Beginner growers need every break they can get when it comes to purchasing grow equipment. Costs can start stacking up fast when you are buying everything from grow tents and grow lights to nutrients and grow room fans. Cheap T5 grow lights can save you money initially, and in the long run over HID or LED grow lights.

Hydroponic lighting has traditionally been expensive to run and inefficient when it comes to energy consumption. High Intensity Discharge (HID) and Metal Halide (MH) bulbs are very effective for growing cannabis, but they must be replaced yearly or more and they end up being very expensive in electricity costs not only for the lights themselves but for ventilation that is needed to dissipate the heat that they produce. This is why many growers choose CFL or Compact Fluorescent bulbs for their grow.

Fluorescent bulbs do not offer a full spectrum of light, so they are best used just for seedlings, cloning and vegetative growth. You can still save a lot of money during this time though, because cannabis requires at least 16 hours of light per day during vegetative growth, while it requires only 12 hours per day during flowering.

T5 lights are the most popular CFL type for hydroponics. T5 lights are the smallest diameter of CFL lights that you can purchase. They are about the same diameter as a dime, which makes them more efficient than T5 or T12 bulbs, and they also have a higher PAR/lumen rating. T5 lights are very inexpensive when compared to HID or LED lighting.

In this article I have listed the cheapest of them all, so that you can start growing today without breaking the bank. Keep in mind that the lights on this list, because they are so inexpensive, are not as powerful as more expensive T5 lights or other types of grow lights. Click here if you want to see more options for CFL bulbs for your grow room.

This pack of four T5 lights from Apollo Horticulture is a great start for your hydroponic lighting system. Each bulb is 54W and has a color temperature of 6400K and 4,850 lumens. This pack comes with light bulbs only, so you will need to purchase a hood separately. It is also a great price for replacement bulbs.

Here is a small and high quality two foot light from Agrobrite. This light comes with two tubes and includes a powder coated steel housing and faceted aluminum hood for better light distribution. You can hang this light overhead, vertical or horizontal in your grow room or seedling area.

This is a very unique light that would be great for any grow room where you cannot hang a light from the ceiling. This light comes with a complete frame and hanging equipment. You can easily adjust the height on this safe and sturdy frame. The lamp itself is a high output T5 fixture with bulb included and a 6’grounded cord with on and off switch.

This one bulb grow light is one of the least expensive out there. This light comes with a high output ballast that has a long life, a 24W 6500 degree lamp, power cord and four inch jumper cable in order to allow you to daisy chain multiple fixtures together. This is a helpful feature because this is a small light, so if you need more coverage you can add or remove fixtures as needed.

This last light on our list is my personal favorite inexpensive T5 light. This light has four bulbs so it is comparatively powerful. It has a total output of 10,000 lumens with a 95% reflective German hammer-tone reflector hood. This is reported as about 30% higher light output than other light systems. This light comes with all of the necessary accessories including hanging hooks and chains, ceiling bracket, power cord and all bulbs. It also has an outlet on either side so that you can daisy chain multiple lights together. Overall, this light is a great price for the amount of light you get.