How Much Does A Bench Press Rack Cost? Home Gym Models

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The bench press is one of the most popular exercises in any gym. If you like bench pressing you probably don’t want to give that up when building a home gym. What can you expect to pay for a bench press bench?

Bench press benches can cost anywhere from $90 to over $500. Many benches are around $250 but the quality and features at that price point vary wildly. For the best flat bench press benches with high load limits expect to pay upwards of $300 for just the bench.

Let’s dive a little deeper into the prices of different benches and some alternatives that might be more suitable for the average home gym.

Bench Press Bench Prices

Below you can see a few of the models that are popular for home use. Prices are correct at time of writing and are subject to change.

Brand	Price ($)	Weight limit (lbs.)	Incline	Features
BalanceFrom	90	?	Yes	Folding
Marcy	290	600 Total	Yes	Preacher curl/leg extension/leg curl
Marcy	260	300 on bar	Yes	Preacher curl/leg extension/leg curl
Body Champ	205	275 on bar	Yes	Preacher curl/leg extension/leg curl
Weider	165	410 Total	Yes	Preacher curl/leg extension/leg curl
Weider	120	410 Total	Yes	Leg extension/leg curl
Gold’s Gym	240	300 on bar	Yes	Preacher curl/leg extension/leg curl
Gold’s Gym	110	350 total	Yes	Leg extension/leg curl
Body Solid	530	600 total	Yes	Leg extension/leg curl
Body Solid	310	300 on bar	Yes	Folding/Leg extension/hamstring curl
Valor Fitness	460	500 total	No	None
Ader	330	1500 total	No	None

The average price of a bench press bench is around $260 with prices ranging from $90 to over $500.

What To Expect For Your Money?

Frankly, most of these benches provide pretty disappointing quality and features. For a $100-$250 you don’t expect the world but there are better ways to spend your money in my opinion. Take a look at the alternatives at the bottom.

For under $100 it’s possible to get a simple bench press rack. It does the basics of holding a barbell and being incline adjustable. It won’t be the sturdiest thing you can find though. The uprights can be a bit wobbly and the bench can’t hold all that much weight. The last thing you want while bench pressing is a wobbly bench. That will distract and limit your lifts.

For around $250 you can find some good benches but some are just too expensive for what they are. The load limits are too low for serious bench presses. It’s a bit hit or miss though. In this price range there are good benches as well. There are benches that try to do everything;

• Height adjustable
• Incline adjustable
• Preacher curl pad
• Leg extension
• Hamstring curl

And in trying to do everything they actually do everything mediocrely at best. That said, there are some good options in this category as well.

For over $300 you start getting benches that actually have fewer features but that’s kind of a good thing. That’s because these ones are much better at the basics; flat bench presses. These are the super solid benches that have high load limits for seriously heavy bench presses.

The really solid benches that are over $300 are usually fixed flat. Almost all bench press benches for home gyms are adjustable. That adjustment mechanism is where a bit of the weakness comes from. To get to a 1500 lbs. load limit, you can’t have much adjustability because the mechanisms that keep the backrest in place just can’t handle that much weight.

Load limits

The glaring issue with these home gym bench press benches is the load limits. Many of these benches can’t handle enough weight for serious weightlifters. A 350 lbs. total load limit means you have to deduct your bodyweight from that number. Weigh 180 lbs.? Then you’ve only got 170 lbs. of load capacity left and nobody is going to be impressed by a 170 lbs. bench press.

A bench press bench is often weaker than a separate weightlifting bench and is less versatile. In a home gym if you want to do anything else with the barbell it’s just taking up extra space that is unnecessary. Take a look at the alternatives below to find a better solution.

Recommended Bench Press Bench

So what’s the best bench press bench you can get for your home gym? Here are two options at two price points.

Affordable and multifunctional

Need a bench press setup to get your home gym started? You’ll want something that does a bit more than just provide a place to bench press. It’s always good to have more functionality. At the same time you want something that is solid and won’t break after 2 weeks.

The Body-Solid BFO B10 is the best choice here. It’s a bench from a brand that makes good gym equipment overall. They don’t spend much money on making things look good and that kind of shows but their equipment is very solid. This bench has an adjustable backrest and the barbell height can be adjusted as well.

There is a leg developer that can be used for leg extensions (quadriceps) and leg curls (Hamstrings/glutes). The leg developer has a 1” diameter plate peg for standard plates.

Tough

You just want to train bench pressing and nothing else. Going for a world record or just trying to get some serious weight on the bar? An adjustable, multifunctional bench is just too weak and the extra functionality gets in the way. Here is one bench that just allows you to do flat bench presses but is super solid and no bells and whistles that distract you.

The best bench for very heavy benching is the Ader Olympic fixed bench. This is a simple bench press bench but has a whopping 1500 lbs. load limit. If you can max it out, congratulations! You’ve got yourself a world record. The high load limit means that this bench is super solid and more than enough for almost everyone. For what it is, it’s pretty affordable as well.

Bench Press Rack Alternatives

To do a bench press in your home gym, it’s not necessary to get a bench press rack. For a home gym there are better options that are more multifunctional and higher quality.  

Unless you really want a dedicated bench for flat bench pressing, the alternatives below are probably better for you.

Power cage

For a home gym that’s compact and fully functional, the best way to go is a full power cage with spotter arms and a separate bench. The dedicated bench press benches either try to do everything or cost a lot to only do flat bench presses. The ones that try to do everything usually aren’t too high quality and have pretty low load limits in general (of course you can find exceptions). The simpler but stronger benches are quite expensive for what they are.

For that price you can also buy a power cage. Power cages in general are built much stronger than the average bench press bench from the list above. If you get some spotter arms and a separate bench, you likely have a stronger bench and the rack has a higher load limit than the average benches listed above.

You can easily put a bench in a power rack, adjust the spotter arms to the correct height and bench press. The load limit of this setup will be higher than a cheap bench press bench. If you get a good adjustable bench it will be sturdier than the ones that are included in the bench press benches.

Sure, the expensive benches listed above can have a higher load limit but, those are fixed flat benches. In a home gym, you’re unlikely to buy one bench that’s fixed flat and one that’s fixed inclined. Also a 1500 lbs. load limit is not going to be all that useful for everyone.

Functional trainer

Don’t necessarily want to do barbell bench presses? How about doing bench presses with cable resistance? Functional trainers are machines that have two weight stacks and two fully adjustable pulleys. There are cable attachments that attach one cable on either side and therefore can be used like a normal barbell. Just add a separate bench and you can do almost all barbell exercises but with cable resistance. Functional trainers are a lot more expensive than a power cage though.