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10 best places to buy cheap mattresses and divan beds under £500, £200 or £100

We've compared the cost of a double mattress at 10 of the cheapest online bed stores in the UK, to see what you can get on a tight budget.

As a very general rule, you get what you pay for with a mattress and some of the beds under £100 are, quite frankly, just about good enough for the family dog, or perhaps a mother in law who might overstay her welcome on a comfortable bed.

If you can afford a cheap end pocket spring mattress, I'd certainly consider that a good investment over an open coil or basic foam mattress.

Anyway, we looked at three things at each bed retailer:

the cheapest double mattress we could find, regardless of the quality (might be good enough for a guest mattress, but I wouldn't want to sleep on most of these full time)
the cheapest pocket spring mattress with at least 1000 springs as we think that's the sign of a good quality bed
the cheapest double bed divan and mattress, regardless of the quality

Prices correct at time of searching.

1. Amazon

Over the last few years Amazon has shifted from an online shop which sold its own stuff (including a few beds and mattresses) to a shopping centre with loads of retailers competing to sell to you. The result is that the range is huge and prices are low, although you may end up buying from a third party.

Pretty much every brand of mattresses and beds are on Amazon, with a few top end exceptions. Search for Silentnight and you'll get 100 results just in the mattress section, and it is similar with searches for other big mid-priced brands like Rest Assured and Sealy

My advice with Amazon is to check the seller's rating, although you are covered well by Amazon if something goes wrong.

A couple of options stood out for me when I was looking for cheap mattresses on Amazon:

The very firm 'Extrafresh Urban Living Bio' memory foam mattress was getting very good reviews considering its £169 price tag. Alternatively, for £189 you can get the Inofia Lavender Infused Memory Foam Mattress which is medium firmness and includes a trial period and 10 year guarantee.
If you prefer pocket sprung mattresses, take a look at the Happy Beds range which offer good specifications for the money.

For our price comparison we just looked at beds and mattresses sold directly by Amazon. In late 2019 we found:

2. Mattress Online

Mattress Online wins lots of awards (including best online retailer of the year 2016 and 2017) and is one of the biggest and well established online bed sellers. They claim they offer 'up to 70%' off but I would take that with a pinch of salt, and just look at what you are getting for your money rather than worrying about the original price.

They stock a lot of the big brands - Sealy, Silentnight, Rest Assured, Sleepeezee, Relyon, Gainsborough, Myers, Slumberland, Airsprung, Breasley and Sweet Dreams.

Pricing is competitive when I've compared like for like with high street retailers, as you might expect. At the budget end of the market, you will find Mattress Online prices are:

3. eBay

eBay is another online retailer which has gradually changed over the last decade. At one stage eBay was full of private sellers selling items at auction. Now, most items seem to be Buy It Now and are sold by businesses using eBay as a shop front. The private sellers are still there, it's just a much busier website than it once was.

I've always found prices on eBay to be very competitive, because you can easily narrow down your search and find the cheapest available. Make sure you check the seller's feedback and consider using Paypal or some other payment option which gives you some guarantee.

At first the choice is baffling with 800,000 beds and mattresses when I checked but you can narrow down easily with the filtering options which are better and quicker than most websites offer.

For the price comparison, we just looked at new items on eBay, although I'm sure you could pick up a 30 year old mattress which was 70% dust for 99p if you were so inclined. Anyway, we found:

4. John Lewis & Partners

You wouldn't associate John Lewis with cheap products generally, but there is a good range in prices in their mattress range (there's an £18,000 bed, although I suspect they don't sell many...).

Of course, John Lewis also has an outstanding customer service reputation, and you can tell guests that 'the bed came from John Lewis' without actually mentioning that it cost less than a weekly shop.

The cheapest mattresses and divan beds we could find in our price comparison were:

So, prices that are actually cheaper than Dreams for a mattress or basic. Obviously, we aren't comparing like for like, but it does show that you shouldn't ignore a retailer which you might assume would be only aiming at the luxury end of the mattress and bed market.

5. Very

Very is one of the few retailers we found selling the Dormeo Memory Plus, which has been given an award by expert reviewers. It's now one of the UK's biggest online stores, so it's worth a look in your mattress search. Prices range from around £100 up to £2000 and there's a comprehensible choice of about 130 mattresses in all (so not the 8000 mattresses which some offer...).

In our price comparison we found:

6. Bedstar

We bought a bed from Bedstar and we were pleased with the service and price (we went for a Rest Assured divan in the end with a squidgy latex layer, although I think in hindsight I should have gone for a bed that could be turned and then bought a topper).

Anyway, Bedstar is quite similar to Mattressman and Mattress Online in that they both have a big range and stock a lot of the bed mattress brands. Bedstar also frequently do discount codes and deals which are advertised on their website.

In our price comparison, we found the following prices at Bedstar:

7. Argos

Argos is certainly worth a look nowadays for cheap mattresses and beds. -Their product range has grown and grown in recent years and they now have a good range of mattresses, from the cheap and cheerful through the higher end of the market.

You will occasionally find good reductions on beds are Argos, and they also do discount codes on a semi-regular basis. When I searched a little while ago (late 2019) they were doing 20% off all furniture, which made quite a difference to their bed prices.

For our price comparison, the cheapest beds at Argos were:

8. Dreams

Dreams is one of the UK's biggest bed sellers, and they offer the significant advantage of customers being able to try out their beds instore. It can take a little while to go through the Dreams filtering process, but it is clearly labelled and laid out.

But are they a cheap bed seller? Well, one observation about Dreams is that they are frequently have massive reductions and big red stickers. If you're a newcomer to the mattress and bed buying world it's tempting to look at the 'original' price but my advice would be to look at the price of the bed, and what it is actually made of (read our beginners' guide as well if you've got five minutes).

Anyway, prices at Dreams when we looked were

9. Bensons for Beds

Bensons for Beds has more stores than any other bed seller in the UK, which offers the major advantage of being able to try out your mattress beforehand. That may be less of an issue if you are just looking for a cheap guest bed, but more significant if you are spending £1000 on a high quality pocket sprung mattress which you hope will last you for 10 years or more.

In our price comparison, we found prices for their cheapest mattresses and beds were:

10. Mattress Man

Mattress Man is big with a capital B, with around 8000 mattresses to choose from (a rather baffling number unless you know what you are looking for).

But does a huge stock range equate to low prices? Well, they do stock some of the more expensive names in the mattress market, such as Hypnos (£2000 for a king size), but they also have a decent range at the cheap end.

We searched in November 2019 and found the cheapest Mattress Man prices were:

Results - the UK's cheapest double mattress

Our comparison of the cheapest double mattress we could find online had prices ranging from £50 on eBay through to
£139 at Bedstar.

The top 10 order for the cheapest mattress of any type was:

So, the cheapest mattress overall was one at eBay, but to be honest though, the comparison is fairly meaningless as we are comparing completely different foam and sprung beds. A slightly closer comparison will be between the various open coil spring beds (although there is still going to be some variation between mattresses).

I'd personally be reluctant to buy a very cheap mattress, but if you are just looking for a guest bed or if money's tight then it does show that you can get something at least for a very cheap price.

Results - the UK's cheapest pocket sprung double mattress

If you want a sprung mattress and can afford an upgrade, then I would definitely consider a pocket spring bed with at least 1000 springs. Once again, there was a big variation in prices between the different beds we found, with prices ranging from £120 to £279 when we searched in late 2019.

The top 10 order for the cheapest pocket sprung mattress of at least 1000 springs was:

Once again, we see eBay and Amazon coming out as very cheap retailers for mattresses, with prices around half of those from the high street bed stores such as Dreams and Bensons for Beds (although admittedly the mattresses are not exactly the same and spring count isn't all that matters).

The big online retailers such as Bedstar, Mattress Man and Mattress Online performed well too with pocket sprung mattress prices around the £200 mark.

It goes to show that if you shop around you can get a pocket sprung mattress at Amazon for the sort of price you'd expect to only be able to afford a foam mattress or open coil mattress.

Results - the UK's cheapest divan bed and mattress set

We just compared the cheapest divan and mattress at each store, so it's worth noting that there will be differences in the quality of the mattresses on offer. However, if you are just looking for a cheap bed for the spare room then you can pick up a divan and mattress set for under £150. Prices ranged from £135 to £329 when we searched (in November 2019).

Here are the results of our top 10 comparison for a cheap divan set with mattress:

In our divan bed and mattress comparison, eBay and Amazon once again came out as the cheapest option, with the online only mattress retailers somewhere in the middle and the big name mattress retailers as the most expensive.

Here are some more mattress retailers which didn't make our top 10, but which you might like to explore in your search for a new bed:

11. Happy Beds

Happy Beds is a UK company which just sells its own mattresses, at the budget end of the market. They sell pretty much every type of mattress including pocket spring mattresses (the best type of sprung mattress) as well as memory foam mattresses, latex mattresses and mattresses for kids.

When I checked, prices for a double mattress ranged from about £100 to £450.

Delivery is free to most postcodes.

The prices in our comparison were:

12. Dunelm

You've probably bought a pair of curtains from Dunelm, but they also have a fairly large range of mattresses online (about 250 when I checked). Prices range from about £100 - £1000.

They stock most of the names in the Silentnight group of brands, which included Rest Assured, Sealy and Silentnight (obviously). They also have a few other names including Dorma and Relyon.

Delivery is free over £49, which is pretty much everything on the website. The filtering and navigation is simple and more detailed than some of the less specialist retailers. They also have a big range at the lower end of the mattress market.

They also fared pretty well in our price comparison:

13. Archers Sleepcentre

Archers Sleepcentre is a Scottish based retailer, but it offers free next day delivery to the rest of the UK on most of its beds and mattresses. They sell some of the bigger name bed brands plus a few smaller companies (we found Sealy, Silentnight, Breasley, Deluxe Beds, Dura Beds, Highgrove, Kaymed, Sareer and Shire Beds).

14. Bed Factory Direct

Merseyside-based Bed Factory Direct mostly sells cheaper end mattresses and beds, with the majority of their stock in the £100 - £300 price range. Most are their own brand (Bed Factory Direct Workshop), although they do have some Sealy, Breasley and Silentnight mattresses. Delivery is free over £100.

In our price comparison, we found the lowest prices were:

15. Carpetright

Carpetright actually has a fairly large range of mattresses, and they have the added advantage of being able to try before you buy which online only retailers can't offer (or those ones which only have have two stores which are 200 miles from your house).

Most of their mattresses are aimed at the mid-range market, with some more expensive brands such as Kaymed. Delivery is generally another £39, although you can pick up and take away yourself if your car is big enough...

In our price comparison, the cheapest prices we could find were:

16. P&N Homewares

P&M Homewares has a small selection of mattresses at the budget end of the market. When I checked there were 5 double mattresses on offer ranging from about £120 to £270. Brands include SleepSoul and Luxor. The company is based in the East Midlands but delivers worldwide. Delivery is free in the UK.

£95 for P&M Homewares' cheapest double mattress (Azarra)

17. Asda

Superstore Asda doesn't go big on beds, but they had a choice of 30 double mattresses when I checked. Only three brands were featured, which may come as a relief if you've been sifting through websites with 30 different brands and thousands of choices. Asda has some budget priced George (own brand) mattresses, as well as some Airsprung mattresses and the cheaper end of the Silentnight range.

The own brand George mattresses typically have a low spring count (800) but most reviews are positive, so might be worth considering if you are after a guest bed or don't have much budget to play with.

Our mattress price comparison found the following:

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