What Cycling Electric published
On 5 October 2026 Cycling Electric published Electric bikes hold similar second-hand values as pedal cycles, written by its editor, Mark Sutton. The piece is built on figures we sent him on 1 October 2026 and names Cyclesite as the source.
It reports that electric bikes under a year old were advertised at about 72% of their original price, two-year-old electric bikes at about 56% and four-year-old electric bikes at about 50%. It quotes our founder, Tom Southern:
"Compared with normal bikes of the same age and price, the difference is only less than three percentage points."
Cycling Electric's earlier guide, What should I look for when buying a second-hand electric bike?, links to our free stolen-bike check, which looks a frame number up in an international stolen-bike registry and in theft reports filed by riders.
The asking-price figures, measured again
Before repeating those figures here we ran them again, on 13 October 2026. They held.
| Age of bike | Electric bikes | Ordinary bikes | Gap | Adverts counted (electric, ordinary) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Under a year old | 72.5% | 71.5% | 1.0 points | 308, 415 |
| Two years old | 56.0% | 58.3% | 2.3 points | 280, 484 |
| Four years old | 48.8% | 49.7% | 0.9 points | 374, 497 |
Each percentage is the median asking price as a share of the price the advert says the bike cost new. Cycling Electric printed 72%, 56% and about 50%. The four-year figure now reads 48.8%.
How it was measured:
- Whose adverts. Adverts on one UK second-hand marketplace that we track, collected between 30 April and 13 October 2026. These are not adverts placed on Cyclesite. We counted every advert that gave both a model year and a new price.
- Asking prices, not sale prices. We do not know what any of these bikes sold for, or whether they sold.
- "Original price" is the advert's own figure. It is what the advert says the bike cost new. We have not checked it against manufacturers' list prices. If adverts overstate it, both columns read low.
- Age is the year the bike was advertised minus its model year, so "under a year old" means a bike advertised in its own model year.
- Same age and price. The table compares by age only. Split again by original price (under £2,000, £2,000 to £3,999, £4,000 and over), the gap between electric and ordinary bikes was 3.8 points at its widest, on 50 to 283 adverts per group. Small groups move around, so treat the banded gaps as rough.
These percentages are not comparable with our bike depreciation report. That report measures each model against the newest used example of the same model, not against a stated new price, so its percentages run higher.
Two figures we have not measured again
Cycling Electric reported, from figures we shared on 1 October 2026, that around 1 in 100 used bikes made in 2015 is electric, compared with roughly 1 in 4 made in 2022, with the sharpest rise between 2019 and 2022. It also reported that around one in five sellers cut their asking price, by 10% to 15%.
We have not been able to measure either of these again to the standard of the table above, so they appear here as Cycling Electric reported them and not as a Cyclesite measurement.
For journalists
The Cyclesite UK Bike Value Index has monthly prices by bike category, a chart you can embed, a citation line and the method.
If you want a number that is not on that page, write to press@cyclesite.co.uk and say what the piece is about. We will tell you the sample size and what the figure does not show.
To price one particular bike, use our free valuation.
Google then shows our guides more often, including in its AI answers.
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