Hi guys,
Please, allow me to share my research on road bikes. I analyzed prices, weights, types, brakes used, and groupsets of over 600 mass-produced road bikes.
Here are some of the main findings:
In 2023, the average road bike will set you back around 5,982 USD.
The typical road bike weighs about 8.32 kg (18.34 lbs). Unfortunately, many manufacturers don’t share their bike weights.
Rim brakes are almost dead (or at least, endangered species).
Shimano is more popular than SRAM. Can you guess by how much? Can you guess the most popular groupset?
Electronic shifting is on the rise (probably more than we think).
Carbon is king, as it’s the most popular bike frame material (by a landslide).
I also calculated the cost per gram for bikes with the listed weight and found the point where the diminishing returns begin. As you can see from the chart below, it’s around 0.9 USD per gram. Above this threshold, you pay a premium.
I hope you find the stats interesting. It took us more than 40 hours to put them together but I believe they provide valuable insights. They also bust some common myths.
Min/max/avg are usually plotted with a box plot (where median and 25perc. etc is shown).
One of the most defining things on a bike is its geometry. It is addressed in the chapter “performance, aero vs. endurance”, however the definitions are not clear and probably set by the manufacturer. I’d have liked to see some comparison of reach, stack, head angle etc.
Tire clearance is a big theme at the moment.
Wheel analysis of stock bikes would have catched my interest too.
What’s the median bike price of the brands you analyzed? Avg just shoots trough the roof since covid as topend DA or Sram Red bikes cost upwards of 14k usd. I‘‘d assume 6k usd is what the average enthusiast would spend on a bike but not necessarily representative of the whole market (e.g. beginners).
Given the enormous price difference between carbon and aluminum, I’m interested to know if any of the aluminum bikes came in at the SweetSpot of both low cost and low weight?
I know you didn’t do wheelset data, but I also wonder how many of the low price/mid weight bikes could be converted into great buys with a wheelset conversion.
One thing that surprised me, even though I know Shimano dominates the market, is that there were more DA bikes than any of the SRAM groupsets.
Just a personal opinion, but when it comes to “endurance bikes”, I swear some of the manufacturers (I’m especially looking at you Specialized) seem to be intentionally making their “comfort bikes” as ugly as possible, pushing the consumer to the higher $/gram offerings.
Thanks for sharing the data. This is a fun exercise.
OP is using advertised purchase price (OP calls it cost) This is different than the average or median price of a sold bike. Unless you can include sales volumes of individual bikes on the data set, I think it is not possible to determine the average sales price of road bikes with the information presented.
yeah, you’re completely right. would be so interesting to have insight from a bikeshop owner what they sell to the “avg consumer”. avg price offered doesn’t mean avg sales price. I’d assume it’s much lower depending on where you live. would be great to see a comparison to say 2010 and 2015 and how these prices differ to today.
I suspected it is an average advertised MRSP, which is just some indication on variation of bikes on offer, but it would be interesting to see, what are some brands best sellers.
For instance, if we look on Wilier Cento10SL offering, official price list shows options from 4600€ for 105 Di2 with SHIMANO RS171 DISC to 6500€ for Ultegra Di2 with WILIER TRIESTINA NDR38KC CARBON DISC, while in reality the hotest selling bike at our biggest LBS is the one with mechanical Ultegra disk with SHIMANO RS171 DISC for 3300€, which is officially not even an option any more.
I think the way your cost figures are presented is misleading, it takes no account of the actually figures sold, thus a single 20k bike i carries as much weight on your figures as a 500 bike, even though the latter may sell 100000 and the former might sell 1. According your median and average price figures bear no semblance to what the median and average amount paid for a bike is. Whilst this is understandable as you don’t have the sales figures for each bike I think you should make it clear that the average cyclist doesn’t pay more than 5k for a bike
Also looking at my Pinerello with its ‘campag group set and feeling discriminated against
I can add a line in the notes that the prices presented are the Recommended retail prices. Of course, there is no way to find the prices the bikes were sold for. I am not sure how statistics of other products are done (e.g., cars), but I believe they also use the catalog prices…
Either way, I believe this is the most comprehensive and informative research on this topic yet.
I agree. I understand the point people are making, but there’s no way to know what people actually paid after negotiation. A lot of shops will also have you pay a higher price for the bike, but then give you big discounts on gear/accessories, give you free maintenance for life, etc., and there’s no way to take that into account either.
Is there a reason why steel bikes are not included? Given that many are customised, it will be difficult, but the price of steel bikes are normally higher than aluminium.
Not a silly question, because its a bad way to represent the data. The x axis appears to be the ‘index number’ of each bike. Ie the row it is in excel. This is what excel does if you dont define an x axis.
