12 Best Tabletop Christmas Trees Under $50 (Most Under $35)

Everything comes in one box: a 24-inch tree, a string of 50 LEDs, a star for the top and 24 mini ornaments. Twenty dollars, and nothing else to buy.

It's the pick for a dorm, an office desk or a kid's room, and a good gift for someone who just moved. The lights run off a small battery box (batteries not included), which tucks behind the trunk. Don't expect a dense tree at this price: the ornaments are what make it look full, so hang all of them.

Two hundred and sixty-two branch tips on a 2-foot tree is a lot. Most trees this size have 70 to 80, which is why this one looks bushy where the others look airy.

The tips are dusted with white flocking, like a light snowfall, and the base is a heavy pot made to look like a tree trunk, so it doesn't tip when someone brushes past. The 35 warm white LEDs plug in, so keep it near an outlet. If you have the room, the 3-foot version costs only a few dollars more.

Snow on the tips, little pinecones tucked in the branches and a burlap bag around the base: this one comes already decorated, and it looks like it came from a garden shop.

It's 2 feet tall and 16 inches wide, with 50 warm white LEDs on batteries and the same six-hours-on timer as #1. It's also rated for a covered porch, so it can stand by the front door. The catch is the flocking: it sheds a little white dust the first time you shape the branches, so fluff it over a towel, not over the couch.

A plain green pine in a tan burlap sack. No snow, no glitter, which is exactly why it suits a farmhouse kitchen or a room full of wood and linen (there's a dressier gold-base version with berries and pinecones, and it's actually a little cheaper).

The branches have memory wire, so they spring into shape instead of needing an hour of fluffing. The 35 warm white LEDs take three AAA batteries, not included, so buy them with the tree. It's 24 inches tall and 16 wide, and light enough to move from the table to the windowsill.

You already own lights and ornaments, and you just want a tree to put them on. Get this one. It's a 3-foot tree with no lights, for about $20.

The branches are stiff enough to hold real ornaments and a garland, which is not true of every cheap mini tree. It goes together in three sections on metal hinges, and the base folds flat for storage. Three feet on a table gets tall, so it works best on a low console, a bench or the floor of a small apartment. It also comes in white.

When 2 feet looks too small for the spot, step up to this. At 3 feet with 167 branch tips, it has more than twice the branches of #1 and reads as a real tree from across the room.

It's slim, about 21 inches wide at the bottom, so it doesn't take over a console. It comes with 50 multicolor lights that stay on even if one bulb goes out, plus a metal stand. Like #1, it needs a good half hour of fluffing the first year. This is the one for a family that wants the bright, colored-lights Christmas but has no floor space for a full tree.

A small pine in a plain black pot, nothing else. That's the point: on a modern shelf or a minimal entry table, it looks like a plant you bought for the season, not a decoration.

The needles are soft PE, the molded kind that looks closest to a real tree, and the wired branches bend into shape in a few minutes. It has no lights, so add a string of fairy lights if you want a glow. You can also drop the plastic pot into a nicer planter you already own. There's a 32-inch size if you want more height.

A white tree looks crisp in a bright room, and this is the cheapest good one. It's 24 inches, on a wooden base, with 75 branch tips.

It comes as a kit: white, silver and blue balls, silver berries, a star and a little sign, so it's dressed in ten minutes. The lights run on batteries with a timer and eight modes, from steady to twinkle. Pick steady. The flashing modes look cheap on a small tree.

The ceramic tree your grandmother had, with the little colored plastic bulbs. If that's the Christmas you want, this is the best version for the money.

It's 15 inches tall and hand-painted (there's a snowy flocked green too), with 64 bulbs and a star on top. It plugs in with a 5-foot cord and an on and off switch, so it stays near an outlet. It's small enough for a kitchen counter or a windowsill, and it keeps for years if you wrap it well in January.

Two 2-foot light-up trees made of bare branches wrapped in a birch-bark finish, with no needles at all. About $18 for the pair.

They suit a Scandinavian or minimal room, where a green fir would look too busy. Put one on each end of a mantel or a dresser. Each has 24 warm white lights on three AA batteries and a timer button on top of the base, easy to reach without tipping the tree over. They look best in the evening, when the lights do the work.

Not one tree but nine, from 4 to 10 inches tall, in green and silver. They're the bristly little trees that have been on mantels since the 1950s.

Group them in uneven clusters along a shelf, a mantel or the middle of a dining table, tallest at the back. They don't light up, so put them near a candle or a lit garland. At about $14 for nine, they're the cheapest way to make every surface in the house look like December. A pinch of fake snow on the tips and they look frosted.