What distinguishes expensive professional racing bikes from inexpensive models

Material battle on France's roads

When the best professional cyclists in the world stage the biggest spectacle in cycling for three weeks, the streets of France also become the stage for an unprecedented battle of equipment.

The fastest and most expensive professional racing bikes in the world are at the Tour de France at the start, and those interested in technology will be keeping a close eye on which bike brands, which gears and which tyres the pros are riding - and which products are ahead at which stages. However, most fans will probably continue to dream about such top material rather than actually being inspired to buy it.

Professional racing bikes are becoming more expensive

It remains a speciality of cycling that, in theory, all professional bikes are available to everyone. However, recent developments have unfortunately meant that fewer and fewer people can afford these racing bikes. On the one hand, the bikes are becoming more and more expensive - due to technical innovations, but most recently also due to crisis-related "price adjustments" by many manufacturers.

Many top models now cost 10,000 euros and more. On the other hand, other areas of life are also becoming more expensive - and many cyclists have less budget for their hobby.

This raises the question of whether a cheaper model would do just as well. After all, manufacturers often offer cheaper offshoots of their professional models with different features. These are called like the Professional racing bikeslook the same at first glance and are advertised with the same arguments: they are supposed to be light, aerodynamic, stiff and comfortable and make the professional feeling affordable. But how much of the best bikes in the world are really in the cheaper versions?

The first clue is given by the scales. The general rule is: the more expensive, the lighter. While the professional racing bikes weigh around seven kilograms or even less, the entry-level versions of the same model can weigh up to two kilograms more. The inexpensive offshoots are also measurably slower in terms of aerodynamics - mainly because there is no budget for fast carbon wheels.

Slight differences in the frame sets

However, the real differences are smaller than the price tags suggest. If you are not spoilt by the feeling of riding a seven-kilo bike, you can have fun and win races with a cheaper bike. However, if you look into the causes of the differences in performance in detail, you will also find specific tuning measures that will bring a cheap bike closer to the performance of professional racing bikes with a manageable amount of effort.

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This is because the different frame quality offered by the manufacturers in the price categories is not worth mentioning in many cases. In most cases, the cheaper framesets are only 100 to 150 grams heavier.

The fact that cheaper bikes are systematically heavier than professional road bikes is mainly due to components such as gears, wheels, tyres, handlebars and saddles. Especially the Impellers influence weight and aerodynamics to a large extent, so a higher-quality tyre would help some bikes.

For others, the cheap wheels turn out to be the biggest brakes. In addition to the bare figures, there are other cost-saving measures on the inexpensive models that are difficult to measure objectively, but which spoil the riding experience.

• The wheels of the stars in the test
• Six affordable road bikes around 1500 euros in the test

We often found the contact points on inexpensive road bikes to be unnecessarily uncomfortable, such as thin aluminium handlebars or inflexible saddles. But this could also be easily changed without having to shell out a lot of money.

Click through: How the expensive and affordable versions of the same model differ

Find out here how much faster the expensive professional racing bikes really are! We had for TOUR 7/22 six different expensive pairings in the test laboratory, in the wind tunnel and on the road and calculated the advantages down to the hundredth of a second.

• Canyon Aeroad CF SL 8 vs. Canyon Aeroad CFR Disc MVDP
• Giant TCR Advanced 1 vs. Giant TCR Advanced SL
• Lapierre Xelius SL 6.0 vs. Lapierre Xelius SL 75TH
• Merida Scultura 7000 vs. Merida Scultura Team
• Specialised Tarmac SL 7 Comp vs. Specialised S-Works Tarmac SL 7
• Wilier Zero SL vs. Wilier Zero SLR

The full test, technical details and individual scores are available at's here for download.

DOWNLOAD "Test: Affordable competition bikes"