Standards · the load-bearing page of this site

A rating is a stopwatch, not a promise

Three families of standards dominate the market, and they do not measure the same thing. Below: what each one puts a technician through, and what the label can and cannot tell you afterwards.

THE STICKER DESCRIBES THE TEST, NOT THE BOX. Two products with the same label can differ by an hour in a real attack.

United States — UL 687

Label	Time	Surfaces tested	Tools
TL-15	15 min net working time	Door face	Hand and power tools, listed set
TL-30	30 min net working time	Door face	Same set, longer clock
TL-30x6	30 min net working time	All six sides	Same set
TRTL-30x6	30 min net working time	All six sides	Adds a cutting torch
RSC / RSC II	5 / 10 min	Door face	Residential level, a different world entirely

“Net working time” is time on the tool, not time in the room. A thirty-minute rating can occupy an attacker for far longer — or, with the right tool and no witnesses, for exactly thirty.

Europe — EN 1143-1

Grade	Resistance units — partial / complete access	Typical use
Grade 0	30 / 30 RU	Home, modest values; legal minimum for firearms in Germany
Grade I	30 / 50 RU	Home and small business
Grade II	50 / 80 RU	Business, small cash handling
Grade III	80 / 120 RU	Retail, jewellery, pharmacy
Grade IV	120 / 180 RU	High-value retail
Grade V	180 / 270 RU	Bank-adjacent
Grades VI–XIII	higher	Strongrooms and vault doors, rarely a consumer question

A resistance unit is a scoring system, not a clock: one RU is one minute of work with a tool whose coefficient is 1, and every tool carries its own coefficient — a sledgehammer scores far less per minute than a diamond core drill. Partial access (a hand-sized opening) and complete access (the door open) are scored separately, which is why every grade is written as a pair.

T2 — the part most sites have not updated In April 2019 EN 1143-1 gained new test options: EX (solid explosives), GAS, CD (core drilling) and — the one that matters for ordinary buyers — T2, an attack with an amended tool set: thinner cutting discs, newer thermic lances, more powerful breaking hammers. Grades then read 0 T2, I T2, II T2 … XIII T2.

Why it matters: tested against the T2 set, some high-grade models come out up to two grades lower than their older certificate suggests. A safe certified years ago is not suddenly weaker — but the paper describes an attack with tools that have since been improved. If you are buying today, ask whether the certificate is a T2 one — the full story here.

Russia — GOST R 50862

Class	Roughly comparable to	Notes
Class 1	EN Grade 0–I	Own tool list, own scoring
Class 2–3	EN Grade II–III	Common in retail and pharmacy
Class 4+	EN Grade IV and up	Bank use, rarely exported

“Roughly comparable” is doing real work in that column. The scales are not interchangeable and no certifier converts between them officially. Neither do we — this is orientation, not equivalence.

Phrases with no standard behind them Bank grade · military grade · burglar-proof · unbreakable · maximum security · fireproof (fire is rated in minutes at a temperature, never absolutely). If a page uses one of these instead of a class, the class is the thing that is missing.

T2: why a certificate can be out of date 2019 UPDATE Which grade do you need CALCULATOR Take the questions with you QUESTIONS See who holds what DIRECTORY