You might also find it very helpful to search for cheap step ladders on some of the top search engine shopping portals, where you can view the list of cheap step ladders by scrolling, or request a side by side comparison of those that interest you most.
For example, we went to the shopping portal of one of the largest search engines and asked for a look at step ladders. The choices were in the hundreds. We asked to sort by price. Keep in mind that on a high volume, high trafficked Web search engine site you can get some pretty silly results. We found oil paintings of step ladders and little ladders for parakeet cages. So, it took a little scrolling to get started - still easier than traveling around town and making notes about who offers what for how much and then traveling back to the location of our first choice.
But we soon chose three cheap step ladders we liked, and realized that for the additional $5 off the highest priced step ladder we had one that folded away easily in our tiny apartment. Maybe not the cheapest but still one of the cheap step ladders.