Investing in a bed that suits your sleeping style is essential to getting a good night’s rest. But the best cheap mattress might fit your needs nearly as well—if not better (less money spent on foam = more money spent on fun). Yes, you might find yourself laying on something slightly less luxe—but only if you don’t do your research (or better yet, have us do it for you). The gap between the performance of a pretty good mattress and a just-okay mattress is much smaller than you think, and many mid-range mattresses actually move to much more affordable price points during sale events like Sleep Week.
Sure, you’re going to spend a third of your life cradled in a mattress. In general, a good one is worth the investment. The cost-per-wear logic that has spurred many a grail-seeker to blow their budgets is instructive here: Spend $1,000 on a mattress, sleep on it for three years, and the thing has cost you less than a dollar a day. But! Consider all the scenarios and situations where it might make sense to search for the best cheap mattress that can cost anywhere from $200 to $800…
The Best Cheap Mattresses, at a Glance
Looking for Something Specific?
Maybe you move a lot and would rather start fresh instead of tying a mattress to the roof of a car every six months. Maybe you’re outfitting a guest room that won’t see a lot of action. Maybe you’ve done the math and realized covering the floor of your kid’s rumpus room with six cheap mattresses will cost less than those colorful foam puzzle pieces. Heck, maybe you’ll sleep better knowing you didn’t shell out an entire paycheck for a mattress. Point is, there’s no shame in shopping for an ultra-budget mattress, and in plenty of instances a good cheap mattress is the sensible and smart option. Whatever your reason, after years of research and hands-on testing (read: sleeping on a bunch of mattresses), we’ve found plenty of affordable mattresses that will cradle you to sleep.
The Best Affordable Mattress, Overall: Allswell Hybrid
What makes it great: Allswell is a mattress brand owned by Walmart, and it’s been a leader in the sub-$400 cheap mattress game for awhile. The Allswell mattress is a hybrid, with a breathable innerspring base and a memory foam comfort layer on top, much like more expensive mattresses that have gotten the highest marks from our reviews crew. It’s much thinner than the other hybrid mattresses recommended here, and much less dense, but sleeping on it is still surprisingly comfortable, especially for side sleepers. Almost everyone who slept on the Allswell over the last few years was surprised to later learn how affordable it is. The more complicated hybrid construction could cause durability issues down the road, but that’s standard for any hybrid mattress in this price range. We also appreciated that it comes with a solid decade-long warranty and a primo-looking quilted surface that belies the low price point.
The Allswell mattress comes with a 100-night free trial, but the company makes it clear that any shipping fees you paid to get the mattress to your door will not be refunded. You also have to pay out of pocket to have the mattress removed and recycled (and costs vary by state).
An Allswell mattress is covered under a limited warranty against defects in workmanship and materials for 10 years. The company is not clear on what it defines as a defect, though it states a lot of things this warranty does not cover on its website.
The Best Upgrade Mattress Over $500 (That’s Still Pretty Cheap): Tuft & Needle Original
What makes it great: We’ve recommended Tuft & Needle’s Original mattress since we started testing mattresses in earnest years ago. It features a double-layered construction that ensures your body stays supported and cool as you sleep. (Hot sleepers rejoice!) And the Original does a good job of accommodating motion transfer—your movement isn’t going to wake your sleeping partner.
You can try the mattress for 100-nights before deciding whether you want to keep it, no strings attached.
Tuft and Needle mattresses come with a 10-year limited warranty that covers manufacturing and workmanship defects. The company clearly defines what this includes, like splits in the foam, on its website.
The Best Cheap Memory Foam Mattress, Overall: Nectar Classic Memory Foam Mattress
What makes it great: Nectar’s Memory Foam mattress packs an impressive 12 inches of height, which is quite a feat for a mattress under a grand. It’s made up of five different layers, starting with a durable bottom layer designed to simply hold everything in place, followed by eight inches of a basic foundational foam, three inches of what it calls a “responsive foam” designed to promote back alignment (so, a little more cushy), a one-inch thick pressure-relief layer (think, an even more body-contouring memory foam), and it’s all topped off with a cooling antimicrobial top cover. The mattress is also fiberglass-free, and all of those would-be symbiotic foam layers are CertiPUR-US-certified, which is just a fancy way of saying that they’re made without formaldehyde, phthalates, and other potential carcinogens that have no business being in your mattress. There are over 50,000 reviews for the Classic mattress on the site, which would be dizzying as a standalone fact, but you can actually sort them by the reviewer’s age, sleep style, size, and temperature. I’ve helped set up a friend’s Nectar mattress before—the bed-in-a-box shipping practice remains incredibly convenient for walk-ups—and while there is a bit of a plasticky smell at first, it fades away after a week. It has been almost five years since that unboxing, and they told me they’ve only had to rotate it once, and that it still holds its firm but body-hugging shape for his partner and him (two six-foot-tall men).
You get a 1-year trial period, and free shipping and returns.
There’s a forever warranty on your mattress, which, to quote Nectar, means the company “will warrant your mattress for as long as you own it.”
The Best Cheap Hybrid Mattress: DreamCloud Hybrid Mattress
What makes it great: Big hybrid mattress fan here. I’ve enjoyed the body-hugging comforts of a memory foam mattress before, but a mattress with some well-insulated coils can provide (helpful) bounce during sex, and make for a more comfortable sleeping experience for those who prefer a medium-firm mattress. These traits alone are not necessarily hard to find in a budget hybrid mattress, but I will never forget queening out with a situationship over the fact that their mattress, a DreamCloud hybrid, was purportedly made with cashmere. As a shopping writer and sleep diva, I didn’t believe them, and promptly went home to Ask Jeeves. Lo and behold, I found their DreamCloud Hybrid: a whopping eight-layer cake of a mattress that touted a “breathable cashmere blend quilted top cover” and CertiPUR-US-certified only foams. Here’s the breakdown: The brand’s most basic hybrid mattress offers a generous 12-inches of height, with a manifold-layer makeup. The bottom-most layer is a tufted—and handle-endowed, which is helpful for moves—base, followed by a standard foam layer, a gel foam layer (to allow more adaptation to your body movements at the base), a gel-infused memory foam layer, a quilted foam layer (the quilted design helps bolster support), a quilted gel memory foam, and, finally, a cashmere-blend comfort cover that makes you feel like you’re sleeping at a five-star hotel.
You can return your mattress for up to a year, and there’s free shipping on returns.
There’s a lifetime or “forever warranty,” in the words of DreamCloud, on your mattress.
The Best Cheap Organic Mattress: Futon Shop Wool Japanese-Style Mattress
What makes it great: An organic mattress? In this economy? Yes, my friend, you can actually find a great organic mattress that won’t run you thousands of dollars (see: this lovely, albeit pricey queen-size mattress by Avocado, which has become a titan of the organic mattress category). After decades of sleeping on spring and memory foam mattresses, I wanted to try an organic mattress that would be easy to transport (schlepping a memory foam mattress to a new apartment = Sisyphean), aesthetically-pleasing, and that wouldn’t budge or sink during sex (good sex = a mattress with some spring action). All roads led me to the world of low-slung (if not entirely floor-bound) Japanese tatami-inspired mattresses, which have been blowing up on TikTok for their purported ability to improve sleeping posture, their non-synthetic and breathable material makeup, and because they just look really damn cool. Specifically, I wanted to cop the Futon Shop’s Tatami 2 Futon Mattress, because it combined all the design elements I loved about a traditional futon mat with an eight-inch thick wool and micro-spring interior. Firstly, huzzah to no more synthetic, plasticky smells upon unboxing (even the mattress casing is made out of GOTS-certified cotton). The queen size also fits both my partner (6 ft 4) and myself (5 ft 9) comfortably, and my arms and size 11 flippers never truly dangle off the sides, but are always supported by the curvature of the mattress’ edges. The only pain is that you are encouraged to flip the mattress every week or two, but it’s a task made easy by the handles-option design, which also comes in clutch when I hoist the mattress up into a couch form during the day in our tiny bedroom. It looks so chic atop its tatami mat (optional, depending on whether you want to be on the floor or on your own slatted bed frame) with our Noguchi-esque floor lamp. If you’re a medium-firm mattress stan with a penchant for minimalism, it’s an incredibly solid (and relatively affordable, given the category) choice.
There is a 30-day comfort guarantee, which is another way of saying that you can return the mattress in that time frame for another of equal or lesser value (and receive an additional credit in the latter instance). You will also be responsible for shipping costs.
There is a seven year warranty policy for mattresses and futons.
3 Other Mattresses We Like From the ‘Zon
Though our handful of picks above are still our most stood-behind recs on this list, you might want to secure something on a quick turnaround (say, two days before your Cousin Fred pops in for a stint in your guest bedroom). That’s where the ‘Zon comes in, ever a reliable choice for last-minute purchases of at least reasonable quality…according to reviews. Below, we’ve singled out two of its best cheap mattresses for slinging out to your pad without you needing to invest in a whole futon or put your guests up on an inflatable.
What makes it great: Many of the all-foam budget mattresses you’d find on Amazon are likely from the same manufacturer, potentially the same factory, just with a different algorithmically generated brand name slapped on top. Among this morass of practically identical foam beds, the cheapest ones with a significant threshold of reviews usually come from Amazon itself through its AmazonBasics brand. The queen size 10-inch memory foam, plush-feel AmazonBasics mattress clocks at just under $300. It’s not a mattress anyone will have dreams about, but it’s no source of nightmares either. Most people will sleep on the firm mattress fine for a night or two (and they’ll certainly like it more than an air mattress or a pull-out futon). If that’s all you need, it’ll do the trick.
Amazon will let you return the mattress within 30 days. (This is a lot stingier than most risk-free trial periods.)
The mattress comes with a one-year warranty against defects, which isn’t very long compared to the policy among other picks on this list.
What makes it great: Terrible, inaccurate name aside, the Best Price mattress is a decent option for people that want something firmer than the Allswell. Compared to the Allswell and the Zinus, the sleeping surface is kind of hard. There is a little bit of give, but not really enough to make sleeping on your side very comfortable. If you’re a back sleeper, however, this is a plus—softer mattresses can cradle you in a way that feels weird and unwelcome.
Best Price does not offer a free trial period for its mattress.
The company boasts a 10-year warranty, but reviews seem to indicate these are difficult to actually redeem.
What makes it great: The older I get, the more my bones prefer a mattress with a little spring in its step. The brand Zinus—which also makes a great range of Thuma bed frame alternatives—delivers all of that bounce and then some with its hybrid 12-inch medium-firm mattress. This wildly affordable yet thick mattress consists of four layers, including a base of individually-wrapped (to reduce the odds of creaking over time) coils, an initial foam layer, a gel-infused cooling foam layer, and Zinus’ trademark Comfort Foam layer to top it all off. It’s also fiberglass-free and made with CertiPUR-US foam and a OEKO-TEX-certified mattress cover, and the cushy tufted top makes for a more luxurious sleeping experience, in my humble opinion, than a whole lot of grid-flex options out there.
It’s worth noting that Amazon has this product highlighted as one with a “low return rate,” which means people are either super happy (or too lazy to send it back). That being said, you can still enjoy Amazon’s 30-day return policy on this big boi.
An impressive 10-year limited warranty is included.
What to Expect With a Cheap Mattress
Firmness: Even the best cheap mattress is likely going to be a compromise over something more expensive. The first thing you’ll notice the moment you lay down on a budget mattress is that they’re…kinda stiff. Firmness level is very important. Cheap mattresses tend to hew to the firmer end of things, which is actually perfect for back sleepers, who need a little bit of rigidity to keep their weight from sinking into the mattress. That’s not so ideal for side or stomach sleepers who might need a little more cushion for their joints.
Lots and lots of foam: You’ll also notice that most are foam or hybrid mattresses, since making innerspring mattresses that don’t suck is a lot more expensive than just cutting a bunch of foam. You might also notice that none of these foam mattresses are heavy on the jargon-y “special technology” that more expensive mattresses are supposedly made with. We’ll let you in on a little secret: That’s not such a big deal after all. Most of the “X4 cooling gels” or “organic plush wool pillow tops” companies like to promote don’t really have an actual effect on how it feels to sleep on their new mattresses. Your evening routine can survive without them.
Longevity issues: More importantly, durability is often an issue with cheaper mattresses, especially ones entirely constructed from foam. After a couple of months, the foam can start to wear out, leading your mattress to stop actually holding you up while you sleep. We’ve had no issues with this kind of bottoming out from the mattresses we’ve included in this guide, but if you do, you should contact the manufacturer and try to see if your mattress is still under warranty. Speaking of warranties, we’ve included all that info below so you can make the most informed decision possible.
What Factors Into the Cost of Mattresses?
The perfect answer to this question would require information that mattress companies simply won’t disclose. But based on what we can gather from our experience comparing mattress listings and sleeping on them ourselves, it mostly hinges on material. Broadly, more expensive mattresses are made with higher quality materials—denser foam, heartier woven fabric exteriors, and sturdier innersprings. At higher price points, the mattresses also tend to have more complicated designs, with contouring and conforming that provide more pressure relief.
What to Look for in a Cheap Mattress
Before you buy any online mattress, think about your needs. What kind of sleeper are you? If you sleep on your side or stomach, you should look for a mattress that will support you. Do you sleep hot? Look for a mattress with innersprings, since they’ll include built-in ventilation. Hunting for a mattress that’ll last you upwards of a decade? Think hard about how much you’re willing to spend.
