The fastest single-engine turboprops, ranked by cruise speed
The owner-flown turbine class, fastest first
What the ranking shows
- One engine, turbine speed. The quickest approach 330 knots, well clear of any piston single.
- Cruise speed is KTAS from sourced specs.
- Read past the top number. A few knots rarely decide between these; payload, pressurization, and field performance usually do.
When a piston single stops being enough, an owner-pilot reaches for a turboprop. This board names the five fastest single-engine turboprops in our catalog, ranked by cruise speed: we sort on one sourced figure, the published cruise in KTAS, and let each airplane fall where its specs put it.
The aircraft below are owner-flown turbines: one PT6 or its equivalent, one pilot, a pressurized cabin, and cruise speeds that once required a jet. The TBM, Epic, and PC-12 lineage built the segment, and the speed range inside it is wider than most buyers expect.
The quickest entries approach 330 knots, enough to turn a trip a piston single would make a full day of into an afternoon. Speed is never the whole case, though. Useful load, cabin width, and runway numbers separate otherwise-similar airplanes, and this board deliberately isolates the one figure they all share.
Our picks
Select up to 5 to compare side by side, or open any aircraft for full specs.Tick 2 or more above to compare them side by side. selected (max)
Two airframes, five rows
The board collapses to two airplanes. The Epic E1000 holds the top, and the four TBM rows beneath it are one airframe caught at four points in its life: the 900, 940, 960, and 980 all cruise at the same 330 knots, because Daher spent those revisions on the cockpit, the cabin, and the systems rather than the speed. The ranking sorts on the one number that did not move.
Yet speed is one cut through this segment, not the whole of it. The three-knot margin between the Epic and the TBMs is one no passenger would feel, so the choice rests on other features. The TBM carries its 330 knots past 1,700 nm on a tank; the Epic answers with a higher ceiling and an all-carbon airframe.
The single buyers might expect to see here is the Pilatus PC-12, but it sits a tier down: the PC-12 trades cruise speed for a cabin and a cargo door nothing else in the class carries.
Where the speed goes next
This board covers single-engine turbines. If you’d like a wider look:
- The fastest turboprops put the cabin-class twins back on the list, where the Piaggio Avanti reaches 402 knots, seventy clear of anything here.
- The fastest single-engine planes drop to piston power, where the quickest singles cruise near 280.
Or set two of these turbines beside each other: compare the Epic E1000 and the TBM 960 on range, ceiling, and cabin, the numbers that separate them.