What $10,000 Bought You in a Motorcycle, 2020 to 2025
Updated: Sep 28
Ten thousand dollars is the budget most riders name when they want a real motorcycle and no argument about it. Between 2020 and 2025 that number bought a noticeably different set of machines at the end of the window than at the start, and not in the direction general talk about motorcycle pricing would suggest. The cheapest bike in this series barely moved. The engineering underneath the tier moved a great deal.
Disclosure: MotoGearRater and Legendary USA have the same owner. Links to legendaryusa.com in this article go to our owner’s store, and are marked as sponsored. How we make money
The floor of the market moved $300 in six years
Honda's Rebel 500 opened 2020 at $6,199, with the ABS version at $6,499. It closed 2025 at $6,499 for the base bike, $6,799 with ABS and $6,999 for the ABS SE. Six model years, and the entry price rose three hundred dollars. Nothing else in this series held a line like that.
The motorcycle underneath the price was equally still: a 471cc liquid-cooled parallel twin, a 27.2 inch seat, 408 lb wet and 414 lb with ABS, every year from 2020 through 2025. The one change of substance in the window arrived for 2025, and it was a revised seat and handlebar position. Ergonomics, not engineering.
Even the torque figure has to be handled carefully, which is a useful lesson about entry bikes generally. Honda's US arm publishes no torque number for the Rebel 500 in any year. Honda Europe publishes 31.9 lb-ft at 6,000 rpm, verified from the 2022 model year onward. The engine did not change before that, but the figure was not published, so we do not print it for 2020 or 2021.
The 2020 bike was not a placeholder either. That model year brought a new fork, LED lighting and an assist and slipper clutch with 30 percent lighter lever effort. Honda described the Rebel 300 and 500 that year as the industry's top-selling small-displacement cruiser models, and was still calling them the industry's most popular entry-level cruisers in 2024. Our post on Honda's best seller of 2021 covers how that language has shifted year to year.
The top of the tier moved $2,000 the other way
Indian's Scout Bobber started the window at $10,999 and held there through 2021, with the base Scout at $11,499. By 2023 the Bobber listed at $12,249 and the base Scout at $13,249. 2024 was a colors-only year at the same $12,249. For 2025 the Bobber came in at $12,999. Our 2022 figure is roughly $12,249 and it is soft, possibly later-cycle pricing rather than the sticker in January of that year.
What that money bought through 2024 was a 1133cc liquid-cooled 60 degree V-twin making 100 hp at 8,100 rpm and 72 lb-ft at 6,000 rpm, with a 25.6 inch seat. We leave weight out for those years deliberately: published figures split between 552 lb wet and 533 lb dry, and the two cannot be reconciled into one honest spec.
The tier also got wider rather than only more expensive. For 2022 Indian added the Scout Rogue at $11,499 and the Rogue Sixty at $9,999, which put four figures back on an Indian window sticker in the middle of a rising market.
In 2021 the tier absorbed an automatic
The other thing that happened inside ten thousand dollars was the Rebel 1100. Honda launched it for 2021 on the Africa Twin's 1084cc parallel twin, at $9,299 for the manual and $9,999 for the dual clutch version, with a 27.5 inch seat, 509 lb for the DCT bike and three ride modes.
That is a 1,084cc motorcycle with no clutch lever, sitting one dollar under the round number. By 2023 Honda had extended the platform into the Rebel 1100T bagger at $11,299, and the Rebel name covered a range running from $4,749 to $11,299. The entry cruiser had become a sub-brand.
2025 is when the cheap end got a new engine
The most substantial engineering change at this price point in the whole window landed in the last year of it. Indian replaced the Scout completely for 2025: new steel-tube frame, new engine, and gains of 11 percent in power and 14 percent in torque over the 1133. The SpeedPlus 1250 makes 105 hp at 6,300 rpm and 82 lb-ft at 6,300 rpm, and the Bobber carrying it weighs 522 lb as shipped.
Underneath it sits the part that matters here. The MY2025 Scout Sixty family runs a 999cc version of the same SpeedPlus design, 85 hp, 65 lb-ft, five speeds, in three variants starting at $9,999. That is a new engine at a price a beginner budget can reach, arriving in the same window during which the cheapest bike in this series changed its seat. Our look at Indian's best seller of 2025 goes through the redesign in detail.
What the sticker price leaves out
Three things, and they all cost money. First, ABS was a trim decision on the Rebel 500 through 2025, which is why the bike carries two or three prices in every year of that table. For 2026 Honda drops the non-ABS bike entirely and makes ABS standard at $6,799, so the cheapest number in the old price list stops existing.
Second, freight. Every price in this post is base MSRP excluding it. The one freight figure available to us is Harley's, around $850 in 2024 on a much larger motorcycle, and it at least establishes the order of magnitude of the line at the bottom of a dealer worksheet.
Third, fit. A 25.6 inch seat and a 27.2 inch seat are not interchangeable for a lot of riders, and the gap between a 408 lb machine and one whose weight cannot be pinned down at all is the gap between two very different first years of ownership.
What this means for a buyer today
If your budget sits near the bottom of this range, the used market for 2020 through 2024 Rebel 500s is close to a single motorcycle spread across five model years. Buy on condition and on which trim carries ABS, not on model year, because the years are mechanically the same bike.
If you can reach the top of the tier, the decision changed in 2025 and it changed in a way that is easy to state. The 1133 Scout is a mature, high-revving engine with years of market history behind it. The SpeedPlus is newer, stronger on paper, and sits in a first-year chassis. Neither is wrong, but they are not the same purchase, and the used 1133 bikes are the ones getting cheaper.
And if you are inside this budget because you want an automatic rather than because you want the cheapest bike, that option has existed since 2021 at $9,999. It is the only choice on this list that changes how you ride rather than what you ride. For the wider market context, see our roundup of the best-selling motorcycles of 2025.
A gear note before the first bike
The purchase most often underestimated at this budget is the jacket, because a cheap motorcycle makes a cheap jacket feel proportionate. It is not. A first leather jacket is the item riders replace soonest and most often buy twice, and Legendary USA's own guide to choosing a first leather motorcycle jacket is a sensible place to read about fit and weight before spending anything. Read it as background rather than as a shopping list.
Across six model years the entry price of a motorcycle rose about as much as a set of tires. What changed underneath that price was far larger, and nearly all of it arrived in the final year of the window.
Cover photo: "Honda CMX500 Rebel parked at Hogs for Hospice, Leamington, Ontario, 2025-08-02" by Chris Woodrich, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
