in Brno (Baltic Forestry, 2023), measuring a Stihl MS 362 in an open field using the ISO 22868 positions, found the level dropped to 80 dB(A) only at about 21 metres from the operator. That is a single saw in one open-field setting, so treat it as an order of magnitude rather than a rule: in a stand of trees, propagation is different again.

We did not find published bystander-distance curves for battery saws, so we cannot tell you how that 21-metre figure changes for an electric machine.

Battery chainsaws remove the combustion engine, which is a major noise source, but they do not remove chain and cutting noise. Peer-reviewed comparative field studies exist — the University of Florence group published one in Forests in 2023, and a Slovenian team followed in 2024 — but we could not extract their measured values, so we are not going to put a number on the difference.

What can be said from the labelled data: manufacturers declare sound power for both types under the same directive, so comparing two saws' guaranteed LWA values is a fair like-for-like comparison, as long as you remember it is a source quantity and not the level at your ear.

At the levels in the test report, hearing protection is not a refinement — it is the difference between a routine task and a damaging one. NIOSH's recommended exposure limit is 85 dBA for 8 hours with a 3 dB exchange rate, which halves the allowed time for every 3 dB increase.

Chainsaw work is also intermittent: idle, cut, reposition, cut. That is why the standard duty cycle mixes idle and load rather than quoting only the loudest moment — and why a single instantaneous reading, from any meter, describes a moment rather than a day.

Not against the figures above, no. The test values were produced with instrument-grade microphones in defined positions under a defined duty cycle. Our own browser meter, uncalibrated, reports A-weighted digital signal level in dBFS — a relative number, not sound pressure — and only becomes an estimated dBA figure after you calibrate it once against a trusted meter.

Even calibrated, a phone or laptop microphone near a chainsaw is working at the top of its range, where compression and clipping are likely. What a browser meter is genuinely good for is comparing one situation with another on the same device: is it quieter here than there, and did the level drop when I stepped back.