What’s the smallest Leatherman worth carrying every day? The company sells two very different answers. The OPNR is a $10 keychain tool that weighs 0.52 ounces, and the Skeletool KBx is a $31.95 folding knife at 1.3 ounces. Both are built from 420HC stainless, both open bottles, and both ride along without taking over a pocket or a key ring.
One of them has a blade and the other doesn’t, and that difference decides everything else. The KBx cuts, which is the job that comes up most in a day. The OPNR skips the blade and puts four small tools on your keys: a mini pry, a screwdriver, a package opener and a bottle opener. Already carry a knife? The OPNR is the better buy. Carry nothing and the KBx earns the pocket.
Leatherman Skeletool KBx
420HC combo-edge blade, with a bottle opener built into the pocket clip. 1.3 oz, 3.45 in closed, six finishes.
Price: $31.95 $39.95 (save $8.00, 20% off)
Where to buy: Buy on Amazon
The OPNR is one flat piece of steel with four jobs
Leatherman machines the OPNR from a single piece of 420HC stainless, so nothing on it folds, pivots or works loose over time. The long oval cutout carries the bottle opener and the package opener, the angled corner works as a mini pry, and the medium screwdriver sits ground into one end. Four tools, zero moving parts, and a shape your fingers learn in a day.
Size is the whole pitch: 2.6 inches long, 1.01 inches wide and 0.09 inches thick, with a round hole at one end for a key ring or split ring. It rides flat against your keys and adds half an ounce to the ring, less than a couple of house keys. There’s no edge to deploy and nothing to unfold, so the tool is working the second it comes off the ring.
Each tool maps to a job that shows up constantly. The package opener takes the tape and cardboard flap on a delivery box. Pry corner next, for paint-can lids, battery covers and stuck pulls. Loose hinges and toy battery doors go to the screwdriver, and the bottle opener needs no explaining.
The trade is cutting. A pry corner rips tape and scores cardboard, but it won’t slice cord, zip ties or webbing the way a blade does. Leatherman is upfront about the lane here: this is the tool for people whose cutting is already covered, or whose day never needed a knife in the first place.
Leatherman OPNR
Four tools milled into one flat piece of 420HC: bottle opener, mini pry, medium screwdriver and package opener. 0.52 oz, 2.6 in long.
Price: $10.00
Where to buy: Buy on Amazon
The Skeletool KBx is a real knife that also opens bottles
The Skeletool KBx starts from the opposite end. Closed, it runs 3.45 inches; open, the modified drop-point blade brings it to 5.87 inches. The blade is 420HC with a combo edge, straight toward the tip and serrated near the handle, so it takes clean cuts at the front and saw work on cord and straps at the back.
A skeletonized frame is how a steel knife gets down to 1.3 ounces and 0.3 inches thick. A pocket clip carries it tip-up in a pocket or on a waistband, and the clip hides the second tool: a bottle opener built into the clip itself. Two tools total, one of them invisible until you need it.
Leatherman sells the KBx in six finishes, from plain stainless to the burnt orange pictured above, and offers engraving on it. That combination explains why so many of these end up as gifts. A $32 knife with a name on the blade feels personal in a way most pocket tools never manage.
Price frames the whole comparison. Ten dollars is add-on money, the kind of thing you’d grab at a register without thinking about it. Thirty-two dollars puts the KBx up against real budget knives, and it holds its ground there: the steel, the fit and the 25-year warranty behind it are the same ones Leatherman puts on tools that cost five times as much.
Side by side
On paper, the two barely overlap. Same steel, same bottle opener, same warranty, and almost nothing else in common:
| Spec | Leatherman OPNR | Skeletool KBx |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $10.00 | $31.95 |
| Tools | 4 | 2 |
| Weight | 0.52 oz | 1.3 oz |
| Length | 2.6 in overall | 3.45 in closed, 5.87 in open |
| Thickness | 0.09 in | 0.3 in |
| Blade | None | 420HC combo edge, modified drop point |
| Material | 420HC stainless | 420HC stainless |
| Carry | Key ring hole | Pocket clip |
| Warranty | 25-year limited | 25-year limited |
The warranty line matches because Leatherman backs both tools with its 25-year limited warranty, defects in materials and workmanship covered for the original owner. Buy either one and the company’s bet is that you’ll lose it before you wear it out.
Which one earns the pocket
If you cut things most days, buy the KBx. Tape, cord, packaging, zip ties, the occasional apple at lunch: a real blade handles all of it, and at 1.3 ounces the KBx never gives you a reason to leave it on the dresser. It’s the smallest Leatherman that works as a complete carry on its own.
If your keys are the carry, buy the OPNR. It covers the four jobs that show up around a house and an office for $10, and it never competes for pocket space because it doesn’t need any. Plenty of readers will land on both: $41.95 for the pair, one on the keys and one in the pocket, with a single bottle opener of overlap between them.
Neither tool pretends to be a full multitool, and neither needs to. Each one picks a lane, keychain or pocket, and stays in it. The right buy is whichever lane matches the carry you already have.
