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My wife just got her new road bike so she can come with me sometimes. She really likes it so far. It has a 2x10 speed Tiagra groupset (11-32 on the back). I have a 2x11 speed ultegra, 11-30 on the back. From October I will do indoor trainings again and I am thinking about what would be the best way so she can also use my smart trainer (it has 11-30 cassette).

Should we buy another trainer, or is it possible (or cheaper) to convert her bike to a 11 speed one so we could easily just swap the bikes? (I am considering to buy a new wheelset for me, can she use mine then?)

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    This doesn't answer your question directly, but I have a beater bike that is permanently installed on my trainer. My wife and I share it; we have different saddles and seatposts that we swap out.
    – Adam Rice
    Jul 15, 2022 at 19:37
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    Yes, I also considered this option, but the problem is that I have 61 frame, she has 54. So the difference is a bit too much in our case :)
    – Mat
    Jul 15, 2022 at 19:46

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The practical options here are limited. Her bike can't use the 11-speed 11/30 cassette, and upgrading the bike to an 11-speed drivetrain means completely redoing the bike, so it's not a very attractive solution.

Generally speaking, direct drive trainers all make it pretty easy to switch freehub bodies. You could do this by buying another freehub body and keeping an 10-speed 11-32 cassette on it for her bike. For most of them, switching it is only a 1-2 minute job once you're in the habit. It's not completely non-technical because you have to make sure the pawls are in place etc, so it requires some care and can't be done in too much of a hurry, but it's not too bad. You could also just swap cassettes, which isn't terribly slow either (especially if you have both cassettes be fancy spidered or one-piece ones that don't have many individual pieces - switching every time with a more basic stack of cogs type cassette is probably impractical).

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    It might be possible to use the 11 speed bike on a 10 speed cassette if you were willing to ride exclusively in ERG mode and never change gears - might require a tweak on the barrel adjuster to get indexing though
    – Andy P
    Jul 15, 2022 at 22:11
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2024 update: in late 2023 a new hardware, called Zwift Cog came out, what makes it possible to use bikes with different speed on the same trainer. Until now it can only be used on Zwift hub trainers. There is also a new trainer called 'Wahoo Kickr Core Zwift One' trainers that uses the same zwift Cog (possibly older versions can also be upgraded to this one)

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  • Yep, covered in this answer also. Wahoo has provided enabling firmware for the Kickr Core and Kickr v6, and is expected to roll out hardware to all the Kickr models except possibly the earliest ones.
    – Weiwen Ng
    Mar 19 at 17:09

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