Our buyer’s guide to the best electric bikes, including hybrids, folding bikes, eMTBs, budget electric bikes and more

By Jack Luke

Published: Friday, 20 September 2024 at 14:00 PM


The best electric bike for you will depend on the type of riding you want to do, so in this guide we’ll cover the whole range of different electric bike types and recommend some of the best we’ve tested.

Electric bikes – or ebikes as they’re commonly known – are bicycles with an electric motor and battery that provides assistance as you pedal.

There are many benefits to riding an electric bike. Electric bikes make riding up hills easier and will enable most riders to travel at a higher speed over longer distances without arriving at their destination covered in sweat.

Despite common misconceptions, you can still ride an electric bike for fitness. Electric bike laws limit the power of an ebike motor, so you still need to pedal – there’s no twist-and-go throttle here.

There is an electric bike for every type of riding. Electric folding bikes and electric hybrid bikes are great choices for cycling to work, electric mountain bikes will help you get to the top of the next trail so you can enjoy more descending, and electric road bikes and electric gravel bikes will enable you to take on longer adventures.

Making sense of how an electric bike works and how to choose the right one for you is a daunting task. Luckily for you, BikeRadar’s team of expert testers have put in hundreds of hours riding more than 185 of the best ebikes across all categories.

Our testing is 100 per cent editorially independent and impartial, so you can always trust our recommendations.

In this in-depth buyer’s guide to choosing the best electric bike for any rider, we’ll talk you through the things you need to consider for each category of ebike. We also highlight the best ebikes we have reviewed, as selected by BikeRadar’s expert team of tech editors, for each type of ebike, with links to our detailed buyer’s guide for each category.

We also have a general buyer’s guide to electric bike tech at the bottom of this article that answers common questions. For even more information, take a look at our ebike FAQs.

There’s a lot to cover here, so use the links below to skip to the section you need, or read on for every detail.