What Happened to Motorcycle Prices Between 2020 and 2025
Updated: Sep 28
Between 2020 and 2025 the four best selling motorcycles in this series moved in price by wildly different amounts, and not in the pattern most riders assume. The cheapest barely moved at all. The most expensive got cheaper for a year. Here is what six years of list prices did, and what a list price leaves out.
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The cheapest bike hardly moved
Honda's Rebel 500 started this window at $6,199 base and $6,499 with ABS. It ended 2025 at $6,499 base, $6,799 with ABS and $6,999 for the SE. That is a $300 move on the base price across six model years, on a motorcycle mechanically the same throughout: the same 471cc liquid cooled parallel twin, the same 27.2 inch seat, the same 408 lb.
None of that is accidental. An entry motorcycle's price is a market position rather than a cost calculation, and the position stops working if the number crosses the line a first-time buyer has in their head. The only real change came at the end of the window, in the specification rather than the sticker: for 2026 Honda drops the non-ABS Rebel 500 and makes ABS standard at $6,799. The base price did not rise so much as the base bike went away.
The most expensive bike moved most, and once moved backwards
Harley's Street Glide Special listed at $27,699 in 2020, $27,099 in 2021, $27,449 in 2022 and $27,999 in 2023. Then the redesigned Street Glide arrived for 2024 at $25,999, and 2025 came in at $27,749. One caveat makes those numbers readable: through MY2023 the Street Glide and Street Glide Special were separate SKUs and the Special was the likelier individual seller, and for MY2024 Harley collapsed them into a single Street Glide. So the 2024 figure is a redesigned bike replacing the old Special, at about $2,000 less.
That price cut arrived with more motorcycle rather than less. The Milwaukee-Eight 117 replaced the 114, torque went to 130 lb-ft at 3,250 rpm, weight fell to 811 lb, and the bike gained a 12.3 inch TFT display and four ride modes. Harley described it as the most comprehensive product development in the touring platform in well over ten years. Its own FY2024 release credits the new Street Glide and Road Glide with contributing to nearly 5 percent growth in the US Touring segment and driving the brand to 74.5 percent share, which is a brand segment figure: Harley, Indian and Honda publish no model-level unit sales, and BMW is the only one of the four that does.
Then $1,750 went back on for 2025, the same year Harley flagged weakness in Touring in the first half, with customer traffic down and affordability becoming more of a focus. A manufacturer naming affordability as a problem and raising the price of its highest profile touring bike in the same twelve months is the most interesting thing in this price set.
On the Scout, the increase bought a different motorcycle
Indian's Scout Bobber listed at $10,999 for 2020 and 2021, sat at $12,249 for 2023 and 2024, and moved to $12,999 for 2025. The mid-cycle figure is the softest number here and may belong later in the cycle than it looks, so treat 2022 as a transition rather than a data point.
What separates this from the Harley pattern is what the last increase paid for. The 2025 Scout is a ground-up redesign: new steel tube frame, the SpeedPlus 1250 engine at 105 hp and 82 lb-ft at 6,300 rpm, about 11 percent more power and 14 percent more torque than the 1133cc engine it replaced, and 522 lb as shipped. Indian charged $750 over the outgoing bike for an entirely new motorcycle, and opened a lower door the same year with the SpeedPlus 999cc Scout Sixty family from $9,999.
The GS moved at the ceiling, not at the floor
BMW's R 1250 GS listed at $17,895 in 2020 and $17,995 from 2021 through 2023, which is a $100 move across four model years on the outgoing generation. The R 1300 GS replaced it at $18,895 for 2024, with a new frame, the gearbox relocated below the engine, 145 hp, 110 lb-ft and 523 lb, which is 26 lb under the 1250 despite more displacement.
The 2025 numbers are where it gets interesting. The base R 1300 GS listed at $19,495, but the R 1300 GS Adventure came in at $22,745 plus $695 destination. And 2025 was the first year the Adventure outsold the base bike, 33,570 units against 32,555. Harley, Indian and Honda publish no model-level unit sales, and BMW is the only one of the four that does, which is why this is the one place in the series where a price and a volume can be put side by side honestly. The entry point to a GS rose about $1,600 across six years. What buyers actually chose moved considerably further.
The money that list prices hide
Every figure above is a list price, and list prices are assembled to different rules by different manufacturers. Harley's are base Vivid Black and exclude freight, about $850 in 2024. BMW quoted the 2025 GS Adventure at $22,745 plus $695 destination, which at least puts the charge in the same sentence. Neither includes tax, title, dealer fees or the accessories touring buyers add before the bike leaves the lot.
The practical effect is that a $25,999 headline is not a $25,999 transaction, and that a cross-brand comparison built purely from MSRP compares numbers assembled to different rules. On the small bikes the distortion is proportionally larger: several hundred dollars of freight and fees against a $6,499 motorcycle is a real percentage of the purchase.
What this means for a buyer today
Three things follow. First, the entry end of the market is close to frozen and the premium end is where the movement is, so if budget is your constraint, the cheap end of these lineups has held its value proposition while the expensive end has not. Second, model-year timing matters: the two biggest movements here, the Street Glide's $2,000 cut and the Scout's $750 increase, both landed on redesign years, so knowing where a model sits in its cycle is worth more than haggling.
Third, get a written out-the-door figure before comparing anything. Freight, destination and dealer fees are not consistent between brands, and the gap between two MSRPs is often smaller than the gap between two out-the-door quotes. For what the money buys in practice, what $25,000 bought between 2020 and 2025 and what $10,000 bought work both ends of this range, and the 2025 best sellers covers where the market ended up.
One gear note, because the budget conversation usually stops at the motorcycle. Gear is the line item buyers postpone and then buy twice, and a leather jacket is the clearest example: bought as an afterthought at the end of a purchase, it is usually the wrong weight or the wrong fit, and it gets replaced within two seasons. Legendary USA's guide to choosing a first leather motorcycle jacket is a reasonable place to work out what you actually need before that money is committed.
The short version
Six years, four bikes, four different price stories. The Rebel 500 moved $300 and stayed the same motorcycle. The Street Glide took a $2,000 cut on a full redesign and then a $1,750 increase in a year its maker was talking about affordability. The Scout's $2,000 rise ended in a bike with a new frame and a new engine. The GS held its entry price within $100 for four years and then let the variant buyers actually wanted climb well past it. Underneath all of it, freight and destination charges no list price shows are still real money at the counter.
Cover photo: "Harley-Davidson Street Glide parked at Hogs for Hospice, Leamington, Ontario, 2025-08-02 04" by Chris Woodrich, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
