Best road bikes under £2,000 2023 — affordable roadsters that combine performance and value

Best overall: Cannondale CAAD13 Disc 105

Buy Now for £2,300 from Sigma Sports

Proving that composites don't quite reign supreme, Cannondale's meticulously engineered CAAD13 frame wrings every last gram of performance potential out of aluminium. Cannondale combines that frame with Shimano 105 shifting, its own HollowGram Si chainset and Shimano 105 hydraulic disc brakes for a thoroughly modern fast road bike.

The CAAD13 includes a stack of refinements over the previous, much-loved CAAD12 with tweaks to the aerodynamics and dropped seatstays to improve comfort.

Read our review of the Cannondale CAAD13 Disc 105

Best value: Canyon Endurace AL Disc 7.0

Buy Now for £1,649.00 from Canyon

It's always worth checking out what Canyon has to offer, and this combination of the light, quick but comfortable Endurace AL frame and Shimano 105 components is decent value, and a superb all-day mile-eater that's fun to ride.

Read our review of the Canyon Endurace AL Disc 6.0

Best steel-framed bike: Cotic Escapade

Buy Now for from £1,799 from Cotic

One of the early adopters of the whole gravel/adventure/do-it-all bikes, the Cotic Escapade has had a few upgrades since its inception a good five or six years ago. Larger tyre clearances, a new carbon fork and a tapered head tube have now upped the performance and dropped the weight, making the new model an absolute joy to ride whether on or off road.

The original Cotic was disconcertingly ahead of its time, but with the explosion of the whole gravel/adventure market, components have caught up and things like quality 1x groupsets, brilliant hydraulic disc brakes and 650B wheels mean the Escapade can really strut its stuff, especially if you like to chop and change your choice of terrain.

Read our review of the Cotic Escapade

Best carbon bike: Cube Attain GTC Race

Buy Now for £2,049.00 from Paul's Cycles

How does Cube manage to make a carbon fibre endurance bike with 105 equipment for just over two grand? Well, they've swapped out the hollow 105 chainset for the non-series FC-RS510, which as far as we can tell is a Tiagra crank configured for 11-speed instead of 10. It's a bit heavier, but works just fine, saving a bunch on the price tag without substantial detriment to performance.

The Attain GTC Race is very much a mile-eating all-rounder, with clearance for mudguards so you can keep going through winter without getting drenched.

Best gravel bike: GT Grade Carbon Elite

Buy Now for £1,699.00 from Sigma Sports

Highly capable, with a performance that shines on any surface as it smooths out bumps with the skinniest of skinny rear stays – and a very competitive price – the GT Grade Carbon is a top choice in an increasingly crowded gravel bike market.

The Grade is brilliant at being fast and comfortable on rough roads, and right at home on forest trails and gravel roads. The new frame, with its 'floating stays' design, is impressively smooth at the saddle. Rough tracks, jagged roots and rippled fields are soaked up exceptionally well thanks to the seat post flexing backwards. It's freer to do this on the new frame since the seat tube can bow forwards, unhindered by the seat stays.

GT makes no claim for how much flex there is, and it’s obviously not tuneable, plus variables like rider weight and aggression influence just how much you get. However the stays actually flex visibly, either when you press hard down on the saddle with your elbow, or look down when you’re riding. At the worldwide launch event in Girona, riding next to another Grade revealed that it's even noticeable from afar.

Geometry defines a gravel bike, with stability a key focus. The Grade gets a lower bottom bracket across the size range, along with 15mm longer chainstays, and feels extremely surefooted on any terrain at any speed.

Read our review of the GT Grade Carbon Expert

Genesis Equilibrium

Buy Now for £1,849.99 from Freewheel

The Equilibrium has been part of Genesis' line up for many years now, and this latest version – with its Reynolds 725 frame and fork – is an absolute corker, thanks to a smooth ride and plenty of tyre clearance.

Tester Stu writes: "The ride quality is beautiful. I like my tyres pumped up hard; if the frameset is any good, it'll deal with the vibrations. And this one does. Taking to the back lanes sees it float across broken road surfaces. It just seems to dampen everything out and feels so composed."

Read our review of the Genesis Equilibrium

Giant Defy Advanced 3

Buy Now for £2,099.00 from Rutland Cycling

Giant's Defy line is one of the most popular bikes in the endurance and sportive sector, and is the company's best-selling model, combining smart geometry with a full range of competitively priced builds. It was revamped for 2019 with a frame that will take up to 32mm tyres, some tweaks to the cable routing, and the addition of Giant's new D-Fuse buzz-reducing handlebar. Those improvements carry on into the 2021 models.

The 2021 Defy bikes also get tubeless-ready wheels and 32mm tyres, and the Defy Advanced 3 has Shimano's Tiagra shifting with an 11-34 cassette for a 1:1 low gear.

Read our review of the Giant Defy Advanced SL
Read our review of the Giant Defy Advanced 3

Giant Revolt Advanced 3

Buy Now for £2,199 from PedalOn

Giant bills the handsome Revolt Advanced 3 as a gravel bike, but it's very much on the go-faster end of the gravel spectrum, so it's suited to Tarmac shenanigans too with handling that's positive enough that you can push it into the bends and still have fun when the road heads downhill.

Dirt roads are where the Revolt Advanced really excels though, rewarding flat-out effort with buckets of fun as the tyre scrabble for grip on loose surfaces. You can throw it through twisty gravel sections right on its limits and enjoy the thrill of feeling it could all go tits-up in an instant — but it doesn't.

There aren't many 2020 Revolt Advanced 3s left in the shops, but the 2021 model is imminent and gets Shimano's GRX-400 braking and shifting in place of the 2020 bike's Tiagra.

Read our review of the Giant Revolt Advanced 2

Ribble CGR AL Shimano Ultegra

Buy Now for £2,199.00 from Ribble

Ribble's CGR AL is a hugely versatile and superb value bike for everything from gravel bashing to cyclocross and road commuting. The aluminium frame isn't overly compliant and the kit needs a few tweaks if you intend to mostly stick to dirt, but that's easy enough to custom spec it to your heart's content when you order. (That's the £1,400 105-equipped version in the pic by the way; the Ultegra version is available in the same screaming orange.)

The CGR bit of the name stands for Cyclocross, gravel and road, which tells you pretty much everything you need to know about where this bike is pitched, namely as a do-it-all drop bar bike. The impressive thing is that it actually delivers on this promise, having taken in everything from gravel rides, road Audaxes and tow-path bashing commutes.

The aluminium frame is really nicely made with flattened welds, there are 12mm through axles at either end with flat mount disc brakes, loads of guard, cage and rack mounts and the paint job is smooth and smart - orange is available as well as this blue - and it generally gives off the vibe of being a much more expensive machine than it is. It scores extra points for having a proper, tapered steerer on the carbon forks where many rivals still have a straight item too.

Read our review of the Ribble CGR AL

Trek Émonda ALR 5 Disc

Buy Now for £2,200.00 from Sigma Sports

Part of Trek's line of Émonda lightweight race bikes, the ALR 5 demonstrates one of two approaches to speccing up a bike in this range. Trek takes the aluminium version of its Émonda frame and equips it with Shimano's midrange 105 group for a bike that doesn't cost the earth but has plenty of upgrade potential.

Read our review of the Trek Emonda ALR 5