Best audio interfaces under £150

At UK street prices, £150 now buys a two-input Focusrite. The Scarlett 2i2 4th Gen carries a £209.99 RRP and sits at £149 on Thomann UK, which puts it inside a budget that used to stop at the single-input Solo. If you shop by manufacturer list price you will talk yourself into one input you didn't need to settle for.

We checked every price below on Thomann UK on 27 August 2026 and cross-checked the specs against each manufacturer's own product page. Street prices at this end of the market move more than they do higher up, so treat these as figures from one retailer on one day rather than fixed numbers, and look them up again before you buy.

What £150 buys in 2026

Our audio interface buying guide quotes the Scarlett Solo at £149.99 and the 2i2 at £209.99. Those are Focusrite's list prices and they are accurate as list prices. They are not what the interfaces sell for. Thomann UK currently has the Solo at £105 and the 2i2 at £149, a £61 gap on the 2i2 between RRP and shelf. The same pattern runs across the whole budget tier, which is why a post about £150 interfaces looks different from a post about £150 RRPs.

Everything on this page records at 24-bit, has 48V phantom power for a condenser mic, and does hardware direct monitoring so you hear yourself back without a delay. Those three stopped separating budget interfaces years ago. What still separates them is preamp quality, what software comes in the box, and whether there are MIDI sockets on the back.

The shortlist

Behringer U-Phoria UMC204HD, £58

The cheapest thing here worth plugging a microphone into. Two combo inputs with Midas-design preamps, 24-bit/192kHz, 48V phantom power, and four outputs, which is more than anything else on this list. Nothing else comes with it: no DAW, no plugins, and drivers that Thomann's own reviewers describe as basic. Buy it if you already own the software you need and want the money to go on a microphone instead.

Audient EVO 4, £91

The best preamp per pound at this price. Audient publishes 58dB of gain on both channels, 113dB of dynamic range and -128dBu equivalent input noise, and the company builds studio consoles, which is where the preamp design comes from. Smartgain listens to a few seconds of you playing or talking and sets the level itself, and it works on both inputs at once. There is loopback for streaming and a discrete JFET input for guitar.

Two caveats. It tops out at 24-bit/96kHz rather than 192kHz, which has no effect on music delivered at 44.1 or 48kHz but rules it out if a client demands higher. And Audient's own overview page now describes the software bundle only as ARC, its customer portal, without naming the titles that older reviews list. Check what is currently in it before buying the EVO 4 for its bundle.

Focusrite Scarlett Solo 4th Gen, £105

One XLR microphone input and one instrument input, so you can record a vocal and a guitar one after the other but never two microphones together. The software is the reason to look at it: Ableton Live Lite, Pro Tools Intro+, Steinberg Cubase LE, the Hitmaker Expansion plugins and three months of Splice Sounds. If you own no DAW at all, that bundle is worth real money against the £105; if you already produce in something, it is worth close to nothing, and our free DAW guide covers what Live Lite actually restricts you to.

Universal Audio Volt 1, £111

One combo input, two line outputs, and MIDI in and out on the back, which neither Scarlett at this price has. The bundle runs to Ableton Live Lite, Melodyne Essential, Spitfire LABS, UA's LUNA DAW and a set of UA plugin emulations including the LA-2A and a Pultec EQ. The single input is the thing to think about: if you ever want to mic a cabinet and take a DI at the same time, this is the wrong interface and its two-input sibling, the Volt 2, sits at £149.

Arturia MiniFuse 2, £111

Two combo inputs, 24-bit/192kHz, MIDI in and out, and a USB-A hub port on the back that frees up a laptop socket for a controller. That last detail sounds small until you own a two-port laptop. Arturia's bundle is Ableton Live Lite, Analog Lab Intro, four Arturia effects, Guitar Rig LE and three months of Splice Creator. It is the pick if you own hardware synths or a drum machine, since it handles two inputs and the MIDI clock without a separate box.

Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 4th Gen, £149

Two combo inputs, 24-bit/192kHz, and the three things Focusrite added at the 4th generation: Air, which has two settings rather than the single mode on older Scarletts, Auto Gain, which sets your level from a ten-second test, and Clip Safe, which watches the input and pulls the gain down before a take clips. Clip Safe is the one that earns its place, because a clipped vocal take is unrecoverable and a slightly quiet one is not. At £149 it uses the whole budget and leaves nothing for cables, which you will need.

What you give up under £150

• Converter headroom. MOTU's M2, which UK retailers list at roughly £188 to £235, uses an ESS Sabre32 DAC and publishes 120dB of dynamic range at the output. The EVO 4's 113dB is fine in a bedroom and measurably behind.
• Preamp character. The SSL 2 MkII at £185 adds the Legacy 4K switch modelled on SSL's 4000-series consoles, and the SSL 2+ MkII at £255 adds four outputs and a second headphone socket. Nothing under £150 does anything equivalent.
• Metering. The M2 has a full-colour LCD showing input and output levels. Everything on this page gives you an LED that turns red once you have already clipped.
• Outputs. Two is the norm here, and only the Behringer gives you four. That becomes a limit the day you want to send a separate feed to a headphone amp or a hardware compressor.

How to choose between them

• Count the inputs you will genuinely use at the same time. Two sources recorded one after the other need one input, not two. Most solo producers never fill a second channel.
• Check for MIDI DIN sockets if you own hardware. The Volt 1 and the MiniFuse 2 have them at £111; neither Scarlett does at this price, and adding a USB MIDI box afterwards costs about £30.
• Price the bundle against what you already own. Focusrite's software is the strongest case for the Solo and the weakest reason to pick it if you already produce in Ableton or Logic. See which DAW to start with if you have not settled on one.
• Leave something in the budget for the rest of the signal chain. An interface with no microphone, no cable and nothing to listen on is not a recording setup, and our monitor guide covers where the next £200 goes.