Middle chainring is indeed looking quite worn, maybe not to the point of replacement needed, but close.
Outer doesn’t look as bad.

Set of 3×9 chainrings on eBay: £20 – seller Rusty_MTB

Although, I would change chain & cassette and if no skips, run em for a bit longer.

Seriously, a good chain is around £12-19 quid….I change mine after roughly 500-650 miles, depending on gloop. That way, the cassette and rings last at least 2000-2500 miles, and it saves dosh in the long run.
As someone up there said, ride the old chain till it doesn’t shift anymore, then change the lot and invest in a chain checker and use it!
I’ve had a couple of shimano chains be fine when I went out for a ride, but be worn beyond the ‘happy’ place by the time I returned…..KMC are better.

Are you running 3×10?

Can’t comment on your chainrings and how worn they are, but if ok I’d just change the chain and cassette at the moment – thats the cheapest option.

If you’re not using the full range of gears – granny / outer ring not massively worn and same with the cassette with wear in the middle) then the other option is to change for something like 1×10 using your current shifters / rear mech, binning the front mech and putting a narrow wide front chainring on the middle of your triple chainset. I did this with my last bike when the chainrings died.

Of course a full 1×11 / 1x 12 would be the money no object replacement but that’s a lot of money and the bike may not warrant it.

I’m afraid that I must disagree here and when I replace a chain it has physically stretched

The chain may be longer, but not because the links have stretched, it’s pin, roller and bushing wear.

If you go and measure pin-pin distance on all the outer plates it will be the same as the day the chain was new, and if you were to disassemble the chain and measure the centre-centre distance on the holes* in the inner links it will also be the same, the difference is the wear on mating surfaces of the inner links which means that hole is no longer the same size (or shape, which makes doing * difficult) as it was when new.

The plates don’t stretch, but the inner links wear on the mating surfaces (inside of hole where pin goes through) and you also get wear on the face of the pins (and on the rollers). These two areas of wear means you get slop in the inner links, this gives the appearance that the chain has stretched, but it’s just sloppy worn links, not stretched links.

good illustrations here (although for bushed chains, most modern are bushing-less but same principle in terms of wear not stretch):

more detail

I dump chains at around 0.75% wear, which here in Yorkshire on a mountain bike means around 1000-1500km or thereabouts. Cassettes and chainrings last a goodly amount of time when I stick to this, although obviously they do wear eventually.

Interesting – I’m also slopping about in Yorkshire mud and have found that if I let it go to 0.75, even if only just, it’s Slippy McSlipface and a new cassette time – I’ve had to start swapping when the 0.5 side of the gauge goes in (smoothly).

Shimano 3 x 10.
EDIT: And 3 x 9 (also Shimano)

Interesting – I’m also slopping about in Yorkshire mud and have found that if I let it go to 0.75, even if only just, it’s Slippy McSlipface and a new cassette time – I’ve had to start swapping when the 0.5 side of the gauge goes in (smoothly).

Hmm, I have to admit that I do change at no more than 0.75% (i.e. not 3 months after I noticed that it was there) so perhaps we’re not a long way different. I’m on Shimano 2×11 and it seems reasonably forgiving (apart from the shit jockey wheels 🙂 )

Note, this is measured pin to pin, rather than with the gauge, so this may also make a difference.

ps. Regarding rollers vs fishplate wear, perhaps my earlier statement wasn’t quite accurate enough – when I say I “measure pin to pin” I don’t mean literally the distance between two pins, but rather the length of the chain measured over 12″ with a steel ruler and then worked out as a percentage stretch. This being the case, I suspect we may be talking about the same thing.

I use all three chainrings, with the bigger one being the most used. I also climb a lot, so need the small one too. In fact, I think the middle chainring is the least used.
I know how chain wear actually works, I’ve researched about that a while ago. But thanks for the info!

I have now replaced the new chain with the old one, and everything works just fine. I’ll use it this way until problems occur. I measured it once again before putting it back on the bike and still got 25.55cm at 10 pins. The new one measures about 25.4cm.

You use the big ring the most?
Either you ride on the road all the time or you’re Chris Hoy.

there are a number of suggestions above that when you change to go 1X..

Is there any user experience that says that this extends the life of chain/cassette/chainring? or is the ‘advantage’ that you only have one chainring to replace?

I would expect that the wider deviation from a straight chainline would wear the chain faster, than you might expect with a properly used 3X setup… just wondering what the real life experience is?

not really noticed any difference in wear rates, can still do 2/3 cassettes per chainring by rotating chains or replacing frequently.

My other hypothesis is that changing gear is bad for chains (vis a vis my singlespeed chain goes on for ever, never broke one, have broken several on geared bikes) as the chain is forced over shifting ramps and often if you’re hamfisted like me, under load as well. And of these changes, the front one is the most likely to be messed up. Hence – no front shifts = least likelihood of it wearing or breaking.

That drive train is goosed. I’d run the whole lot into the ground then replace the lot in one go