Best road bikes under £1000 2024 — start riding on the road and cycling to work for less

Despite the events of recent years including pandemic-related supply chain issues, inflation and turmoil in the bike industry, there is still a pretty healthy variety of road bikes toroad bike review wheels choose from around and up to £1,000. It’s very difficult to find brand new road bikes carbon fibre frames at this price point any more unless you buy second hand or bag a huge end-of-season discount, but you will still find entry-level race bikes, touring-style bikes and budget gravel-style bikes that take bigger tyres, made with materials that can be produced for cheaper such as aluminium and steel.

You can narrow your options by coming up with a list of features you want from your new road bike. Do you want to fit mudguards? Look for bikes with extra clearance that will accommodate your tyres and mudguards, and preferably come with eyelets for full-length guards. Do you want extra stopping power? Go for a bike with disc brakes rather than rim brakes. Prefer a lighter bike? At this price point, a racing-style road bike with increasingly rare rim brakes might be a good idea to save some weight, because sub-£1k bike frames will be heavier than more expensive ones.

While a grand is still a lot of money to spend on anything, a bike towards the top end of this price bracket will likely provide you with many thousands of miles of cycling joy. There is very little in the road bike market you can get for £500 or under nowadays, so we’d recommend spending around £1,000 (ideally more, but we would say that) to get the best bike for your buck. Many employers also now offer cycle to work schemes, where you take a salary sacrifice to pay for your new bike in instalments and get it (technically on loan) at a discounted rate.

How we review road bikes
When it comes to bike reviews, we don’t do things by halves at road.cc and ensure our reviewers have access to their test bike for at least a month – ideally longer – to come up with their final verdicts.

Most importantly we’ll assess how a bike rides in our usual riding environments, and compare the bike to similar products on the market when generating a value score. Other parts of the bike test report include ratings for comfort, handling, stiffness, components and finishing kit.

Why you can trust us
We only ever recommend bikes that fared well in reviews in our buyer’s guides, so you’re not just seeing a list we’ve plucked from thin air. We might recommend a different specification to the precise model we reviewed to fit into the sub-£1k price bracket, but where this is necessary we’ll only do so if we’re familiar with the alternative parts used: for example, we might recommend the sub-£1000 version of a bike we’ve reviewed that has the same frame and fork, but a more entry-level groupset.

You might also have noticed that one or two of our selections don’t have a sub-£1,000 recommended retail price, but we’ve included some bikes that were under £1,000 when we reviewed them or can be found for under £1,000 with discounts at some retailers. Pickings are slimmer at this price point nowadays, so we want to recommend you the most bike for your money!

Its friendliness, versatility and high-quality spec make the Triban RC520 our overall best road bike under £1,000. The only thing it won’t readily turn its hand to is road racing because of the relaxed geometry and 10.4kg weight.

Built around Decathlon’s comfort-orientated 6061 aluminium frame, the RC 520 gives you most of a Shimano 105 R7000 11-speed groupset (with a Prowheel crank and bottom bracket) and TRP HY/RD disc brake calipers, the latter being a more powerful hybrid version of a mechanical disc brake but not quite full hydraulic. The Triban RC 520 also has tubeless-ready wheels and Decathlon’s own Resist+ 28mm tyres. It’s a super-steady, confident ride and excellent value for money.

Our reviewer noted that the super-tall head tube and compact top tube mean the bike sits you quite upright, so the geometry is definitely on the more relaxed side and not ideal for those looking to get into serious racing. For the rest of us though, the Triban RC 520 is still our pick of the sub-£1k bunch for its unbeatable value and familiar, easy ride that will appeal to commuters and weekend warriors alike.