Best kids bikes 2024 — from beginner-friendly balance bikes to junior sized road bikes

Raleigh's Balance Banana Bike, tailored for smaller children with 12-inch wheels, pays homage to Raleigh's iconic Team Banana bikes from the late 80s. Despite a slightly higher weight than other balance bikes, it offers clever design choices and is great value.

The bike's adjusted geometry enhances balance, featuring flared chainstays for wider tyres and added safety by keeping feet away from the wheels. Well-designed grips with buffers and handlebar stoppers ensure secure handling, limiting the turning angle to 90 degrees.

The Banana balance bike is highly adjustable, accommodating various heights. Raleigh's website specifies a rider height range from 88cm to 107cm for this 12-inch wheel bike.

The LittleBig bike is a brilliant concept that will see your child travel from the early stages of balance through to learning how to pedal and beyond. It's light, well made and above all so exciting to ride that you'll struggle to get them off it.

The LittleBig starts life as a balance bike with a very low saddle; that's 'Little' mode. As junior grows you turn the seat clamp section over to set it up in 'Big' balance bike mode, and when it's time to fly solo you fit the pedals. That should cover an age range from about two years old to around six or seven, depending on how quickly your child grows.

As well as being a great idea, very well executed, it's also just a very very good bike. The aluminium alloy frame means it's light, and its long wheelbase keeps it stable, making it very easy for youngsters to learn to balance and then pedal

The Pinto grows with your youngster, starting out as a balance bike, and turning into a small pedal bike with the addition of cranks, and then a larger pedal bike with the clever built-in frame extensibility taking it from a 12in bike to a 14in bike. 

It's very well engineered, and a confidence-inspiring ride for a young cyclist. The belt drive is a nice touch, shedding a source of grime that always manages to find its way onto clothes and skin.

The Tektro V-brakes are very powerful on a bike of this size and will stop the bike instantly and the bike features a removable sprocket to up the gearing by about 20% as your child gets stronger. 

The Hornit Hero is a starter pedal bike for younger riders – roughly 3.5 to 6 years old – that's light and built to a high quality with sensible components. 

The Hero features a belt drive and, while this is not unique, most others use chains. The benefit of a belt drive is reduced maintenance and a slightly lower weight.

Other key details include the short-reach brake levers, a 22mm handlebar diameter more suited to smaller hands, and slim but soft and comfortable grips. The seatpost also gets a direct-mounted saddle that allows the lowest possible standover.

Giant's ARX 24 is rather good for the aspiring junior cyclist. A great quality frame and fork matched to a well-chosen spec list make it an easy and fun bike to ride, and it doesn't cost the earth either. It's also available in four other colours if yellow doesn't do it for your young 'un.

For the ARX Giant has used its Aluxx grade aluminium alloy, not just for the frame but also the fork, and that means the whole bike comes in at a pretty impressive 9.02kg (19.88lb) on the road.cc scales. Weight on paper really isn't everything, and according to our 10-year-old tester Libby, the ARX feels much lighter than it is. She had no issues lifting the front wheel to hop up kerbs, and when we were out and about on the trails, ruts and tree roots weren't an issue either.

Everything about the Frog 61 is created for young cyclists from the geometry, the FrogFit gear shifters, easy-to-reach brake levers and the patented Frog crank arms. The Frog 61 is designed for 8-10-year-olds, with a recommended inside leg of 57cm to 74cm.

With its lightly-treaded tyres, the Frog is happy to be ridden off-road as well as on the road, and even on loose sections of gravel or mud the bike remained stable and easy to control. Full mudguards are included, as are the pedals, and in the accessories box, you also get reflectors, paint plasters and frame protection stickers.

At 9.3kg it's light too, especially as that's for the complete build you see here.

The Vitus Energie 24 Kids CX Bike is a cyclo-cross bike so can be used both on and off-road. It features child-friendly geometry and a robust, well-specced build, topped off with an awesome paint job.

For the build quality and spec list, this bike is worth the money, and it's robust enough to be passed down through the family. Bikes like this often retain their value for resale too. 

The shifting is taken care of by Microshift's R8 cassette, R9 rear mech and R8 shifter, and keeping a 1x at the front drops weight over a 2x chainset, and keeps things simple too.

If road is more your child's thing then Vitus offers the Razor, which uses the same frame and fork and wears 1in slicks. Both bikes are available in 24in and 26in wheel sizes.