With goods getting more expensive seemingly by the hour, it’s becoming ever harder to purchase a brand-new pickup truck at a decent price. The sub-$30,000 truck is fast becoming extinct, and if you’re after a tough body-on-frame machine that’ll likely outlast your own life, getting one for less than that is impossible unless you trawl the used market. Still, as long as you’re not looking to push your new truck to within an inch of its life, there are still some cheap options out there.
Though we’re not sure how much longer that’ll last.
For this list, we’re including every brand-new pickup truck on sale in the US for less than $30,000, including destination charges.
Slate Truck: The Cheapest New Pickup In America Is Also An EV
$26,400
Kicking off the contenders is the new-for-2027 Slate Truck, which is set to start being delivered in the latter stages of 2026. Slate is a newcomer to the truck market, with the company having only been established in 2022 as it looked to produce a range of budget-friendly electric vehicles.
With a no-frills approach being prioritized in order to keep production costs to an absolute minimum, and consequently its price to the consumer, the Slate Truck is the cheapest way of securing a new pickup in 2026. You’ll only have to pledge $26,400 of your hard-earned cash to have a Slate grace your driveway, which includes destination costs.
Don’t get your hopes up if you’re looking for a truck that also works as a family mover, since it only comes in single-cab spec. Plus, its bare-bones philosophy means it only comes with manually operated cloth seats, no built-in infotainment system, and a basic air conditioning setup.
The Slate is classified as a subcompact truck, meaning cabin space is at a premium. Interestingly though, its bed is actually pretty sizable given how small the overall vehicle is. Measuring five feet in length, and with a 35.1 cubic foot volume, it’s larger than the bed found on the Ford Maverick compact truck. That’s despite the entire vehicle measuring 25 inches shorter than the Maverick.
It also fares well from a load-carrying standpoint, at least compared to larger compact trucks on the market. Thanks to its Slateboard chassis – which combines design elements from unibody and body-on-frame philosophies – it can deal with 1,550 lbs of payload, while it can tow up to 2,000 lbs.
As far as EVs go, though, it’s not the most effective when it comes to performance and range. The small single electric motor is mounted on the rear axle only, and it produces a modest 181 horsepower and 195 lb-ft of torque. The torque is at least instantaneous, so the finished product should feel much more responsive than its on-paper figures would suggest. It does, however, only offer a range of 205 miles on a full charge, which means completing longer trips could prove tiresome. That said, from a pure driving standpoint, we were impressed with how well-built the truck was for the price.
It’s aimed at urban use, rather than traveling great distances hauling cargo. For traders like gardeners and those who deal with smaller and light loads, it could prove the ideal budget workhorse to get things moving around efficiently and quickly.
Ford Maverick: Outselling Every Compact Truck On The Market
$29,685
Should the Slate’s lack of cabin space and overall range put you off, then Ford’s trusty Maverick compact truck could be your savior. The Maverick has been one of the great success stories over the last few years, with the model pretty much single-handedly creating a resurgence for the compact truck market.
It may lack the outright strength of bigger models like its Ranger and F-Series siblings due to relying on a unibody chassis – the same used by Ford’s small SUVs such as the Escape – but it’s effective enough to act as a decent compromise between load carrying and daily refinement.
With over 155,000 units sold in 2025 – around double the number of Rangers that found new owners – the Maverick’s lower entry price is clearly resonating with many Americans in the market for such a vehicle right now. For your $30k budget, you’ll just about be able to get an entry-level XL trim in base front-wheel drive form. That’ll net you a turbocharged 2.0-liter inline-four engine under the hood, which delivers a strong 250 hp and 280 lb-ft of torque to the front axle.
Despite having drastically more power at its disposal than the Slate, it can only tow the same 2,000 lbs. Plus, thanks to its chassis being less rigid than the Slate’s, its maximum payload figure is a little lower at 1,500 lbs.
Still, for buyers who need a truck to combine the roles of a traditional pickup and an SUV in one affordable and versatile package, the more practical, better-equipped, and more refined Maverick will be the superior choice.
The Upcoming Slate Prevented The Maverick From Being The Only Sub-$30k Truck
2026 Hyundai Santa Cruz driving rear 3/4Hyundai
If it weren’t for the Slate bursting onto the scene, this list wouldn’t have been much of a list. The Maverick used to be joined in the sub-$30,000 club by the Hyundai Santa Cruz, a similarly designed compact truck that uses the same unibody chassis as the Hyundai Tucson SUV. Hyundai raised the price of the truck ahead of the 2026 model year, however, with the base SE version now costing $30,300. With destination costs factored in, the total came to $31,950.
Even that point is moot, though, since Hyundai is winding down production of the Santa Cruz toward the start of 2027. That comes as a result of extremely poor sales in the US, where the model has been outsold 6-to-1 by its Maverick rival.
The reason for all these price hikes, which have seen the average price for light vehicles increase from $38,948 in 2019 to $50,562 in 2026, is severe inflation. That has been driven primarily by global events such as the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020, as well as various conflicts that have unsettled the world since. With inflation constantly growing, auto manufacturers have had to increase the price of their offerings to help keep the lights on.
As a result, we wouldn’t be surprised to see sub-$30k trucks die out completely before too long. The Maverick has barely any wiggle room before breaching the barrier, so it’s likely everything will rest on the Slate. We’ll have to see whether the small-but-mighty approach will be enough to tempt enough buyers, however.
Base Trim Engine
Electric
Base Trim Transmission
Single-speed Automatic
Base Trim Drivetrain
Rear-Wheel Drive
Base Trim Horsepower
181 hp
Base Trim Torque
195 lb-ft
Make
Slate Auto
Segment
Compact Pickup Truck
Sources: Ford, Hyundai, Slate Auto
