The best cycling shoes for under £100 – great value picks for road and mountain biking

Boardman has delivered an absolute belter of a spec list for the sub-£100 price tag on their latest Carbon Cycle Shoes. It’s quite rare to see a full carbon fibre sole on a shoe with an RRP of £90. While there is a little bit of flex, they offer decent stiffness, coping with the majority of scenarios it’s likely to find itself in. The sole is compatible with three-bolt cleat options only though – no option for two-bolt SPDs.

They are also well vented and the upper gives a supple feel for comfort too – plus the adjustment of the ratchet dials allows you to tweak them on the fly. Performance is also helped by the retention system, provided by Atop. It’s a dial system that tightens a cable evenly across the top of your foot, similar to Boa and the like. Cheaper shoes tend to use one dial with a Velcro strap at the toes, so it’s good to see Boardman showing no signs of penny-pinching and speccing twin dials.

Decathlon’s Rockrider Mountain Bike/Gravel Race 900 shoes are a fantastic pair of off-road shoes for XC mountain biking and gravel adventures. They are reasonably stiff race-style shoes which tester Patrick says are “comfortable and easy to adjust via the single large dial which smoothly pulls its nylon cord to tighten the shoe”.

The outsole of the shoe is made from nylon and glass fibre polymer for stiffness and durability and the lug pattern is XC race style with token heal lugs, blocks to the side of the cleat box and pre-moulded pseudo toe studs at the front of the shoe for grip when running off the bike.

Decathlon offers a lifetime warranty on their Habu dial system and two years on the shoes in general which is pretty awesome for £80.

The Endura Hummvee Flat Pedal Shoes are comfortable and extremely versatile as they’re an excellent choice for both on and off the bike. The grippy sole provides sufficient stiffness for riding without compromising off-the-bike comfort for walking.

The Hummvees feel light not only in comparison with walking boots, but also when compared with other flat-pedal off-road shoes, so you don’t feel like you’ve got anchors on your feet after an hour or so. They’re also decently ventilated along the sides and on the toe box, which helps to provide a nice balance between breathability and keeping your feet warm.

The Hummvees are unisex so the styling is quite neutral except for the choice of laces. The shoes come with two pairs of laces, described by Endura as ‘wild and mild’. The shoes also feature an elasticated lace stash, which helps to keep the lace away from the chain and cranks. The Hummvees come in six colour options – the olive green pictured above, black, navy pebble, white and grey.

The Shimano MT3W Women’s SPD shoes sit in that rare midground of being a dedicated bike shoe that’s stiff for riding, yet easy to walk in. They’re a cost-effective and comfortable option for on or off-road riding and touring, with relaxed low-key looks. Able to be used with or without cleats, they’re spot on for those first venturing into clipless pedals. If you want to go the clip-in route there’s a bolt-on/off plate that you need to remove so you can attach the cleats – or leave it in place/reattach for a flat-soled non-clip-in shoe.

The shoe fastens and adjusts with straightforward laces and there’s an elasticated keeper to hold them secure.

The soles are very flexible – they’re not designed for demanding riders looking for an injection of power – but they are still stiffer and better shaped than trainers or casual shoes. They look pretty low-key, too, meaning they won’t look out of place with casual clothing rather than Lycra.

The Bontrager SSR Multisport bike shoes are perfect all-rounders with enough pedalling efficiency in the saddle and enough grip by foot to keep everyone happy. With very grippy rubber tread at the sole, good if not super-plush comfort inside, and a supportive inner sole, these are fine for standing, walking and even tackling a spot of slip-slide hike-a-bike, and Bontrager says they deliver “trainer-like comfort”.

Tester Matt says, “Comfort on the pedals is even better than comfort on foot. I didn’t suffer any hotspots when pushing on and – even in temperatures hovering around freezing – I didn’t get cold feet. Whether with or without two-bolt SPD-style cleats, the sole provides a good and fairly effective pedalling experience”.

These shoes will do the trick quite happily for a whole host of cyclists, from commuters to tourers to leisure, gravel, social road and light mountain bikers. Simply, they’re very good.

The Giro Gauge offers a great mix of comfort, pedalling efficiency and off-bike grip, making it an excellent commuting shoe. Although designed and promoted as mountain biking shoes, in terms of style the Gauges look like quite a classy commuting option.

Build-wise, it treads quite a nice line between reinforced sections at toe and heel – as you’d expect for off-roading shoes – with otherwise quite lightweight construction and a synthetic fibre breathable upper.

Underneath, it’s a slightly different matter, with a chunky treaded sole interrupted in its central section by mounting points for clipless pedal cleats. Giro does supply a couple of plastic covers that you can bolt in to cover the cleat mounts should you want, though.

The Specialized Recon 1.0 clipless mountain bike shoe is a versatile and lightweight trail shoe that happily takes on gravel riding too. It’s comfortable, stiff and easy to walk in.

Built around the brand’s well-established Body Geometry footbed, the Recon 1.0 uses a nylon outsole with a TPU injected forefoot, which allows for some flex at the toe – something that makes off-the-bike antics easier. The aggressively-shaped tread uses Specialized’s SlipNot rubber compound, and it’s impressively grippy.

The upper is a mixture of perforated paneling and a tongue area of breathable fabric, and it ventilates well enough to mean the Recon 1.0 is not so great in wet weather. You might want a more winter -focused shoe for damp trails. We tested the Velcro version of these and they have since been updated with a BOA dial.