The 11 Best Places to Buy Glasses Online for 2023

Several CNET editors have bought their glasses on Warby Parker, which has a good selection of sharp-looking eyeglass frames. While glasses start at only $95 with a single-vision prescription, chances are you're going to pay a bit more -- around $150 to $200 -- based on the type of frame options you choose, your prescription and type of eyeglass lenses. Prescription sunglasses start at $195, and progressive lenses in both eyeglasses and sunglasses start at $295. But based on my and my fellow co-workers' experience, the finished products tend to be a step up from what more budget-oriented sites offer. 

Austin, Texas-based Roka branched out into the online prescription eyewear business a few years ago. The retailer's marketing slogan is "The most technically advanced eyewear that doesn't look technical," and its glasses are impressively light, durable and stylish looking. Like Warby Parker, these are at the higher-end of the online prescription eyeglasses spectrum, with prices of around $200 for a completed pair of prescription glasses, depending on some of the lens upgrades you might add. But Roka has some of the best glasses frames out there.

Founded in 2008, GlassesUSA.com offers more affordable options for buying prescription eyeglasses and designer eyeglasses online than sites like Warby Parker and Roka, with full prescription glasses starting at $19. But it also features premium designer frames from high quality eyeglasses brands, including Ray-Ban and Persol. The designer eyewear lists for more -- frames start at $89 for basic completed Rx glasses -- but discounts can bring them down in price.

As its name implies, Overnight Glasses can make you a new set of prescription glasses quickly -- and really quickly if you're willing to pay extra for it. If you buy a frame/lens package, fast three- to four-day service is available for $9. (It takes slightly longer for progressive and bifocal lens types.) The quality of the lenses I got was as good as that from other replacement-lens sites, so there's no sacrifice on prescription eyewear quality for speed. Lenses and a new frame will cost you from $42 to $285, while lens replacement orders start at $87.

Eyeglasses.com's huge selection of both frames and lenses is a big selling point, but it also has the downside of offering so many options that it can be a little daunting to figure out exactly what to buy. You can get budget options -- lens prices start at $48 -- but the site skews toward more premium options. The idea is to get a significant discount (upwards of $200) on a high-quality frame-and-lens combo that you'd spend big bucks for in a brick-and-mortar shop. "Our business targets the main part of the eyewear industry, to supply the same products that customers would get at the eye doctor, but at 50% lower prices," CEO and Founder Mark Agnew told me.

EyeBuyDirect is similar in many ways to a lot of its competitors. Along with an in-house frame brand (Rflkt Eyewear) it has some Ray-Ban and Oakley frames. I went with a more affordable Rflkt frame and paired it with a higher-end lens. The price came out to around $150 -- you can go cheaper or more expensive. The most budget-friendly pairs are under 20 bucks. The frame quality was decent though not on par with, say, Roka's frames. Lens quality was good and the ordering process was smooth, with a standard virtual try-on feature where you upload a photo of yourself to help you find the perfect frame.

Zenni has been around for awhile, and it's the first site I used to buy cheap prescription glasses and sunglasses online. It's more of a budget-minded site, and over the years, I got some nice deals on cheap glasses, particularly when Zenni was running its occasional three-for-two glasses sales. I've had both standard eyeglasses and prescription sunglasses made here and so has fellow editor David Katzmaier, who has since graduated to Warby Parker (he said, however, he would still buy prescription sunglasses at Zenni because they're cheap and decent enough).

What do you do if you've already got a pair of eyeglasses frames you like but your prescription is old (or the lenses on your frames are scratched) and you just want to replace the lenses? Lensabl is one of the few sites that allows you to send in your own pair of frames and get a new prescription lens for them. Its motto is, "Your frames, our lenses," with prices starting at $77 for buying a basic pair of single-vision lenses. A pair of tinted sunglasses lenses start at $97.

FramesDirect is similar to a lot of the other online glasses retailers out there, but it focuses more on offering decent discounts on premium brand frames, claiming to have the largest selection of designer glasses online. This eyewear retailer is also one of the few places that offers prescription lens inserts for the Quest 2 and other VR headsets.

One of our editors recently used glasses.com and reported a good experience. She said that glasses.com accepts a lot of vision insurance plans and automatically handles payment if your insurance provider is in their network (you can usually get one pair of glasses free). If your vision insurance plan is out of network, like VSP and Spectera, the site automatically generates a bill (via email) that you need to submit to get reimbursed.

As you'd expect, SportRx caters to people looking for sports-oriented prescription glasses, with a wide variety of options from big eyewear brands such as Smith, Oakley, Ray-Ban, Costa and Nike. Not all the frames it sells have an Rx option, but most do.