MEWP categories explained

Vertical access: scissors and masts

Scissor lifts and vertical masts both move in a straight line up and down, which suits any task directly above the machine's footprint. Scissors trade footprint for deck size, useful when more than one person or a load of materials needs to travel up together. Masts go the other way, staying narrow enough to pass through a standard doorway at the cost of a much smaller platform.

Up-and-over access: articulating and telescopic booms

Articulating booms use two or more jointed sections, which lets the platform reach up, over an obstruction, and back down on the far side, exactly what's needed when there's a wall, canopy or piece of plant between the machine and the task. Telescopic booms extend in a straight line instead, generally buying more outright height and horizontal reach where there's nothing to reach around.

On both, the published outreach envelope has to be checked at the platform load you actually intend to carry, not just the maximum figure on the spec sheet.

Specialist mobility: spider lifts and vehicle mounts

Spider lifts combine tracks with deployable stabiliser legs, which is what lets them travel through gates and corridors a wheeled machine can't fit through, then set up on ground conditions a wheeled machine couldn't safely stand on. Our spider lift vs boom lift comparison goes into that trade-off in detail.

Truck-, van- and trailer-mounted platforms bring a different advantage: they travel on the public road between sites, which matters for jobs spread across several short visits rather than one continuous stay. That convenience comes with chassis weight, licence requirements and a deployed footprint that needs its own space to check against the site. Truck-mounted units are actually the single largest category in our catalogue, ahead of articulating booms and spider lifts.

Category isn't the same as certification

This page groups machines by how they physically move, which is useful for narrowing a shortlist but isn't the same classification IPAF uses for operator training. A boom lift and a scissor lift that can both drive with the platform elevated fall into different IPAF categories from otherwise similar machines that can't; see our IPAF categories guide if you're checking a specific operator's certification against a machine rather than just comparing specs.