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BUYER'S GUIDE
Shimano RC100 Road ShoesBest cheap cycling shoes 2025 — get road or mountain bike shoes for under £70
Looking for the best cheap cycling shoes? Welcome to our guide to the best SPD and road cycling shoes for under £70.
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Shoes with stiff soles and soles that accommodate clipless pedals start around £30
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Choose between mountain bike-style ('SPD') walkable shoes with a recessed pocket for the cleat and racier shoes that put the cleat on the outside of the sole
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Race-style shoes are stiffer for better power-transmission, mountain bike-style shoes have more flexible shoes for walking
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Most cheap cycling shoes use laces or Velcro straps to close them
The best cheap cycling shoes
Cycling shoes have stiffer soles than, say, trainers or running shoes, which makes them more comfortable to pedal in. You can pay hundreds of pounds for high-tech shoes with carbon fibre soles, but you can get perfectly usable shoes for under £70.
As Mat Brett discusses at length in our article covering everything you need to know about cycling shoes, there are broadly two types of cycling shoes: road racing style and SPD/mountain bike style.
SPD/mountain bike style shoes have a small cleat (a special stud) recessed into the sole. They're easier to walk in than road racing shoes and because the pedals are usually double-sided they're easier to get into. They're the way to go if you want to get started with clipless pedals.
Road racing shoes have stiff, smooth soles with threaded holes for a cleat that stands proud from the shoe and fits into the attachment mechanism on a matching pedal. They're efficient and secure, but there's a learning curve to getting in to the usually single-sided pedals and the shoes are hard to walk in.
Let's see what we can find by way of shoe bargains.
Cheap SPD shoes
Triban RC 100 road shoes — £34.99
These from French-based sport store chain Decathlon look like a bargain entry point when it comes cheap cycling shoes. They're billed as road shoes, but have a two-bolt mounting for mountain bike-style cleats, so you'll be able to walk in them easily.
Muddyfox Tour 100 Low Cycling Shoes — £37.99
Just under forty quid is the starting price for cycling shoes and these from Sports Direct brand Muddyfox are typical of what you'll find. You get a padded mesh fabric body, with laces and Velcro strap to cover the knot and lace ends and a cushioned heel outsole for walking.
Triban RC 500 — £44.99 - £49.99
The latest shoes from Decathlon, these have a two-bolt sole for mountain bike style cleats so you can walk in them easily. They look just the job for touring, commuting and even club runs. They're also available in all black, or with blue or red in place of orange.
Giro Berm — £63.99
A shoe that seems to have lots of happy users, with reviewers citing the roomy toebox and stiff-but-not-too-stiff sole as advantages for one and off bike use.
Cheap road shoes
Shimano RC100 — £53.99
Straightforward synthetic leather shoes from Shimano with a three-strap closure and a fibreglass-reinforced sole set up for three-bolt cleats such as Shimano's own SPD-SL system and Look, among others.
Northwave Core Road Shoes — £49.99
Carbon-fibre reinforced soles for stiffness and low weight are very nice things to find on shoes that cost under £60 a pair. Northwave has been making cycling shoes for literally decades so these three-strap shoes may be entry-level but they won't be low-rent.
dhb Dorica — £40.00
Lace-up road shoes are achingly trendy and practical too thanks to the ability to fine-tune the tension right across your foot. The synthetic upper is well assembled, the stitching feels quality and the overall impression is of a more expensive shoe. There are many ventilation holes along the top, and muted dhb logos side and rear.
This road version will take SPD cleats, but there's a version with a proper walkable SPD sole for the same money.
Read our review of the dhb Dorica shoes
Shimano RP1 — £39.99
Owners seem very happy with their RP1 shoes, praising the fit, comfort, sole stiffness and faff-free two-strap closure. The sole gets its stiffness from fibreglass reinforcement and there's a reflective patch on the back for visibility. They're compatible with two-bolt SPD and three-bolt Look-style cleats.
Muddyfox RBS100 shoes — £37.99
These budget road shoes from Muddyfox are available in a white and black colour scheme and have a three-strap closure, with a very broad strap across the top to spread the tension over your foot, and Amazon reviewers say the sole is plenty stiff. For just £38, they do the job.
Van Rysel 500 road shoes — £49.99
With a fibreglass-reinforced nylon sole and classic trio of Velcro straps, these road shoes from Decathlon look to be very good value. They'll take either three-bolt cleats or two-bolt SPD cleats.
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.
John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.
He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.
Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.
John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.
He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.
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19 comments
"Buy [shoes] now from Decathlon" gets you one of these:
RC500 WOMEN'S WATERPROOF CYCLING JACKET - BLACK
9 pairs described. 0 of them tested. I find great value in your reviews, so it would be very interesting if you could look more at the cheaper kit in general. I know the commercials might be tricky for more obscure cheap kit, but surely Shimano, Wiggle, Decathlon etc could be persuaded to provide review samples.
Perhaps it would be possible to do an eBay or Amazon special across a few products as well.
Especially when they claim they are "10 of the best". How do they know?
Regarding the Dorica's, I bought a pair of the carbon soled road shoes and after 500km or so I'm a big fan. I find them really comfortable though I do think people with wide feet might not agree with me. They look great on the bike too
I can't understand why retailers don't show the underside of cycling shoes. This has to be just as important as the top, perhaps more so!
Looking to buy any of shimano rp1, rp2, rp3. I always wear 10.5 US. But when i re-measured my foot, it’s 10.5 inches (27 cm.) which is size 10 US. What fits me best, 45 or 46? I’ve read that you need to go a size up with shimanos.
such a pity that the BTwin shoes only cater up to size 11/46. Most other makes now cater up to and beyond size 14 so why wont they?
Alexb: My only criticism is that the tongue presses on my foot a bit at the front of the shoe, but I'm expecting that, as the padding beds in, this will disappear,
I found the same thing with my DHB Aerons. I has improved with wear, but the biggest improvement was after I started listening to my coach's advice, and dropping my heels instead of riding very toe-down.
I've done a few 100km+ rides wearing the new dhb Dorica lace-up shoes (I'm using the ones with the MTB sole). In my opinion Wiggle missed a trick as they should have been marketing these for Audaxers or "Gravel Riders", these are great shoes at a really good price point. They're not overly stiff, but as a result, "hike a bike" or walking is reasonably comfortable and the cleats are fully protected. My white shoes have a few scuffs and dirt on them, but have cleaned up OK and look great on the bike.
My only criticism is that the tongue presses on my foot a bit at the front of the shoe, but I'm expecting that, as the padding beds in, this will disappear,
I have the DHB aeron carbons, and I'm happy with them. They are a big size, as Wiggle say on thier website, so most people will need to go a size down. My existing shoes were 43 and a bit tight, so I stuck with 43 and the fit in the aerons is good. My only criticism is that the inners offer no support at all to the instep of the foot - they are very flat. I have just ordered some superfeet carbon inners to go in them, which I am hoping will provide some more support on longer rides.
Mavic Aksium II aren't 2-bolt SPD compatible, they only take 3-bolts.
The tour versions of the Aksium and Ksyrium shoes are, but they seem to have stopped making them, annoyingly as they're pretty much my go-to shoes - decent road shoes that work properly with 2-bolt SPDs and have enough of a tread that you can actually walk with them. I've yet to find anything as good.
Thx
Louis Garneau at Evans have a few lace up versions below £100
Any suggestions for cheap shoes with laces only? For the vintage ride.
Dhb make a lace up own brand shoe.
Shimano RT4.
http://www.shimano-lifestylegear.com/gl/fw/products/explorer/18ss_003rt4...
Widely available for under £70. Road.cc did a test on the velcro counterparts, the RT5 - review at http://road.cc/content/tech-news/227112-first-look-shimano-rt5-road-shoe...
I own one pair of bike shoes - the cheap(ish) Nike ones that I bought in 2003. The velcro closures on each shoe came adrift at differnet times, and each was replaced at the local cobblers for a few quid. Admittedly I am a leisure rider but apart from years with a significant injury do about 5,000km a year, all year round.
Perhaps I should treat myself to a new pair this summer?
Interestingly, they came as a package with some Look delta pedals. I have been through four sets of pedals in the lifetime of the shoes (Cheap Deltas made of plastic wore out, second pair of Deltas got to the point of chronic, uncurable squeaking, switched to SPD-SLs and left the first pair behind on an overseas visit so replaced them with the same).
In the interests of fairness, I did exactly the same, and my first pair of Tour 100s lasted well over 2 years, and I was so pleased with them I bought another pair to replace them when they wore out. That second pair is now reaching the end of its useful life (again 2 years or so later) and I will likely get another as they have given me not trouble and no reason to look elsewhere.
Muddyfox Tour 100 Low Cycling Shoes were what I bought when I wanted to try clipping in but did not want to spend a lot of money to find out it wasn't for me. These shoes lasted just long enough for me to find out that it was for me (2 weeks). Completely false economy, I then got the shimano ones that were £15 more and they are still going strong 2 years later (they are refusing to die and I really want to start wearing the new shoes I bought).