Top five cheap mattresses for 2021

Buy a pricey pocket-sprung or memory foam mattress and you’ll sleep soundly on it for so long that it will work out better value for money than a cheap mattress that will sag and soften within a few years. Or so they say.

And yet, time and again our expert tests have conclusively proven that while spending more may get you better quality materials, such as silk and cashmere, it doesn’t guarantee superior support or stability.

We’ve tested mattresses costing £1,500 – the equivalent of more than 40 pence per night for 10 years – that are less supportive and long-lasting than mattresses costing £200 – or five pence per night for 10 years.

We’ve tested good and bad mattresses at every price point so, however much you want to spend, make sure you check our full list of Best Buy mattresses.

The best budget mattresses

All of the mattresses we’ve picked out below cost £320 or less and all of them are Best Buys. That means that, at the very least, you can rely on them to support your spine for years to come, without sagging or softening.

Table last checked: October 2021

Which? mattress reviews

You can have complete confidence in our mattress recommendations. Not only are we completely independent and impartial, but every mattress we test is subjected to an extensive series of lab tests, all of which have been designed by mattress experts.

Our body support tests, for example, use special equipment to measure the shape of our test subjects’ spines at 36 different points. When you’re lying on your back, a good mattress should keep your spine in the same shape as when you’re standing, while your spine should be parallel to the mattress when you’re lying on your side.

We also accurately measure the firmness, warmth and breathability of mattresses, as well as dropping weights on them and measuring the bounce to see how stable they are. A stable mattress will be good at preventing movement from transferring from one side of the bed to the other, ideally without making it more difficult for you to roll over and switch sleeping positions during the night.

After all this, and more, we simulate up to 10 years of use by rolling heavy human-sized barrels over each mattress thousands upon thousands of times. We then do our body support tests all over again to see how it’s changed, while also assessing each mattress for sagging and softening.

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