Low impact, low noise

Used Home Cross Trainers

Browse used home cross trainers and ellipticals from private sellers, dealers and refurbishers across the UK. Equipd provides the marketplace and the secure payment flow, with Buyer Protection on eligible purchases and a free Instant Valuation on any model.

Browse Home Cross Trainers · Value Your Equipment

Live home cross trainer listings

Home ellipticals and cross trainers listed on Equipd by private sellers, dealers and refurbishers throughout the UK.

Browse all home cross trainers

Other home cardio to consider

Cross trainers give full-body, low-impact cardio. Bikes are smaller and quieter still, rowers store upright, and treadmills add walking and running if you have the space and the floor for it.

Shop by brand

JTX, NordicTrack, Reebok, Horizon, Domyos and Life Fitness all sell home cross trainers in the UK. Stride length, flywheel weight and frame rigidity vary enormously across price points and are what decide how the machine feels.

Why buy a used home cross trainer on Equipd?

  • Full-body cardio without the impact

    A cross trainer works arms and legs together with your feet never leaving the pedals, which suits anyone with sore knees, ankles or hips and produces almost no impact noise for the room below.

  • Plenty of barely-used machines

    Cross trainers are a classic new-year purchase, so the used market is full of machines with a few hours on them. Buying second-hand is usually the difference between a light budget model and a genuinely good one.

  • Buyer Protection on eligible purchases

    Pay through Equipd and funds are held until you confirm handover, with a protection window afterwards on eligible purchases — worth having on a machine whose pivots and rollers are impossible to judge from photographs.

  • Free valuation on the model

    Used cross trainer prices vary widely for no obvious reason. The free Instant Valuation gives you a realistic UK range so you can spot a good listing quickly.

Value a home cross trainer free

Cross trainers are frequently sold for far less than they are worth because owners just want the space back, and occasionally listed at close to retail years after purchase. The free Equipd valuation gives you a market range for the exact model by age and condition, which takes the guesswork out of both selling and offering.

Get a free valuation

Buying guide

Used home cross trainer buying guide

Cross trainers are one of the smartest home cardio buys and one of the most variable in quality. At the top of the market they feel smooth, natural and stable; at the bottom they have a short, circular stride, plastic pedal arms and a frame that flexes with every step, and no amount of enthusiasm survives that for long. Because they are bought hopefully and abandoned quietly, the second-hand market is unusually generous — but you have to know what to test, and you have to check the ceiling before you buy, because a cross trainer lifts you 20cm off the floor before you start. This guide covers stride length and drive position, flywheel and frame quality, faults on used machines, ceiling height and footprint, noise for flats and upstairs rooms, maintenance, and how to get one home and assembled.

Stride length and drive position

Stride length is the specification that decides whether a cross trainer feels like walking or like pedalling a small circle. Budget home machines often have quite short strides, which feels cramped and unnatural for anyone of average height or above, while better home machines offer a considerably longer stride that feels much closer to walking or running.

If you are tall, treat stride length as the first thing you check and the reason to spend more. It is also the specification most often glossed over in listings, so ask the seller for the model number and look it up rather than judging from photographs.

Drive position affects both feel and footprint. Rear-drive machines put the flywheel behind you and generally give a flatter, more natural stride, but they are longer. Front-drive machines are more compact and often cheaper, using a ramp and roller arrangement that becomes the main wear point. Centre-drive designs are the shortest of all and useful where floor space is very tight.

Decide whether you want moving handlebars. Dual-action machines with moving upper handles give upper-body involvement and are what most people expect from a cross trainer, while fixed-handle machines have fewer pivots to develop creaks. Both are common at home, so it is a preference rather than a quality question.

Flywheel weight, frame rigidity and build quality

The smoothness of a cross trainer comes largely from flywheel weight. A heavier flywheel carries momentum through the stride and feels fluid, while a light one feels notchy and makes the whole machine seem cheap. It is the single best indicator of how a machine will feel before you get on it.

Frame rigidity matters just as much and is easier to test than to specify. Get on the machine and stride hard: a good cross trainer stays planted, while a light one flexes, rocks and rattles. Overall machine weight is a reasonable proxy — heavier machines are almost always more stable and quieter.

Look at the pedal arms and linkages. Metal pedal arms and proper bearings at the pivots last far longer than plastic arms and plain bushings, and they are the difference between a machine that still feels tight after three years and one that creaks on every step. Check the pedal pads are large enough for your feet in trainers.

Check the maximum user weight and the machine's own weight against the specification, since both tell you something honest about how it was built. A machine with a low user weight limit is built light, and it will feel light in use regardless of what the console offers.

Faults to check on a used cross trainer

Creaking and clicking are the defining complaints on used cross trainers, and they come from dry or worn pivot bushings. Ride the machine hard, at high and low resistance, upright and leaning forward, and listen. Some noise responds to lubrication; a persistent creak under load can mean worn bushings or a loose frame joint.

Check for play at every pivot. With the machine stationary, take hold of the pedal arms and the handlebars and try to move them side to side. A few millimetres becomes an audible knock under a heavier user and gets worse over time. Play everywhere means the machine has done a lot of work or was lightly built to begin with.

On front-drive machines, inspect the ramp and rollers. Look along the ramp surface for grooves and check the rollers for flat spots and scoring, then ride it and feel for a ticking or bumpy stride. Rollers are usually cheap to replace on home machines if parts are available, but the availability is a genuine question on budget brands.

Test the resistance and console. Work through the whole resistance range confirming each level feels different, then check the display registers and the buttons respond. Most home machines need mains power for the console and powered resistance, so confirm the adaptor is included — a missing proprietary adaptor is a surprisingly common problem on used machines.

Ceiling height, footprint and where it can go

Ceiling height is the constraint people miss. A cross trainer raises you roughly 20cm above the floor before you stand up straight, so you need your own height plus that clearance plus a margin. Loft rooms, garages with beams, rooms with low light fittings and under-stairs spaces frequently fail this test, and it is worth measuring before anything else.

Home machines commonly need around 1.4 to 1.8m of length and 0.6 to 0.7m of width, with rear-drive machines at the longer end. You also want clearance behind for getting on and off and a little at the sides for the moving handlebars, so allow more than the bare footprint.

Most home cross trainers do not fold, though many have transport wheels at one end so you can tilt and roll them a short distance. That means the space you choose is more or less permanent, which makes it worth putting the machine somewhere you will actually want to use it rather than the room you least mind losing.

Think about where the console will face. A cross trainer positioned facing a blank wall gets used far less than one facing a window or a television. It sounds trivial, but for home cardio the difference between an engaging position and a dull one is the difference between four sessions a week and none.

Noise, floors and neighbours

Cross trainers are among the quietest cardio machines because your feet never leave the pedals, so there is no foot impact to transmit into the floor. In a flat or an upstairs room they are dramatically kinder to the people below than a treadmill, which is one of the main reasons to choose one.

The noise they do make is mechanical: roller rumble on front-drive machines, the drive belt, and creaking from pivots. On a light machine there is also frame movement, which transmits into a suspended floor as a low rocking rather than an impact. A heavier machine solves most of it.

A mat underneath is still worth having. It protects carpet and laminate from the feet, absorbs some vibration, keeps the machine from creeping and catches sweat. You do not need the heavy anti-vibration matting a treadmill wants, so a standard equipment mat is sufficient.

If you are in a flat, position the machine near a supporting wall rather than in the middle of a floor span, and keep pivots lubricated so creaking does not become the thing your neighbours hear. Done sensibly, a cross trainer is one of very few machines you can use late in the evening in a shared building without a second thought.

Maintenance and keeping it feeling tight

Pivots are everything on a cross trainer. Lubricating them to the manufacturer specification every few months is the single job that keeps the machine feeling new and prevents the creaking that makes people give up on them. Check the manual for which points need attention and what to use.

Keep the ramp and rollers clean on front-drive machines. Dust and grit on the ramp accelerate roller wear noticeably, so wiping the ramp surfaces regularly is genuine mechanical maintenance rather than tidying. It is a two-minute job that adds years to the rollers.

Check fixings periodically, particularly at the uprights and the pedal arm mounts. Home cross trainers are bolted together rather than welded, and bolts loosen with use, producing wobble and creaks that are often mistaken for worn parts. A quick check with the supplied tools resolves a surprising number of complaints.

Wipe the frame and console down after use, since sweat drips onto the pedal arms and the base and corrodes fixings over time. If the machine lives in a garage or conservatory, expect corrosion to be the thing that eventually ages it and consider a cover.

Collecting, assembling and ex-gym alternatives

Home cross trainers are usually 40 to 90kg and are awkward rather than desperately heavy. Many can be partly dismantled — uprights, handlebars and the console often come off — which is how they got into the house in the first place. Ask the seller whether they still have the manual and the assembly tools, because reassembling one without instructions is genuinely fiddly.

Plan for two people and a measured route. Fulfilment on Equipd is arranged directly between buyer and seller — collection, seller delivery or a buyer-arranged courier — and the important detail is that every bolt is bagged and labelled if the machine comes apart, since missing fixings are the most common post-collection problem.

Consider an ex-commercial elliptical if you have a garage or large room. Gym machines feel far better than home models, with long strides, heavy flywheels and proper bearings, and used prices can be very reasonable. The obstacles are weight of 150kg or more, a footprint around 2m long and the ceiling height they need, which rules them out of most upstairs rooms.

Before you pay, ride the machine for several minutes and check the pivots, ramp, resistance and console. Only confirm handover once the machine is assembled in your house and working, since confirmation is what starts the Buyer Protection window on eligible purchases, and a cross trainer that creaks or has a missing adaptor is much easier to resolve before that point.

Frequently asked questions

Stride length, ceiling height, creaking pivots and noise for neighbours — the questions that matter on a used home cross trainer.

How much ceiling height do I need for a cross trainer?

Your own height plus roughly 20cm for the pedal position, plus a comfortable margin. Loft rooms, garages with beams, low light fittings and under-stairs spaces often fail this test, so measure to the lowest obstruction in the intended spot before you look at machines rather than afterwards.

Why does stride length matter so much?

It decides whether the machine feels like walking or like pedalling a small circle. Budget home machines often have short strides that feel cramped for anyone of average height or above. If you are tall, it is the main reason to spend more, and it is the specification most often left out of listings.

Are cross trainers quiet enough for a flat?

They are among the quietest options, because your feet never leave the pedals so there is no impact travelling into the floor. The noise they do make is mechanical — rollers, drive belt and creaking pivots — and a heavier machine near a supporting wall with a mat underneath is genuinely fine for evening use.

What causes a used cross trainer to creak?

Dry or worn pivot bushings, and occasionally loose frame bolts. Lubricating the pivots to the manufacturer specification and checking the fixings resolves most cases. A creak that persists under load after both can mean worn bushings or a loose frame joint, which is worth investigating before you buy.

How do I test a used machine before buying?

Ride it hard through the full resistance range, upright and leaning forward, and listen for creaks and knocks. Then check for play by moving the pedal arms and handlebars laterally, inspect the ramp and rollers on front-drive machines, and confirm the console and every resistance level work.

Do home cross trainers need mains power?

Most do, for the console and powered resistance, and they often use a proprietary adaptor. A missing adaptor is a surprisingly common problem on used machines and can be awkward to replace, so confirm it is included and test the machine plugged in before agreeing to buy.

Do cross trainers fold away?

Very few do, though most have transport wheels at one end so you can tilt and roll them a short distance. That means the space you choose is essentially permanent, so pick somewhere you will actually enjoy using it — facing a window or a television rather than a blank wall makes a real difference.

Is front-drive or rear-drive better for home use?

Rear-drive machines usually give a flatter, more natural stride but are longer. Front-drive machines are more compact and often cheaper, with a ramp and roller arrangement that becomes the main wear point. Centre-drive designs are the shortest. Choose on how it feels and how much floor length you have.

Should I consider an ex-gym elliptical for home?

If you have a garage or a large ground-floor room, yes — commercial machines feel far better with long strides, heavy flywheels and proper bearings, at reasonable used prices. The obstacles are weight of 150kg or more, a footprint around 2m long and demanding ceiling height, which rules them out upstairs.

How difficult is it to move and reassemble one?

They are awkward rather than very heavy at 40 to 90kg, and uprights, handlebars and consoles often come off. Ask whether the seller still has the manual and tools, since reassembly is fiddly without them, and make sure every bolt is bagged and labelled — missing fixings are the most common problem after collection.

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