Loading selling time tool
A typical selling time for bikes like yours, from listings tracked across the UK market. If we have not seen enough, we say so.
How long a used bike takes to sell in the UK depends far more on the bike and its asking price than on any single market-wide average. Cyclesite measures selling times from listings tracked across the UK second-hand market, weighted by how reliable each source is, and fits a survival curve per cohort of brand, model, category, condition and price band. Listings that had not yet sold are counted as still for sale rather than discarded, so the figures run slower and truer than an average taken over sold adverts alone. Alongside the typical selling time we publish the share sold by one week, one month and three months, with a confidence range. A figure is published only once enough comparable bikes have actually sold; where they have not, the tool says so instead of estimating. Selling times are national, not city-level, and we do not publish a best month to sell because our record is not yet long enough to separate a genuine seasonal pattern from the fact that recent listings have had less time to sell.
Four things account for most of the difference between a bike that goes in a week and one that sits until you give up on it.
Nothing else comes close. A bike priced in line with what comparable ones have recently sold for moves in a fraction of the time of one priced on hope. If a listing has been quiet for a fortnight, the price is usually the reason.
Buyers filter on the thumbnail before they read a word. Daylight, a plain background and a clear shot of the drivetrain and any damage will do more than a long description.
Demand for most bikes climbs through spring and drops through the darker months. Kids bikes run to their own calendar and pick up ahead of Christmas and the summer holidays.
Most buyers are talking to more than one seller. A reply the same day keeps you in the running, and a bike that is easy to arrange a viewing for sells sooner than one that is not.
Where the number comes from
A selling time is only worth reading if you know what stands behind it. Here is the whole of it, including the part where most of the data gets discarded.
Bikes advertised across the UK second-hand market, followed from the day they appear to the day they go.
Catalogue prices, trade-in offers and brand-new stock never enter. Nor does anything we cannot confirm was a real listing that ran its course.
A confirmed sale on Cyclesite counts for more than a listing that quietly vanished elsewhere. Shop stock sitting in a window for months is capped, because that is inventory, not demand.
A selling time is only published once enough comparable bikes have genuinely sold. Below that bar you get told we do not know, which is why the numbers you do see are worth something.
Selling times are national. We do not publish a figure for individual towns or cities, because we have not measured whether bikes genuinely sell faster in one part of the country than another, and presenting a local number we have not verified would be worse than leaving it out. Nor do we publish a best month to sell: our record is not yet long enough to tell a real seasonal pattern from the fact that recent listings have simply had less time to sell.
Price moves this figure more than anything else, so it is worth checking what your bike is worth before you settle on one.
Related: The best time of year to sell a bike · Where to sell a used bike
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