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BUYER'S GUIDE
Four of the best road bikes for under £350 Oct 2021Four of the best road bikes for under £350
Choose one of the best road bikes under £350 and you're buying the fastest and most fun way of getting around under your own power, zooming you to the office during the week and taking you out to explore the lanes at the weekends — on a budget.
What if you're dying to join the cycling revolution, but can't afford the four-figure price tags of those featherweight carbon creations in your local bike shop? We've combed the catalogues for a selection of the best road bikes under £350 that'll get you started without breaking the bank.
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Decent-quality drop-bar road bikes under £350 are now rare and there are a lot of 'bicycle-shaped objects' in this category. Caveat emptor.
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Look for an aluminium alloy frame and components from Shimano
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Avoid buying an unassembled bike — putting a bike together is not trivial and if you don't know what you're doing it's easy to end up with a death trap
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Got a little bit more to spend? Check out our guide to road bikes for under £500
4 of the best road bikes under £350 for 2021
Fortunately almost every bike out there meets what we'd consider the rock-bottom minimum spec for a bike to be safe and pleasant to ride. Horrors such as hard-to-repair cottered cranks and steel rims with useless wet-weather braking are things of the past, or at least things to avoid on second-hand bikes. Most of these bikes have efficient, easy-to-use gears from Japanese firm Shimano, the world's biggest maker of bike components.
We've looked for bikes with drop handlebars — the defining feature of a road bike — indexed gears that click into place to make changing easier and a decent range of gears for riding up and down hills.
All that said, in the last couple of years the pickings in the sub-£350 category have become slimmer. All bike prices have risen around 20% since the Brexit vote crashed the pound, which has pushed quite a few bikes that were previously in this category out of reach. The survivors, as it were, mostly come from companies with huge buying power that get their own-brand bikes directly from bike factories: Halfords and Decathlon.
If you want to know more, we've an in-depth article about choosing and buying your first road bike. Go have a thorough read, we'll wait here.
Road bikes under £250
If your budget is this tight looking for a second hand bargain is something you should seriously consider (see below for more), but if it has to be new if you shop around for discount bargains during the winter you might find something.
Apollo Paradox — £230
It's arguably a bit basic, but the Paradox from Halfords brand Apollo is as much bike as you can reasonably expect for £200 and boasts an aluminium frame, Shimano gears and 28mm tyres. It's available in three sizes and if you pick it up from the store Halfords will assemble it for you at no extra cost.
Road bikes for £250-£350
Triban RC100 — £299.99
The cheapest drop-bar bike from French-based sports superstore chain Decathlon, the B'Twin Triban 100 has an aluminium frame and seven-speed gears with 32mm tyres so it can tackle the odd dirt track or towpath without any fuss. It'll take mudguards and a rack so will make a serviceable commuter that can take you pootling round the lanes at the weekend.
Carrera Zelos — £340
There are plenty of bikes costing under £350 at Halfords, and pick of the bunch is this Carrera Zelos. In normal times, it's often discounted, but with bikes still in high demand as people look for covid-safe transport you could wait for a long time before the price drops. It features an aluminium frame built up with a 14-speed Shimano groupset and Tektro MD-C400 disc brakes.
Brand-X road bike — £349.99
WiggleCRC's own-brand range of basic cycling gear includes this entry-level road bike, which looks pretty decent, on paper at least. It has an aluminium alloy frame with 14-speed Shimano gearing and combined brake/gear levers for easy shifting. As far as we know it's the cheapest bike you can buy with Shimano's brake/shift levers rather than
It's available in five sizes, so you should be able to get one that fits well unless you're very tall or short. Wiggle and CRC are showing it as all sizes in stock at the moment.
The secondhand alternative
If you've got champagne — or maybe prosecco — tastes but only a beer budget, there are bargains to be had in the secondhand market.
You can get pretty decent second-hand road bikes under £300 if you scour around. The places to look are eBay, Gumtree and our own classified ads.
Gumtree has a good guide to staying safe and not getting scammed or lumbered with a stolen bike, and eBay has a thorough guide to the intricacies of buying safely through its auction system.
Explore the complete archive of reviews of bikes on road.cc
About road.cc Buyer's Guides
The aim of road.cc buyer's guides is to give you the most, authoritative, objective and up-to-date buying advice. We continuously update and republish our guides, checking prices, availability and looking for the best deals.
Our guides include links to websites where you can buy the featured products. Like most sites we make a small amount of money if you buy something after clicking on one of those links. We want you to be happy with what you buy, so we only include a product if we think it's one of the best of its kind.
As far as possible that means recommending equipment that we have actually reviewed, but we also include products that are popular, highly-regarded benchmarks in their categories.
Here's some more information on how road.cc makes money.
You can also find further guides on our sister sites off.road.cc and ebiketips.
road.cc buyer's guides are maintained by the road.cc tech team. Email us with comments, corrections or queries.
road.cc's founder and first editor, nowadays to be found riding a spreadsheet. Tony's journey in cycling media started in 1997 as production editor and then deputy editor of Total Bike, acting editor of Total Mountain Bike and then seven years as editor of Cycling Plus. He launched his first cycling website - the Cycling Plus Forum at the turn of the century. In 2006 he left C+ to head up the launch team for Bike Radar which he edited until 2008, when he co-launched the multi-award winning road.cc - finally handing on the reins in 2021 to Jack Sexty. His favourite ride is his ‘commute’ - which he does most days inc weekends and he’s been cycle-commuting since 1994. His favourite bikes are titanium and have disc brakes, though he'd like to own a carbon bike one day.
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26 comments
Not to toot the eBay horn, but I'm very satisfied with my £192 2005 Specialized Allez that I won on the site last week. I think if you're buying as a beginner, it can be intimidating but get hold of a knowledgeable friend and you'll find a host of very decent (if older) bikes on there.
That there BikeSnob NYC writing as his alter ego Eben Weiss, wrote about the Brand-X bike here
https://www.outsideonline.com/2394530/eroica-california-race-cheap-bike
Bit depressing, innit? A few years ago we were raving about the Triban 3/500SE and the Merlin PR7 in this price range...
Anyway, worth mentioning again that British Cycling memberships should pay for itself after one trip to Halfords... (Cycling UK discount seems to be on 'selected' items only now):
www.britishcycling.org.uk/membership/article/halfords-discounts
May also be worth checking if your local bike club has deals with local shops.
The Triban 3 was mega, still got mine as a pub* bike. OK, so it's a bit of Triggers Broom but the frame, fork, bars, and seatpost are all original. Currently running 8 speed Claris with worn drivetrain/mechs (because 8 speed is incredibly tolerant of worn parts).
*obviously no pub visits currently
I've got the Apollo Paradox and its great. I'm fairly new to cycling to its ideal for me and you don't need to break the bank.
Proving that you can get a perfectly good bike sub 300. Are you riding utility or with a club?
"A bike" is better than "no bike". Happy cycling!
Freewheelin' Franklin Says Dope Will Get You Through Times of No Money, Better Than Money Will Get You Through Times of No Dope
I didn't expect to encounter that saying on here
Good time to re-run/update this article - a lot of people will be thinking about getting a bike, inspired by the numbers who seem to be making the most of the current 'lockdown'.
Just a shame the prices have gone up. Definitely a good idea to go secondhand if you/a friend knows what they're doing. Or ask your local bike shop if they'd take a fee to find something in your budget - they might enjoy the challenge. Probably better if they don't sell new bikes in a similar price range though (and ask if they'd give you some warranty, maybe three months labour, so they don't sell you something they had rusting in their shed at home).
Probably also worth mentioning the discounts available with either Cycling UK or British Cycling membership - which could pay for themselves in one transaction:
www.cyclinguk.org/membership/member-benefits
www.britishcycling.org.uk/membership/benefits
Although now out of stock on their website (NB like the Halfords Crixus), branches of Go Outdoors may still stock of their rather decent-looking options:
https://road.cc/content/buyers-guide/167855-go-outdoors-road-bikes-buyer...
So I've finally taken the plunge and bought my first ever road bike (Boardman SLR 8.6). I plan to cycle for fitness initially, so have bought some basic kit e.g. helmet, likes etc.
I don't want to spend a fortune on equipment right away, so I wondered what people think are the most essential pieces of kit for new road cyclists?
I'd go for these:
It helps if the jacket is a snug fit so it doesn't flap in the wind. And try to avoid getting one that is substantial and unvented as it's you'll be boiling after a few miles.
I got rid of my overtrousers after 2 or 3 commutes, too hot and noisy. I find legwarmers are more faff than lightweight unpadded tights (e.g. Ron Hill, Altura Cruiser / Stream), which work well over the shorts or undershorts in cooler temperatures.
I would add a small multitool such as Topeak Mini 9, a spare inner tube, tyre levers and Park Tool glueless patches in a small seat pack (~0.4L is big enough). Add a Lezyne or Topeak mini pump that fits on the bottle cage bosses - see the road.cc pump reviews.
Lock.
Big lock.
Bib shorts
Another tick for the 500SE, love mine and have put almost 5000 miles on it so far including 3 times round RideLondon and VeloBirmingham last year.
Agree about the wheels, very quickly changed mine out for a pair of R501s which Ribble had for just £60 and they have been amazing. My original BTwin rear wheel now goes on when I use the bike on the turbo over the Winter.
I was one of the early buyers so got the Sora cranks (but Microshift everything else) and even though I paid £329 for mine 4 years ago, I consider it a bargain. So, £249 is a steal.
BTWIN 500 series are really good workhorse frames. Note however that the provided wheels are really not good and if you abuse them a bit they are quickly so out of line that trueing is not possible any more. REplacement set had exact same problem after three months and triban forum has plenty reporting same. But then you just buy som RS10-11 wheels and you are pretty much set for some time.
They do have very little clearance under rear brakes ( at least the 2015 model had that problem, might have changed) so that you couldn't really fit mudguards SKS raceblade style.
The new 500s have huge clearance front and rear and mudguard eyelets. They ship with 25mm tyres but I think you'd be OK going up to 32mm at least with mudguards. Deca mention market-beating tyre clearance but don't specify a size. Looks lovely in matt red, I'm kinda tempted to get one and chuck my spare 105 group on it.
you won't go wrong with the btwin, it has carbon forks and the micro shifters are just as good as my Shimano tiagra shifters on my boardman. Also has a wide spread of gears with the 3 ring front and 8 ring rear, great for hills.
I was out on my winter bike, my Allez on Saturday and this young lad asked me how much it costs... He was surprised when I told him that it was £350. He thought that it was an expensive bike until I told him. Admittedly he didn't know much about bikes..
It was second hand a number of years ago but if I could have bought some of the bikes in this list at the time, I would have been tempted to buy new.
Bit off-topic but I saw the 2017 Allez Sprints on Instagram last night. WOW
Look like pure baller machines. I'd love one. Though they are actually still a tad pricey I bet. Can't find any word on UK prices but definitely gonna be over a grand..
https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/allezsprint/
Yeah they were for a while a Specialized US product but I know any Specialized UK dealer can order them, from top of my head £1600 springs to my mind.
The perfect Crit Racing bike, fast but relatively disposable when some Cat 3 nodder decides to take everyone down running out of talent.
When I first saw my brother's Triban 3 5 years ago I thought he'd spent well north of a grand on it. Not knowing much about bikes back then I saw "carbon fork" and "24 gears" and thought woah...
Such a good bike for the money and when he upgraded to a carbon bike I got it as my commuter. As others have said the wheels are utter bobbins but an RS10/11 upgrade sorted that out for around £100...
"you even get an alloy fork where most bikes in this range use steel" Hmm I'd far rather have a good steel fork than cheap aluminium one, much nicer to ride!
Good article, it's remarkable what a couple of hundred quid can buy, the BTwin in particular looks amazing.
My advice is save up just a little bit more and get a slighly better model with carbon forks and Shimano Sora or similar. £400 or so is a sweetspot. Much cheaper than upgrading later on.
It is right to mention buying second hand too , get someone to who knows a bit about bikes to help and you can get some real bargains. I recently bought an immaculate 2012 Wiler Triestina with Campagnolo for £200 on ebay. Stupidly cheap, and I actually prefer it to my Cervelo.
But therein lies the problem! If you get the bug, you will always want to upgrade later on. There are a bunch advantages of buying second hand. First, you get more bang for your buck now. Second, if you decide to sell later to fund an upgrade later, you will suffer less depreciation on a second hand bike. A budget spec alloy Trek or Giant will always be easier to offload than a Carrera. Third, the hydroforming on an alloy Trek or Giant looks, and performs proper, to the point where you pass one in the street and find yourself looking for the welds to see if it is carbon!