Here's the part the big-box stores won't tell you. Some of the best-measuring in-ears you can buy cost less than a tank of gas, and most of them come from small Chinese brands the hobby lumps together as chi-fi (Truthear, Moondrop, 7Hz and friends). In the US they mostly sell through Linsoul, HiFiGo and Shenzhen Audio. On Amazon you'll usually be buying from a third-party seller like SHENZHENAUDIO or LEAUDIO with Amazon handling the shipping, so I name the seller on each pick.
I'll be straight about how I got to these five. I've been mixing since 1978, and the in-ears I know first-hand are the stage kind, Shure PSM 1000 across touring rigs and Sennheiser G4 packs on the artists I've worked with. I don't sit at home measuring $25 earphones. For these picks I lean on the people who do, mostly Audio Science Review's measurements, SoundGuys, Prime Audio and the reviewer roundup over at iemranking.com, and every price here was checked on Amazon at the end of October.
I put more weight on measurements for this list than I would for a pair of $300 headphones. Budget in-ears live and die on Amazon stars and YouTube unboxings, and both are easy to game, while a frequency response graph from ASR doesn't care who mailed in the sample. I still read the listening notes, though. A graph can't tell you a shell starts digging into your ear an hour into a flight.
What actually matters in a cheap IEM
Tuning comes first, and it's where cheap in-ears have come the furthest. A lot of the good ones are voiced close to the Harman target, a curve built from listener preference research that Audio Science Review grades everything against. Get near it and you've got a pair that sounds balanced to most people, with enough bass to feel like music and no shouty upper midrange to wear your ears out by the second album. If you want to read the squiggly lines yourself, here's my rundown on how to read a frequency response graph.
Fit is the one most of us skip, and it can wreck a great pair. An IEM that doesn't seal sounds thin and tinny no matter how well it measured on somebody's rig, so try every tip in the box before you decide you hate them. Shell size counts for a lot. The Hexa runs big, and the Zero:Red's wide nozzles don't agree with everybody.
A good seal pays you back another way. It shuts out a fair bit of the world with no noise cancelling involved, so on a subway car or a plane you can keep the volume lower, which your ears will thank you for down the road. Just don't wear a sealed pair biking through traffic.
Every pick here has a detachable cable with 0.78 mm 2-pin plugs, which I'd call a must at any price. The cable is usually what goes first, and a fresh one costs far less than a fresh pair. The other side of that coin is that every pick ends in a plain 3.5 mm plug, with no USB-C version or inline mic that I could confirm. If your phone doesn't have a headphone jack, budget for a dongle.
Don't get hypnotized by driver counts either. The Zero:Red runs two dynamic drivers and the Chu II has just one, and both earned Audio Science Review's recommendation. KZ will happily sell you a fistful of drivers for $50-odd, and the one expert review of the KZ ZSX on iemranking.com scored it 3.3 out of 10. More drivers mostly means more ways to get the crossover wrong.
Power isn't much of a worry. The Truthears are rated at 117 to 124 dB per volt, which means a phone or a cheap dongle drives them just fine, and you can skip the amp. The Chu II is the quiet one, ASR found it low on sensitivity for an IEM, so you'll be nudging the volume up a few clicks. My piece on impedance and sensitivity has the math if you're curious.
My five picks under $100
Truthear Hexa
A neutral four-driver hybrid that reviewers can't stop recommending
If I could only point you at one pair, this is it. The Hexa is a hybrid with one dynamic driver and three balanced armatures, tuned neutral with a little extra rumble down low, and the reviewers line up behind it in a way you rarely see at $90. SoundGuys gave it an 8.1 and singled it out for editing vocals and checking mixes. Crinacle graded it B+ with three-star value on his ranking list (he stopped updating that list in 2024), and Head-Fi owners average 4.4 out of 5. Now for the catches. The shell is a chunky thing, and SoundGuys warns that smaller ears might not get on with it. There's no mic. And it's crept up to $89.99 from the $79 it used to sell for, both at Truthear and on Amazon, where the seller is SHENZHENAUDIO.
Truthear Pure
The Hexa with a bit more meat on the midrange bones
Truthear put the Pure out in 2025 as a reworked Hexa. It keeps the same one-dynamic, three-armature layout and adds roughly 3 to 4 dB of extra energy from the sub-bass up through the core midrange, while everything above 1 kHz stays nearly the same, per Prime Audio's measurements. Prime Audio liked it enough to give it a 4.6 and call it a genuine step forward, and on iemranking.com it edges the Hexa ever so slightly, 6.6 to 6.5 across 13 expert reviews. On paper that extra body is just what voices and acoustic guitars want, if you ask me. The trade is a touch of space and separation, Prime Audio says detail isn't class-leading, and only five Head-Fi owners have rated it so far (4.0 out of 5). It's the same $89.99 as the Hexa, sold on Amazon by LEAUDIO, so pick one and don't buy both.
Truthear x Crinacle Zero:Red
Deep, clean sub-bass that Audio Science Review signed off on
Audio Science Review put the Zero:Red on its recommended list back in May 2023, pointing to incredibly low distortion even when cranked to 114 dB and a response close to its target. It's two dynamic drivers tuned neutral with a shelf of sub-bass underneath, the kind you feel in an 808 more than hear, and the mid-bass stays out of the mud. Head-Fi owners give it 4.4 out of 5 across 21 ratings. Before you click, know that Crinacle co-tuned it, so his praise isn't exactly independent. Prime Audio was cooler at 3.5 out of 5, finding the extra-wide nozzles uncomfortable for some people, the sub-bass tiring over long sessions and the stock cable flimsy. The price has also crept from $54.99 to $64.99. SHENZHENAUDIO sells it on Amazon, and there's an impedance adapter in the box.
Can't decide between the Truthears?
Tell the matcher what you listen to and what you'd like to spend, and it'll trim the list down to a few pairs.
Try the matcher →Moondrop Chu II
Metal shells and a measured-right tune for the price of a takeout lunch
Audio Science Review recommended the Chu II in June 2024, when it was a $19 earphone, and found a response very close to the Harman target with just a small overshoot around 14 kHz, very low distortion and good fit and comfort. SoundGuys calls it its best value pick, and Prime Audio scored it a 4.5. That's a lot of nods for something that costs about $23 on Amazon (LEAUDIO is the seller). With metal shells and a cable that comes off, I'd happily leave a pair in the gig bag as a spare. The fine print is that it's a quiet one, ASR measured low sensitivity for an IEM, plus a little extra mid-bass and upper treble that EQ can tame. Prime Audio warns the treble can tire some ears, and the detail is middle-of-the-road.
7Hz x Crinacle Zero:2
A plain, honest tuning for about twenty-five bucks
ChiFi Wire called this the best neutral-reference IEM under $30 back in June, and from what I can tell headphones.com's Summer 2026 roundup made it the cheapest pair on its under-$100 list. Head-Fi owners average 4.2 out of 5 across 22 ratings, and iemranking.com has it at a normalized 6.0 from nine expert reviews. It's the pick for somebody who wants things flat and even, with nothing hyped. I'll be honest, though, the experts are all over the map on this one, with scores running from 3.6 to 7.5. It's another Crinacle collaboration, the maker's specs haven't been confirmed anywhere I trust, and the Amazon variant I'm linking is the one without a mic. Linsoul sells it for the same $24.99.
How to pick between them
Still torn? Find the line that sounds most like you.
The ones that didn't make the cut
Yes, three of my five are Truthears, and two of them carry Crinacle's name. I'm not thrilled about that, a list this lopsided makes me itchy. But the independent measurements kept pointing the same way, and I'd rather send you to a pair that holds up than pad the list for variety's sake. Here's who else was in the running and why each one sat this out.
The Sennheiser IE 100 PRO is the one I'd hand a musician. It was about $95 on Amazon in late October, though Sennheiser's own store has it at $109, and it's a proper stage earpiece that I cover in my list of universal IEMs for the stage. Shure's SE215 is $119, over budget, and the measurement sites score its tuning poorly (a 3.5 normalized on iemranking.com), though Shure's claim of up to 37 dB of isolation is the whole point of it on a loud stage.
A few others came close. The Etymotic ER2XR reportedly made headphones.com's under-$100 list at about $100, but I couldn't confirm the current price, so it stays on the bench. Moondrop's Aria 2 ($89.99 per SoundGuys, which also called it heavy) overlaps the Truthears without a measurement-site verdict to back it up. The Simgot EA500 LM only had praise from affiliate-style guides. SoundGuys likes the Tangzu Wan'er S.G. at $24.99, but I couldn't pin down its price or listing, and the same goes for the Simgot EW200 and Truthear Gate. The Meze Alba is a lovely thing at $159, which is $59 too many for this page.
Is it worth spending more than $100?
For most of us, not right away. The obvious next rung is Sennheiser's IE 200 at about $130, a single-driver pair from a name your uncle has heard of, with an MMCX cable and a spec sheet claiming under 0.08% distortion. Climb further and you're looking at the IE 600 at about $600 or Shure's four-driver SE846 Gen 2 at $999. Those get you nicer materials, fancier cables and, on the Shure, nozzles you can swap to change the voicing.
What they won't get you is six or ten times the sound, and I'll stand by that one. My advice is to live with a Hexa or a Chu II for a few months first. Once you can put a name to what's bugging you (not enough air up top, say, or bass that runs out of puff on a long synth note) you'll know which upgrade actually fixes it, and you won't be throwing money at a box with a bigger number on it.
Questions people ask about budget IEMs
Are cheap IEMs actually any good?
The good ones are startlingly good. When Audio Science Review measures a $19 earphone like the Chu II and finds a response very close to its preference target with very low distortion, that tells you the gap to the expensive stuff has shrunk a lot. What you mostly give up under $100 is build, accessories and the last bit of detail.
What does chi-fi mean?
It's hobby slang for budget hi-fi from Chinese brands like Truthear, Moondrop, 7Hz, KZ and Tangzu. Quality swings wildly from brand to brand, so I'd go by independent measurements and leave the driver count on the box out of it.
Do I need an amp or DAC for budget IEMs?
Not for these. The Truthears are rated sensitive enough that a phone or a basic dongle runs them comfortably. The Chu II needs a little more volume than most, which a decent dongle should handle. Save the amp money and spend it on tips. All five end in a 3.5 mm plug, so a phone with no headphone jack (an iPhone included) needs a USB-C or Lightning dongle no matter what.
What's the difference between IEMs and regular earbuds?
IEMs sit deeper in the ear canal and seal it off with a tip, which blocks outside noise and gets you real bass. Most of the hobby stuff, including every pick here, is wired with a detachable cable. If you'd sooner have no wires at all, have a look at my picks for wireless earbuds instead.
Can I use budget IEMs as stage monitors?
In a pinch, sure, and I like the idea of a Chu II as a spare in the gig bag. But none of the picks here has a track record as a stage IEM, so for real gigs I'd get something built for it, like the Sennheiser IE 100 PRO, and spend some time on getting a proper seal before soundcheck.
Should I swap the tips on a cheap IEM?
Try every size in the box first. A lot of the "these sound thin" complaints you read online sound to me like a tip that's one size too small. If nothing seals, a pack of third-party foam or wide-bore silicone tips is about the cheapest experiment in this whole hobby. It can change the bass a surprising amount.
Is it safe to buy chi-fi IEMs on Amazon?
Generally yes, as long as you check who's selling. The listings I link were sold by SHENZHENAUDIO (Hexa and Zero:Red) and LEAUDIO (Pure and Chu II) and shipped by Amazon, and the Zero:2 listing is Linsoul-branded. If the seller name looks like a cat walked across a keyboard, I'd go buy from the brand's own store.
My bottom line
For most people the Truthear Hexa is the easy call at about $90, as long as your ears can take the size of the shell. If vocals are what you live for, swap it for the Truthear Pure. And if the budget is closer to lunch money, the Moondrop Chu II is about $23, metal shells and all, with ASR's only real gripe being that you'll ride the volume a few notches higher.