Best road bikes under £3000 2024 — our top-rated road bikes in the popular sub-£3k price range

If your budget can't stretch to the Scultura Team and its £8k price tag, but you still want a high-performance road machine with great geometry and impressive comfort, the Scultura Limited fits the bill. It shares the same geometry as the top-end models used by the pros, but in a more affordable package. 

Gone are the days of £3k getting you a road bike equipped with Shimano Ultegra Di2 or similar, and the Scultura Limited comes with a Shimano 105 mechanical groupset. What distinguishes this bike from its competitors are the deep section Merida SL45 carbon wheels it comes with. The Scultura also comes fitted with 28mm tyres, although it will accept 30mm wide ones if you want to boost comfort even further.

The majority of the finishing kit is Merida branded, although the stem is from FSA with its SMR ACR, which is designed to funnel the brake hoses and gear cables down through the head tube and into the frame and fork for that smooth look. 

If your budget is slightly less, consider the Merida Scultura Endurance 4000 which also scooped a road.cc Recommends award. 

Fairlight Cycles’ steel Strael is a stunning machine to ride, offering four-season adaptability and durability without sacrificing high speed or a racy performance. Intelligent tube choices coupled with a long and low geometry make for a bike you can blast about on all day long.

One of the best things about the Strael is the ride quality, which comes from its use of steel tubing. Fairlight works extensively with Reynolds to design a custom-drawn tubeset that takes the ride feel to the next level. Stiffness levels are great. Stamp on the pedals and the Strael responds, not quite as sharply as a carbon superbike but not far off. It’s certainly no slouch off the line or when climbing hard.

It’s not just the ride that sums this bike up, though, it’s the attention to detail – the whole thing has been really well thought out. There is so much going on, and while you may not necessarily want or need all of the mounts and things, they’re there if you do.

The Ribble CGR SL Sport is the brand's entry-level model in their carbon fibre range of  'do it all' bikes. CGR stands for 'cyclocross, gravel, road' and it's well specced for the money, is very easy to ride regardless of terrain and it's a looker too. 

The CGR may come with a roadie bias in its build, but the geometry is very much in the gravel camp, with slacker angles and a longer wheelbase than you'd expect to find on, say, an endurance road bike. It's designed to sort of ease a roadie into gravel or general riding away from the tarmac but with some fast-rolling slick tyres, you aren't going to be at a disadvantage riding the CGR SL Sport out on the road. It accelerates well thanks to the frame stiffness and feels very much like a road bike, not a gravel bike trying to be a road bike.

Something that is impressive is the tyre clearance, which is definitely on the gravel side of things rather than road. The CGR will take 45mm-wide rubber on a 700C wheel, and up to 47mm if you go for a smaller 650B wheel.

The Trek Émonda SL 5 Disc is a great all-round race bike offering great handling, a stiff platform for performance and a comfortable riding position, plus it's all wrapped up in a minimalistic, clean-looking package. 

This is a proper race bike with a steepish 73.5° head angle for quick steering, plus a short 151mm head tube to allow a low front end and a short wheelbase. At just 983mm, this certainly gives it a nimble and flickable feeling in the bends.

The Émonda focuses more on aerodynamics now than ever before, but that doesn't mean it has become a rocket ship on the road. The Émonda is a climbing bike after all, so Trek's engineers have honed in on 'unsteady aerodynamics,' which they say give larger effects at lower speeds when ascending, rather than on curves for cutting through at high speeds in straight lines.

Although the Van Nicholas Ventus is classed as the company’s entry-level option, the way it performs is anything but. This bike is simply great fun to ride. There is a surprising amount of stiffness in these slender tubes, though in no way does it lose that lovely springy titanium ride. It’s a looker too, and quite the bargain.

Tester Stu writes: “The Ventus is designed for fast, competitive riding – so a bit of racing, some fast group riding, or just getting out for a blast on your own. What with lockdown and all that, it was the latter that I spent my time doing, but I found it very rewarding.

“I always felt like I was ‘on it’ when aboard the Ventus. It’s got a zingy sort of character, it wants to be ridden pretty hard, to get a move on, and gives a lot of reward for your input. The more you give, the more you get back.”

The Merida Reacto 6000 is a fast and stiff aero road bike at a decent price. The Reacto CF3 frame has bags of potential for weekend speed merchants and racers who are prepared to upgrade the wheels.

The Reacto frame is among the most laterally stiff road frames you’ll ever encounter – maybe too stiff for some. Whether you’re ticking along in the saddle or up on the pedals for extra power, it channels all your effort into forward motion. Once up to speed on a flat road, it simply glides along.

Climbing is fun on the Reacto too, all that rigidity meaning that you get uphill fast for a given amount of energy expenditure, while the sharp and stiff front end enables you to descend with confidence.

Launched in 2019, the Cannondale CAAD13 added to the brand's long series of well-received aluminium road bikes. It's an aero-tuned aluminium road bike that proves carbon isn't the only option for a smooth ride. 

The CAAD13 is about the same weight as the fabled CAAD12 (just over 1kg for a 56cm frame; there’s probably no more weight loss to be extracted from aluminium) but it's tweaked to be smoother. The CAAD12 was no slouch in that department, but that bike's back-end smoothness wasn't quite matched by the front end, which was a bit firm.

Cannondale has remedied that criticism and in the CAAD13 produced a bike that is wonderfully smooth all-round. Our reviewer took a first ride on the CAAD13 in the Cotswolds and wrote: “the CAAD13 blew me away with its ability to not just provide a smooth and calm ride, but to really close the gap to a carbon fibre bike”.