Marker Duke PT 13 vs Kingpin 13: Which Way Does Your Day Run?

Both of these bindings top out at DIN 13, both come from Marker, and both are sold to people who want to ski down properly after skinning up. That's where the similarity stops. The Duke PT 13 is a downhill binding that has been made to tour; the Kingpin 13 is a touring binding that has been made to ski down. Which one is right depends entirely on which half of the day you're optimising.

The published specs

Spec	Duke PT 13	Kingpin 13
DIN range	4–13	6–13
Weight (per binding)	1,000g	715g
Brake width	125mm	100mm
Sole compatibility	Alpine · Touring · GripWalk	Touring
Multi Norm Certified	Yes	Not published
Release	Multidirectional	Multidirectional

The boot question decides most of this

The single most consequential line in that table is sole compatibility, and it's the one people skip.

The Kingpin is a tech binding. Its toe grips metal inserts moulded into a touring boot's shell. If your boot doesn't have those inserts, the binding is unusable — there is no adapter, no workaround, and no version of "it nearly fits." Committing to a Kingpin means committing to a tech-compatible boot for every day that ski sees.

The Duke PT accepts alpine soles (ISO 5355), touring soles (ISO 9523), and GripWalk. That is what makes a genuine one-ski quiver possible: your stiff resort boot on lift days, your touring boot on uphill days, same skis, same bindings. If you own one pair of skis and both kinds of boot, this is the binding that lets them all talk to each other.

For the wider picture on how these families differ — and why sole standards aren't a formality — see our guide to backcountry binding standards.

What 285 grams buys and costs

Per binding, the Duke PT is 285g heavier. Over a pair that's 570g, and it's the worst place on your body to carry it. Weight at the foot is lifted and swung on every stride, which is why touring skiers obsess over grams at the binding in a way they never do about a jacket.

On a long day with substantial vertical, that difference is real fatigue. On a 300-metre skin to a sidecountry line you'll ski four times, it's close to irrelevant.

What you get for the weight is downhill hardware. The Duke PT is published as Multi Norm Certified — its release behaviour has been tested across the sole types it accepts, rather than tested for one and assumed for the rest. Marker doesn't publish an MNC status for the Kingpin either way, so treat that as unstated rather than disproven — our guide to backcountry binding standards covers why pure tech bindings often don't carry it. If you want certified release across sole types stated rather than assumed, only one of these two states it.

The DIN floor matters more than the ceiling

Everyone compares DIN maximums. Both of these stop at 13, and almost nobody who buys either will run them near that.

The floor is the number that eliminates a binding. The Kingpin starts at 6; the Duke PT starts at 4. A lighter or shorter skier — and a large share of women, teenagers, and smaller adults — will calculate a release value below 6 and should not be in a binding whose lowest setting is above it. Setting a binding higher than your calculated value because the binding can't go lower is how knees get injured. If you haven't run the numbers for your height, weight, boot sole length, and skier type, start with DIN settings explained, then have a certified technician set and test it.

Brake width sets your ski ceiling

The Duke PT's published brake is 125mm; the Kingpin's is 100mm. Brakes must clear the ski's waist — a brake narrower than the ski fouls the topsheet and won't deploy properly, and one dramatically wider drags in soft snow.

Practically: the Duke PT as published is set up for a wide freeride ski, and the Kingpin as published is set up for something in the 90s. Those are the widths published for the versions we track, not the only widths each model exists in — confirm the brake on the specific version you're buying against the waist of the ski you're mounting it to.

The straightforward answer

Duke PT 13 if you ski more resort days than touring days, if you want one setup to do both, if you already own alpine boots you like, or if your calculated release value is below 6.

Kingpin 13 if the uphill is the point, if you already ski in tech-compatible boots, and if you're mounting it to a ski in the 90s, where the published 100mm brake clears the waist. You give up alpine-boot compatibility and 570g per pair goes away.

If you're not sure which half of the day you're optimising, you're a Duke PT skier — the weight penalty is the cheaper mistake.

Brake widths, DIN ranges, and sole compatibility are published inconsistently and are frequently wrong on retail listings, so we only publish a value when independent readings of the manufacturer's own source agree on it. Here's how we match products and verify specs.